Anton in Show Business
By Jane MartinLisabette is 24, charming and energetic. She graduated from the Southern Methodist University drama department and began teaching third grade. She is cast in a regional production of Chekhov's Three Sisters. This monologue ends the play.
LISABETTE
It's so stupid, but I love to act. It always feels like anything could happen. It's just people, you know, just people doing it and watching it, but I think everybody hopes that it might turn out to be something more than that. Like people buy a ticket to the lottery, only this has more... heart to it. And most times, it doesn't turn out any better than the lottery, but sometimes...
My dad runs a community center, and back in the day they did this play called A Raisin in the Sun, just about a black family or something, and it was just people doing it. He said there was a grocery guy and a car mechanic, a waitress, but the whole thing had like... I don't know... an aura, and people wanted to be there... so much that when they would practice at night, 'cause everybody had jobs, they had to open the doors at the center and hundreds of black people would just show up, show up for the play practice. They brought kids, they brought dinner, old people in wheelchairs, and they would hang around the whole time, kids running up and down, until the actors went home, night after night at practice, and when they finished, these people would stick around and they would line up outside like a... reception line... like a wedding... and the actors would walk down that line... "How you doin'? How you doin'?" Shaking hands, patting on the kids, and the people would give them pies and yard flowers, and then the audience and the actors would all walk out, in the pitch dark, to the parking lot together. Nobody knew exactly what it was or why it happened.
Someday I'd like to be in a play like that.
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