Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Eric Bogosian

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781559362023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781559367462
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

100% pure high octane Bogosian.

Bogosian's latest and greatest monologue.

"His wit is as venomous as ever, his material even more devastating and polished than before."—New York Daily News

"Bogosian hasn't simply crossed the line of good taste, he has snorted it."—The Daily Texan

Wake Up is Bogosian's meditation on making it to the top of the ladder, on falling off the ladder and on the exhilarating thrill of the ultimate crash and burn. Once again the author offers a blisteringly funny and dead-on take of the chaos and alienation of post-modern life in the U. S. of the year 2000. As Michael Feingold so ably offered in his Village Voice review—"Bogosian is there, watching out for the downtrodden, ridiculing the arrogant rich, defending battered wives and neo-hippie hitchhikers and never losing sight of his own capacity for being classed among the batters and bullies. But his 95 minutes is as fast and exciting a read as the theatre community offers. In our time, the stage has almost been what classical thinkers saw it as, a medium for criticizing life. How perfect that a solo performer should rediscover its roots, by choosing his own life as the object of his criticism."

Eric Bogosian, born in Woburn, Massachusetts, has performed his plays and monologues at venues nationwide. Winner of Obie and Drama Desk Awards, he has made four films of his work, most notably Talk Radio and Suburbia. His novel Mall was recently published by Simon and Schuster.

WAKE UP
AND SMELL
THE COFFEE

THE PROMISE

Garrulous, shouting into a mike directly at the audience, menacing:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT. THERE ARE THOSE THAT RULE AND THERE ARE THOSE THAT ARE RULED. THE FUCKERS AND THE FUCKEES. THE MASTERS AND THE SLAVES. THAT’S THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS. THE WINNERS, THE LOSERS, THE KILLERS AND THE DEAD. AND I AM THE TOP DOG. AND DOG SPELT BACKWARDS IS GOD.

THOSE WHO WANT TO FUCK WITH ME, I GOT ONE WORD FOR YOU: PAIN. YOU DON’T LIKE PAIN, DON’T GET IN THE RING WITH ME. ’CAUSE I’LL BREAK EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY. JUST TROT DOWN TO THE LOCKER ROOM AND HAVE A TEARFUL LITTLE SHOWER. IF YOU DO LIKE PAIN, YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME … ’CAUSE I’M THE DOG ON TOP!

(Slams down the mike stand. Pause. Then gently into the mike:)

THANK YOU.

INTRO

Lights up. He slips on a black sports jacket and walks toward the audience.

Thank you, thank you. Thanks so much for coming by. I really appreciate it.

Tonight we’re going on a journey. This theatre is our ship and I’m your captain. Hopefully, you’re going to see things from a slightly different perspective, gain a little insight, renew your empathy.

And we’re going to have some fun too. I’m gonna give you that Lenny-Bruce-esque experience that transforms tragedy into comedy. That turns it all upside-down and cuts through the bullshit and the hypocrisy.

Because that’s what theatre is all about, isn’t it? Insight into human nature. And with that insight comes understanding; with understanding—action; and from action, change and a better world.

Sure, I’m just one guy up here. And let’s face it, you’re pretty much a room full of strangers. But tonight, tonight we become as one. Tonight we’re not just separate individuals, islands, lonely and adrift. Tonight we are like snow flakes in a storm, swirling together, each one of us unique, but also part of something much larger, each one of us a frozen droplet of potential.

As we swirl together tonight, who knows where we might end up? We are limited only by our imagination! Perhaps as a snowdrift high upon a mountain peak! Perhaps the highest mountain—Mount Everest! Why not?

We fall gently, one upon the other, one flake upon his fellow flake, immobile, caught in the frozen silence of the Himalayas.

Until one day, the sun warms us and we melt. We become a trickle, the trickle becomes a stream, the stream a river, as we reunite with all the other little drops and become a mighty torrent. Powerful, roaring, cascading—we are the Ganges—yes! Immense, pouring down into the valley. Full of life and energy and fish! People are swimming in us! Bathing in us! Laughing, joking!!!

Elephants squirt arcing sprays from their trunks! Shamans baptize their followers in our sacred waters! Dark-eyed women scrub their washing on the rocks, pounding their dhotis and saris with sticks, the water droplets splashing joyously up into the air! Even the dead are brought to us upon their fiery funeral pyres, as they say their final good-bye to this transient life. People chant! They sing! They celebrate! We are the river, we are life itself! We are HOLY!

(Pause.)

Wow. All that right here in this theatre, tonight.

And so, hopefully, if my humble little show touches you in any way, if I do manage to reach out and communicate to just a few of you, an incremental change may come over you and you might walk out of this theatre a slightly different person.

You’ll walk out of here and who knows what you might do? Maybe you’ll write that letter to your mother your therapist has been telling you to write. Break up with that boy friend who’s been vegetating for the last six months. Lose ten pounds. Throw away those cigarettes for good. Give someone a hug.

Or write a novel. A play. A screenplay!

Inspired, you just might invent something, some great new invention—penicillin! Well, they’ve already invented penicillin, but something like penicillin. Something that changes the lives of millions. That changes the course of history!

(Pause. Looks the audience straight into the eyes, brimming with optimism, then:)

Or not. Maybe none of that will happen. Maybe you’ll just walk out of this theatre, and enjoy nothing more than a pathetic wordless ride home, you realizing that, despite my every effort up here on your behalf, nothing has changed, there has been no progress in your life whatsoever. And indeed you will go home and set the alarm clock one more time, knowing full well that you’re going to get up tomorrow morning, same as every morning, and go back to that same God-forsaken job you hate with every molecule of your being. And everyone of those misfits you’ve endured for the past five, ten, fifteen years, will be there tomorrow, same as yesterday, same as today and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You are locked in an endless cycle of conformity, a grinding featureless routine, punctuated by only the most lame and insipid diversions, of which this is obviously one.

And I want to tell you, I relate. I identify. I do. I feel your pain. And it hurts. It hurts a lot. And I want to help. But I can’t help. There’s not much I can do about it from this vantage point.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any “message.” I can’t make you think unless you were already thinking before you came by the theatre. Which is a fifty-fifty proposition. All I can do up here is distract you for about seventy-five minutes. Make you numb, sedate you. Make painless this unending trail of shit we call a life. This tar pit of stupidity, this vat of spiritual oatmeal, this slimy snail track of frustration, this pointless, stupid, mosh pit of fuckwits and hypocrites and pinheads with whom we must cohabit like ants on an anthill, like crabs in a bottle, like bacterium in a dirty drop of water, endlessly fighting and competing, fighting and competing, fighting and competing, consuming and shitting. Like food tubes with absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Let’s be honest. You’ll sit here tonight, watch the show, leave, shove an ice-cream cone down your throat, and come tomorrow morning this show, like that ice cream, will be nothing more than a vague memory, flushed away and forgotten.

I don’t know why I waste my breath. Because everybody knows, everybody knows what I’m saying, but everybody pretends not to know. It’s mass delusional self-hypnosis. It’s meaningless. Really. C’mon! Communication? Inspiration? Insight? Bullshit.

If I had any guts at all, I’d walk off this stage right now. (Walks offstage; from off) I’d walk off and I wouldn’t come back. (Returns) But I don’t have any guts. And I need the check.

OK. OK. OK. You want insight into human nature? OK, here’s some insight into human nature. Let’s play a little game, we’ll call it: “The Insight into Human Nature Game”!

No, that’s a lousy name for a game. Here’s a much better name. We’ll call it: “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” But we won’t play the TV version, that’s bull. Let’s play it the way it’s really played in the real world. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

(He jumps over to the mike, and speaks in an announcer voice:)

OK, contestants! You know the rules! There’s a little button in front of each one of you. Push the button and one million dollars tax-free is instantly deposited in a Swiss bank account in your name. But don’t forget when you push that button, millions of people will also be instantly thrown out of work and spend the rest of their lives in abject poverty and misery.

(He drops the voice and steps back toward the audience.)

Question: How long do you wait before you push the button? Or let’s bring it right here, right now. There’s a button in front of each one of you. You push the button and I go up in a big ball of flame. And I die, writhing in agony, right before your eyes.

Question: Do you push the button, or do you just wait for the person sitting next to you to push the button?

(Youthful voice:)

Yeah we went to this show, man, and it was kind of interesting. There was this guy on stage talking about something, I’m not sure what, and then he just went whoosh and went up in a ball of fire! Turned all black and wrinkled-up and crusty like a piece of chicken you leave on the barbecue for too long. It was awesome! (Catches himself) I mean it was disturbing too, you know. It really made me think.

(Switches back to normal voice:)

C’mon, admit it. Wouldn’t you love it if I just dropped dead up here right now? Wouldn’t that be a unique experience? Right? You don’t really know me, why should you care? You could dine out on that one for the next six months: “I was there, man.” You could email your best friend: “Went to this show, guy died on stage. It was … it was disturbing. Really made me think.”

If you think there’s any level of compassion or empathy or civilization whatsoever being shared out there by anybody, I got news for you, there is none. Wake up and smell the coffee, it’s anarchy. It’s chaos barely being held together by pious hypocrisy and gross sentimentality.

The blind leading the blind. No, that’s not right, it’s the retarded leading the blind. (Forrest Gump voice) “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Great moments in Western civilization! I have to write that one down. Never thought of things that way before: “You never know what you’re going to get”! Deep! A hero for our times. (Sling Blade voice) “SOME CALL IT A SLING BLADE.” Great retard, Billy Bob. Will somebody please give that man an Oscar? “Some call it a sling blade.” (Dustin Hoffman Rain Man voice and posture) “Eighty-two, eighty-two, eighty-two. Two hundred and forty-six, two hundred and forty-six toothpicks in the box, Raymond.”

(Drops to his knees, pleading to the audience:)

WE’RE DOWN HERE LOOKING UP AT THE MENTALLY HANDICAPPED. WHERE DOES THAT PUT US???? RIGHT IN THE ESPRESSO BAR WITH A TATTOO AND A CELL PHONE, THAT’S WHERE!

(Jumps back into Forrest Gump:)

“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to …” I KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO GET, I KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO GET: I’M GONNA GET FUCKED. THAT’S WHAT I’M GOING TO GET!

VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

Rushes to a chair and faces upstage as if watching the performance. Whiny, older theatre-goer voice:

What’s this show about anyway? What is this? What are you talking about up there? What happened to the journey down the river? I was looking forward to that part. You came out, you were saying life was beautiful and how theatre was about insight and communication and I thought, It won’t be Vagina Monologues, but I’ll be moved. I want to be moved! I want catharsis when I go to the theatr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• A Note
• WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
• ORPHANS
• BUILDING CHARACTER