An inside perspective of Three Minute Monologues
Three Minute Monologues is a collaborative writer showcase between the Warren Youth Project and Middle Child, funded by Comic Relief, in which writers and professional actors work with young people to create short but sweet monologues.
These come from creative writing workshops that have taken place over the past year, with those results passed to playwrights who used their work as inspiration for original monologues.
These monologues will be performed for the first time at Social on Thursday 31 August, as part of Freedom Festival 2023.
Ahead of the sharing we asked, Andie, aka anti-pop/electro/punk artist Bizarre Fae, to share their experience of contributing to the project.
When Three Minute Monologues began I was super excited to work on these, writing alongside the awesome spoken word poet, Jodie Langford. I feel truly blessed to have been part of this project and I can’t wait to see these monologues be performed now we have received and read them.
Early in the project, I was nervous to write honestly. It felt much easier to write silly stories about the topics we were given, but as I listened to my peers share their writings I became more and more confident in my ability to share truth in my words. It became a weekly safe space for all of us that I looked forward to, not just for my creative outlet, but also to hear the self-expression of my fellow writers.
The group was made up of a large variety of creatives, some of whom did not consider themselves creative at all. It was beautiful to see my newfound friends discover confidence in their imagination and creative ability, many of them continuing to write outside of the project. Hearing the words of my peers was inspirational and empowering: it made me aspire to bear more of my soul in my words.
When we got the scripts back it was exhilarating, seeing the personality of my peers laced into such creative retellings of our words was an unexpected highlight. The first script we read was an incredible piece called The Secret Diary Of Robyn No-Breast. Personally, I’ve struggled with gender identity since I was a little kid. I never understood the harsh confines of what was deemed ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’. Much like Robyn, I found comfort in the nonbinary identity. It was cathartic to read a story of someone so similar to myself, to finally be face-to-face with a character who echoed my experience navigating this crazy divided world.
In the next script, A List Of All The People More Fucked Up Than Me,
that relatability and catharsis grew stronger, as I saw my influence in Molly’s speech. As she began her birthday celebration, it was wonderful to live vicariously through this trailblazing mad woman. I cannot tell you the number of times I have daydreamed of giving a room full of billionaires what-for about their mistreatment of others. The art of anarchy shone through in the writing of this monologue and it made me so happy to see the true angst of youth shine through.
With Life: It’s The Best the tone shifts extraordinarily in a fascinating way. The concept of a bureau between life and death was intriguing from the get-go, allowing a more existential conversation that left a profound impact on me. Although less youthful in tone, a lot was to be gained from the dissociation from the innate human experience. After the main character pulls themself through an entire lifespan in the blink of an eye, they rush to alert the bureau to the necessity for human connection. For me, this is an echo of the depersonalisation forced onto us from a young age in the school system. The way we are trained to hide our individuality to be good little workers, regardless of the impact on our mental health. We only get one life and we should be able to express that in whatever way feels natural. They are our memories to take to the grave and nobody should be able to make us feel as though our life is not our own.
The impact of this experience has been truly eye-opening. Seeing so many minds come together to produce these monologues has been heartwarming. From sitting in the writing sessions and opening myself up to listening to my peers do the same, to reading the way these conversations were interpreted by a third party, it’s been a truly life-changing experience and I would be eager to participate in something like this again.
- See Three Minute Monologues for free at Social on Thursday 31 August, from 7.30pm. Book tickets through the Freedom Festival website.
