The following post is essentially a treatment of a script I have devised for theatre entitled Feeling Rich Yet? For those of you unfamiliar with a script treatment, it is not a script or story excerpt but more of an outline of the whole script and story. I hope you will be able to get some meaning, value and enjoyment from it.
Theatre, 2 Hander.
Act 1: Scene 1
CURTIS has just arrived at LUKE’s. It’s Saturday afternoon. These two go back years. The two men sit on opposite sofas engaged in social chit-chat for what is there occasional catch up. LUKE has his feet perched on the coffee table. The setting is familiar, the lounge is nicely furnished, cosy and stylish, it’s warm and inviting yet the two men are wearing identical grey tracksuit prison issue uniforms. The tone of voice in both men is stern, almost cold. But the words are warm, casual and friendly.
Dialogue
So the conversation starts. Curtis is keen to discuss his wedding plans and explain how far he and his fiancée have got with them. Luke is focused on talking about work and his upcoming appraisal. The two of them are engaged in, what is essentially, ordinary casual dialogue, the type you would expect from two friends catching up once in a while.
But, again, the audience should be able to discern something is out of place, because the actors will be delivering their lines in a kind of inanimate way, stone like, cold. Their body language is also revealing in that they are too guarded, it’s not the kind of relaxed openness you would expect from long time friends. But to emphasise again the words they speak are perfectly normal and friendly, nothing is out of context with the words themselves.
CURTIS
So everything’s all normal then?
LUKE
I think you and I both know everything is far from normal.
Narrative Expansion
This is the point in the conversation where things start to get deeper and we learn a little bit more about the two characters, and with that expanded understanding of the characters we start to learn more about the story and their lives.
Curtis explains to Luke that he has to burden a lot of the cost of the wedding as the father of the bride isn’t on the scene and her mother doesn’t have much money. Despite Curtis’s own parents chipping in Curtis himself will have to shoulder a big chunk of the cost. Add to that the ongoing pressure to keep up mortgage payments, finance payments for the car, utility bills, council tax, fuel, food costs, and all this is before you even get to the overdraft and credit cards. What he reveals is a man struggling with life in general because of money.
A Secret Living Hell
His life in fact is a living hell, but he conceals it very well, as do many people who are incurring serious money problems. We have broken down many social stigmas in our society over the years but money and wealth, or rather the lack of it, is still for so many an issue of great shame. We then discover Luke’s true financial situation which is even worse that Curtis’s.
Luke and Curtis Have Done Nothing Wrong
Neither of these men have done anything wrong, they both work full-time jobs, they even have second jobs to generate more income, but it just isn’t enough. They did everything they were supposed to do, they worked hard at school to get good grades, worked hard at university to get good grades then went out into the wider world and got jobs they were qualified or suited for. But it’s not enough. They pay their taxes and they abide by the law of the land. But it’s not enough, it will never be enough. They, like many others, will live their lives swimming in debt and struggling to stay afloat virtually all of their lives, if not the entirety of it.
Curtis and Luke know they live in a financial prison but they rarely admit it, even to themselves in their own minds. They’re not allowed to really, they have to keep up the pretence that everything’s normal, happy and positive, and life just can’t get any better. After all what else can you do?
The tension and the conflict in the story arises from the apparent normality on the surface at the start of the conversation contrasted with the unhealthy abnormality that’s revealed because of the financial tyranny we all are forced to live our lives under.
This is effectively a social commentary piece, with a focus on money and how it controls so much of our lives. And how difficult it is for most of us to talk about.
The conversation continues to reveal what these two men really think of their lives, and the picture that emerges is a life of constant struggle with the occasional moment of freedom and emancipation.
And after this conversation they will then turn to what type of food they want to eat at the pub later on, and what time to meet up with the others for their Saturday night out on the town. So at the end of the conversation the superficial normality returns again, things get back to ‘normal’ and the facade of an unhealthy normality is put back in place and off they go the pub.
So how many of you are feeling rich yet? Reckon you'll ever get there?
