Every Shade of Blue1
PLAY (BASED ON A TRUE STORY)
(21+)2
Vladimir Zaytsev
Vladimir Zaytsev was born in 1985 in Orenburg, where he still lives. He started writing prose when he was twelve and expanded his repertoire to drama and film scripts during his studies at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He is a member of the Moscow Writers Union. His plays include With a Hammer. With a Shovel (appeared in the journal Contemporary Drama), Moscow-Noginsk (appeared in Contemporary Drama and in 10 Best Plays of the Drama Competition âCharactersâ), Just Yura (appeared in the magazine Gostinyi dvor and in the collection of plays by the Foundation SEIP), as well as Hammer. Brick. Shovel (came out in the collection Eight). The play Every Shade of Blue, featured in this anthology, has run at the Satirikon theater in Moscow since 2015 and was also staged in English in 2016 by Northern Illinois University School of Theatre and Dance as Out of the Blue (in the translation by Tatyana Khaikin and Robert Duffley).
Authorâs address
There is no animal more frightening than man.
Characters
Boyâa teenager, high school student
MomâBoyâs mom, Sveta Biketova
DadâBoyâs dad, Kolya Biketov
GrandmaâBoyâs grandma
Vika Malakhovaâan eighth-grader
Yegor Averyanovâa sixteen-year-old
Lena NevzorovaâBoyâs classmate
Chemistry Teacher
Taxi Drivers: One, Two, Three
NatashaâBoyâs classmate
Classmates: One, Two, Three, Four
Exorcist
Princess LeiaLuke Skywalker
Frail Guy
Fashionably Dressed Guy
Viola
Nurse
Part One: The Die Is Cast
Boy It all started with the simple âMom, Dad, Iâm gay.â Of course, it wasnât that simple. âSimpleâ would have looked like this:
Boy Mom, Dad, Iâm gay.
Mom Oh, great! And I made meat piroshki for dinner. Letâs eat!
Boy Thatâs what âsimpleâ looks like. But thatâs not how it wentâŠ
First, it wasnât simple for me to figure out that I liked boys and was not into girls at all. Itâs not like you can just go shopping, buy a pink button-down shirt, and everyone immediately realizes that you have no taste. Or a fortune teller looks at you and says, âThis oneâs gonna grow up to be gay.â And you just grow up, and everythingâs clear already. Here you have to dig deep, you have to figure out who you really are.
Take daycare, for example. I was friends with two Sashas: a boy Sasha and a girl Sasha. So, do you think I liked the boy Sasha more than the girl Sasha? Not at all! I liked them both, and I liked spending time with both of them. Sasha and I even had a fight once over the other Sasha; you know, the girl Sasha. And, by the way, I won. (Pause.) So how should I have figured out that I was gay? Feel it in my bones?
Or, when I started school, they seated me next to Sveta Buravleva. Blonde hair, a big nose. Should I have protested and told them I wanted to sit next to a boy? Of course not! I was fine sitting next to Sveta, I copied Russian off her, she cheated off me in math. We also walked to school together âcause we lived close by. I even kissed her once. Sure, it was just on the cheek, but it still counts. I canât say it was incredibly amazing, but it wasnât gross or anything. I mean, Iâd kissed my grandma on the cheek just like that before. So it was pretty much the same, just the skin was just less wrinkled. I mean, it was not wrinkled at all ⊠anyway, at the time, there were no clues of my sexual orientation either.
And then, in the seventh or eighth grade, everyone started dating, and (pause) I tried it too. Not with Sveta, thoughâby that time sheâd changed schools. There was a girl in my class, her name was Vika Malakhova. A girl just like any other, with thick glasses and braids. Not a stunning beauty, but I liked that she had dimples when she smiled. In fact, if it hadnât been for the dimples, I wouldnât have even thought about her, but there I went and wrote a note and during the break, when she wasnât looking, I slipped it into her backpack. âAfter school, come to the pavilion, alone.â Of course, I didnât sign it.
We have this pavilion thing behind the schoolyard, a big one, where everyone hangs out when they skip class. Or, if they want to have a smoke, they also head there, so they donât get busted by the teachers. It always stands empty after school âcause nobody needs to hide there anymore, obviously, and it only gets busy again at night, when the local winos hang out there and drink.
Anyway, Vika found my note, read it, and gave me such a look at once that I freaked out and hid behind a textbook. There it was, I thought, sheâd see right through me, figure out I wrote that note, and wouldnât come; but when I dared to look over the physics textbook, I saw her scanning all the guys, so I calmed down. Good, she didnât know it was meâwell, of course, I made sure to change my handwriting. And there she came.
Vika Malakhova Oh ⊠so it was you ⊠I racked my brain trying to figure out whoâd do something that weird? I was sure it was Mishka Semenovâheâs always playing pranks. I was even thinking of not coming, but I was curiousâwhat if it wasnât a prank? What if somebody else wrote it? And it turns out, it was you.
Boy Yep, it was me.
Vika Malakhova So, what do you want?
Boy Not beating around the bush, are you?
Vika Malakhova Why drag things out? (She pushes her lips forward ready for a kiss.)
Boy Can you smile, please?
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