A play I did for uni
CHARACTERS
TRAVIS A welder by trade in his late forties, loves his
cricket and his footy. Working class traditionalist.
LISA His nineteen year old daughter, first year uni student
Progressive minded.
SETTING
A dining room with a long oblong table in the centre. The table is set for a meal for two. A single fluorescent light on the ceiling. Sparse furnishings – some paintings of nature scenes on the walls, a wall unit with associated knick-knacks. There is a kitchen in the background.
TIME
It is dinner time. Light through kitchen window gives the impression of twilight.
SCENE 1
AT RISE: (LISA is bringing two plates of food from the kitchen to the dining room table. TRAVIS is sitting at the table already, busy with a mobile phone.)
LISA
(Reaches table)
If I have to cook at Christmas, I’m gonna scream.
TRAVIS
(still looking down at phone)
Hmm? Well, we can’t eat grass for Chrissy, can we?
LISA
No, but we can have something cold. You know? Salads, cold meat, rolls and stuff. We don’t need to cook. You’re too stingy to buy air-con for this place.
TRAVIS
(looks up at LISA as she sets the plates down)
Stingy? You know how much a decent reverse cycle air-con costs? To say nothing of the power bill. So much for Tony nuking the carbon tax – freakin’ bills keep going up. Nothing’s getting cheaper.
LISA
(sits down)
More reason to have cold stuff. You don’t want high bills, then don’t make me cook at Chrissy. I buy cold stuff from Coles – coleslaw, green salad mix, mesclun and a bunch of sliced meat, and we’re good to go.
TRAVIS
(shaking his head)
Bullshit. That sounds like a granny’s Sunday lunch at the nursing home.
LISA
Think of the environment, Dad. If I don’t cook at Chrissy, there’s less carbon polluting the air, making summer hotter. Everyone wins.
TRAVIS
Except for me. I get rabbit food for Chrissy. (stops eating and glances at LISA) What the hell is a “mesclun?”
LISA
It’s NOT rabbit rood. Look, you don’t get enough vitamin C and iron, Dad. All that shit you eat for lunch now, pies and sausage rolls and so on. Unhealthy crap, every bit of it. Dr. Gordon at uni, he’s a geologist and he says that pies have thickener added to them to bulk them out. That stuff’s carcinogenic.
TRAVIS
It’s what?
LISA
And you’re making me cook in forty degree weather. All because you won’t buy an air-con. Well, I’m bringing in that big fan from out in the garage and I’ll be gunning it all day if I have to slave away in there.
TRAVIS
I don’t think it works.
(HE chews, and stares down at his food)
What’s this purple stuff?
LISA
It’s cabbage.
TRAVIS
Purple cabbage? Really? I think you’ve added some of your Greenie chemicals to it. I’m gonna end up a socialist now, aren’t I?
LISA
(shakes head slowly)
Dad! It’s a cultivar of cabbage that’s purple. It’s the same damned thing as regular cabbage. Brassica oleracea, the cabbage of yore. Same stuff, trust me. Another teacher at uni, Professor Wilkins, he teaches calculus and says cabbage’s iron content is as good as spinach. There you go, an expert, so it’s good for you, green or purple.
TRAVIS
You’re not making this shit for Chrissy, I can tell you that right now.
LISA
Shit? My cooking is shit?
TRAVIS
(covers his mouth apologetically)
Well…no, just this cabbage.
LISA
But it’s still something I cooked! Me! Did you call mum’s cooking shit?
TRAVIS
(coughs)
No. Of course not…um. I’m just saying I prefer cabbage that’s the right colour.
LISA
Try it.
(emphatically points at her father’s food with a fork).
Just give it a go. I bet you like it.
TRAVIS
All right, it’s good.
LISA
Told you. We’re having it for Chrissy.
TRAVIS
Yeah, but you gotta cook it, don’t you? Slaving away in the kitchen.
LISA
Boiling vegetables isn’t the same thing as roasting stuff in an oven. I can make cabbage, toss some salads together, some nice sliced meat, like ham, mortadella, pastrami, some hot English mustard, cranberry sauce. What do you think of that?
TRAVIS
Morta-what?
LISA
If I get all the meats and salad vegetables Christmas Eve, it’ll only take like ten minutes to sort out Chrissy lunch. There’s this guy in America, Doctor Oz, a world-famous medico. He says that doing things like slaving away in the kitchen isn’t a productive use of your time. He’s an expert on health, so he would know all about time and motion, right? Makes perfect sense to me.
TRAVIS
Yeah, he sounds like a genius. Still don’t think it’s right not to cook for Chrissy. It’s a tradition, you know? We’ve been cooking big baked dinners and lunches for Christmas for donkey’s years. What would your mum think of not having a roast dinner for lunch? Think of what she’d say?
LISA
She’d say “buy a damn air conditioner, you cheapskate”
TRAVIS
They cost thousands for a decent one. Already told you that. I’m not made of money so think of my bank balance, please.
LISA
Get a halfway decent one then. I’m still getting that fan out of the shed if you’re gonna make me cook.
TRAVIS
It’s un-Australian not to have a roast at Chrissy. Like not having Coon in the fridge.
LISA
Plenty of Australians have salads and cold meals at Chrissy. Coon cheese is nasty, and it’s racist. Just ask that guy in Toowoomba.
TRAVIS
(gives LISA a long, hard stare)
No true Australian has cold meals at Chrissy, Lisa. It’s completely not dinky-di.
(TRAVIS turns to the audience)
I just can’t understand it with her. This family has had Christmas dinners for ages, since I don’t know when. Nice, hot, big Chrissy lunches and dinners. Sometimes turkey, sometimes roast beef or ham, but I gotta say, I don’t care for turkey much. The Yanks love their turkey, but I reckon it tastes like old mutton. But either way, we don’t have cold stuff for Chrissy. I don’t care if it’s summer here and the wallpaper’s falling off the walls – it’s how we do things. How we’ve always done it. It’s our way and there’s no reason to change it. We cook for Chrissy. It’s too easy, you know? You don’t fix things that aren’t broken, and a good old fashioned Chrissy lunch, with ham, taters, asparagus and stuff is how it’s good. Not damned salad and sliced meat from Coles’ Deli. If you want that, have it for lunch some other day, but not Christmas Day. Traditions are traditions for a cause and there’s no godly reason to change them.
(turns back to LISA)
It’s not ridgey-didge, Lisa. It’s not what any true Australian would do.
LISA
I guess we’re not true Australians then. I’m embarrassed to be an Australian sometimes anyway, Dad.
(LISA turns to the audience)
People booing champion Aboriginal football players, our speaker of Parliament on the take and all that. Our manufacturing base is no more, everything has been outsourced or sent overseas. Everything! And people need to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution! Harmonisation of the people! Reconciliation. What Dad wants me to do is indicative of the old-ways zeitgeist. The woman cooks, the man sits and watches, goddamnit! If only Mum had stood up for herself more with him, but no…old school she was, pathological housewife, born female to be nothing else than a sow-breeder, kitchen slave and dogsbody. At least she had the sense to finally realise her place in life was tainted. I wonder if she’ll even call us this Christmas from wherever she is now. I just know Dad spoke shit about her cooking too. Well, no more!
(turns back to TRAVIS)
I’m gonna go get that fan. If it blows up then you watch – I won’t need to cook anything this Christmas.
(LISA gets up and EXITS through the kitchen)
(TRAVIS grunts and returns to his mobile phone)
I wanted to put ten bucks on that four year old I saw at Rosehill, whatever it’s bloody name was. How the hell do I place a bet again?…What do you mean, no credit? I just got paid yesterday…ah stuff it, I’ll go down to the TAB. Can’t beat the old way.
(LISA returns to the dining room, carrying a tall metal fan. She puts it in front of her father and plugs it in to a power point.)
Watch this thing conk out!
(SHE turns on the fan. It starts up smoothly, oscillating strongly.)
TRAVIS
Looks alright to me. Look at it go. If it wasn’t gonna work, it would’ve stopped by now.
LISA
I thought you said this probably wouldn’t work? It looks like it’s never been used to me. Probably hasn’t been.
TRAVIS
(another long and hard stare to LISA)
Are you gonna cook Chrissy lunch?
LISA
(distracted)
Hmm…yeah why not?
TRAVIS
Good girl, I knew tradition would win out in this house…what’s a mesclun?