Catholic Schoolgirls
By Casey Kurtti

Catholic Schoolgirls is a memory play. Wanda is in the fourth grade when she delivers this monologue, in response to one of her teachers telling her that she is too proud and shouldn't "make a spectacle of herself." She talks directly to the audience.

WANDA:

My father comes home from work every night and before he even takes off his hat, he drops a bag of leaky, smelly meat on the table for my mother. She waits to see if she should kiss him or not. If it is just hamburger, she grunts. If it is liver, she practically goes to Mars. I hate liver. I hate all things sometimes, even things I like. My ballet lessons, my dolls, and I hate my smartness. You know why? Because they were given to me. I am working on something that's mine. I have been for along time.

After school, I go home and do all my homework right away so I can go down to my father's store. He's not really a bad man. I just don't' like him, or something. While he's in the back room, sawing those bones out of the big legs of meat, I take some soda cans and crush them onto my shoes. I move some sawdust into a little pile on the floor, and start to dance. Not like Nancy Sinatra or Diana Ross - oh, I am so much better. As I'm dancing, my mind just lets go and all these little movies come into my head. My favorite - I'm on the Ed Sullivan show. I'm singing a song. Fake snow is falling all around me. I have on a sexy dress. It's sort of a sad song and I look so incredibly beautiful that people in the audience are starting to cry. Well, I break into a tap dance, just to cheer them up. Later on, Ed Sullivan brings me backstage to the Beatle's dressing room, and Paul asks me to marry him. I say, maybe in a couple of months, because I have my career to think about. I become an international superstar and I go to live in a penthouse apartment right on top of Radio City Music Hall. So for now, I don't mind rehearsing in my father's store. He stays out of my way. So, you just get ready, because even if it is a sin, I don't care, I'm going to be famous.

Order Catholic Schoolgirls as part of the Plays for Actresses Anthology from Amazon.

This monologue brought to you by The Monologue Database.