WAIT FOR IT by Lisa Carstens is a semi-finalist for NYCPlaywrights project "Women in the Age of Trump."
LISA CARSTENS is Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at Pacific University, Oregon. Lisa recently had a short play produced as one of seven winners in The Fusion Theatre’s annual 10-minute playwriting competition, “The Seven” (Albuquerque NM, June 2015). Prior to that, the same play, “Future Perfect,” was a finalist in the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s 2015 National Ten Minute Play Contest.
Thanks to Lisa Carstens for allowing NYCPlaywrights to publish this excerpt from her monologue WAIT FOR IT.
This morning I walked in on myself dead at the kitchen table, on a stool I’d always complained about. The stool was backless and had one short leg, so it wobbled.
I looked peaceful enough.
Curiously, I was not interesting to look at. Very plain. Old pajamas. But under forty,which I believe gives me points. Slumped over, obviously. An ambiguous scene.
I looked different from different angles.
The dishwasher was running. It made a very soothing shush shush noise.
Pajamas, yet the dishwasher was running. Curious. Usually, I ran the dishwasher at night, with all my clothes on.
Something was reminding me of something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
It’s troubling, when you think about it: How easy it is to disappear. To forget yourself.
To be forgotten. I wondered: What happened to me? How could I have been here and then gone so suddenly? Am I being studied somewhere? Is somebody scanning my brain to see if it still registers thought after I am gone?