Ransom: 2 Drafts

View and download the readings through the Google Drive here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lPjN3nVPwqzc-jcSlppOBIOFiHMqYLsG or through https://cutt.ly/EuginiaJBS2020

For the last week of her residency with us, Euginia completed 2 different drafts of Ransom.

Ransom is a two-hander play Euginia started working on for Wild Rice's 2020 Singapore Theatre Festival. The play illustrates a kidnapping wherein no one is willing to hand over the demanded ransom for the hostage. Punctuated with moments of absurdity and dark humour, Ransom also talks about class differences, privilege and the pursuit of happiness.

Euginia foresees more drafts coming as she and the play evolves and matures into its topics over time.

We have had the absolute honour to get to know Euginia and her works better during the residency, and we wish her the best for her future endeavours!

We present Ransom in two drafts, by Euginia Tan.

Ransom (Draft 1) by Euginia for JBS (1)

Download • 3.37MB

Ransom (Draft 2) by Euginia for JBS (1)

Download • 976KB

Ransom is free to download through the buttons above. If you've enjoyed Euginia's journey with the residency so far, please leave some thoughts and feedback in the comment box below!

Quarantine: A Play by Euginia Tan

View and download the readings through the Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lPjN3nVPwqzc-jcSlppOBIOFiHMqYLsG or through https://cutt.ly/EuginiaJBS2020

For the past 4 weeks, Euginia completed the two hander, Quarantine.

Set domestically, the play follows the story of a mother and daughter trapped in their house amidst a time much like ours. As tension rises, mother and daughter begin negotiating murder and we are left wondering if the lockdowns globally continue to extend, are we not going to be above further regression into a Lord of the Flies situation?

For this residency, Euginia focused her writing on the format of two-hander plays as the minimal setting and characters not only reflect the time of isolation we are in at this moment, the two-hander format also poses the challenge of playing out conflict and tension through the text without external elements.

We present Quarantine in its entirety. Thank you for following Euginia's journey this past month, and keep a look out as we post Ransom in the following weeks.

Quarantine (Play)

.pdf

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WIP for Quarantine: Day #22

Quarantine the play will be posted on here for public feedback and review as Euginia writes for the next few weeks.  The Google Doc can also be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eKNAeAFOjgluewXPGfNissWO6meg5p6VKgsfFxZq_pk/edit?usp=sharing 

Quarantine

A daughter attempts to negotiate a murder on her mother during their time of quarantine.

Mother

Daughter

Scene 7

(continued from previous post)

Mother and Daughter are contained. They are still sedated.

The room they are contained is eerily similar to the house they lived in.

It is severely clean to a fault, but smaller, with less furniture than before.

After some time, Daughter coughs and wakes up.

Daughter: Where… Mother?

She looks around. She sees her mother sprawled on a bed next to her.

Daughter: Mother? Mother! Wake up! Wake up!

Mother doesn’t wake up.

Daughter: Somebody! Help!

Daughter rushes to what seems like a door.

She tries to open it, but can’t find a door handle or any way to escape. She bangs it.

Daughter: Please! Help! My mother won’t wake up!

No one responds to Daughter’s cries.

She tries again to wake her mother.

Daughter: Please, please! Say something! Anything!

She sees her mother in a vulnerable state.

She slaps her mother.

Daughter: Wake up! Wake up! You cannot leave me like this. You can’t! You can’t!

Mother wakes up, with some difficulty, from the slapping.

Mother: What… Stop…. Stop!

Daughter sees her mother awake. She stops.

Daughter breaks down in relief.

Daughter: You’re up… Nobody would help me…

Mother: Why were you…. Where are we…

Daughter: I don’t know… I told you it was a bad idea. I told you!

Mother: You hurt me when I was unconscious?

Daughter: You… You were just lying there, like a corpse… I had to do something!

Mother struggles to sit up.

Mother: I’m up. I’m okay.

Daughter: Mother, we have to get out… We have to…

It is Mother’s turn to study the room.

Mother: This is… jail?

Daughter continues to cry.

Mother: It looks… So much better than I thought it would.

Daughter: I’m too young to be stuck here… I’m too young…

Mother: Will you just, be quiet for once?

Daughter tries to calm herself.

Mother: This is… Good. It’s not bad.

Beat.

Mother: Give it a few days. They’d let us out of here in no time.

Daughter: What if they won’t?

Mother: Well.

Beat.

Mother: If this is the rest of my life… I’m happy with it.

Beat.

Mother: I don’t even have to make food now! They’d probably drop something off to me. I don’t have to… Be normal, pretend to have a life with my friends…

Mother relishes the rest of the room.

Mother: This is… how I want to live before I die.

Daughter: That’s you, Mother. How about me?! Me!

Mother studies daughter pensively.

Mother: Why should I feel sorry for you?

Beat.

Mother: You’ve tried to kill me! You hurt me when I was down!

Beat.

Mother: Take this as your punishment.

Daughter: Tell them to let me out, Mother. You can stay in here. I want to be out there.

Mother: Why should I?

Daughter: You… You said you loved me. Didn’t you?

Beat.

Daughter: Oh god. We killed a man, Mother. We killed a man…

Mother: We’re not sure if he died.

Daughter: We hurt someone, Mother… We hurt someone.

Pause. Daughter is now calm.

Daughter: It felt pretty good.

Beat.

Daughter: We let him have it… Didn’t we.

Mother: We did.

Daughter: You were right. It just took… Anger.

Mother: Men are weak, girl.

Beat.

Mother: They are not built like us.

Beat.

Daughter: Are you hungry, Mother?

Mother: No.

Daughter: Neither am I.

Mother: Thank you for sticking by my side.

Beat.

Mother: With the plan.

Beat.

Daughter: It’s okay.

The door slides open. Two trays of food are brought in, and a package.

Daughter: We’d best eat.

Mother: Another package.

Mother opens the package. It is a radio.

Mother: Ah.

Daughter eats.

Daughter: The food is quite good.

Mother: We can set this up later.

Mother begins to eat.

Mother: It is quite good.

Daughter: You were the worst cook.

Beat.

Mother: You didn’t turn out too bad.

Daughter: As a cook?

Beat.

Mother: As a person.

Beat.

Mother: There were times you were kind. Especially to me.

Beat.

Mother: There were times I didn’t deserve you.

Daughter: There were times I didn’t deserve you.

They keep eating.

Mother: You think the utensils are eco-friendly?

Daughter: Yes, they seem quite sustainable.

Mother: Very considerate.

Daughter: Maybe even the beds are eco-friendly, you think?

Mother: Ah yes. The sheets, perhaps.

Daughter: You’re right, it’s really quite good, for a jail.

Mother: It is! Why, in my time, for a crime… This wouldn’t be the way things were handled at all.

Daughter: Maybe some people even become more humane in jail.

Mother: Oh, I don’t know about that. Times were hard in the past.

Daughter: Well, I mean now.

Mother: Shall we set that up?

Mother gestures to the radio.

Mother: I know how you hate it. But… There really isn’t much to do now.

Daughter: I’ll do it.

Mother: Alright.

Daughter: You probably fiddled with it wrong the last time. That’s why nothing came out of it.

Mother: You’re better at these things.

Daughter fixes up the radio. She sets it in the middle.

Daughter: You ready?

Mother: Yes.

Daughter switches the radio on.

Radio: Weather report, normal. Crowd control, normal. Death count, 0, a zero percent decrease after twenty four hours. Virus has been contained past the forty eight hour count. End of quarantine commences. Citizens may resume routine.

Beat.

Radio: Weather report, normal. Crowd control, normal. Death count, 0, a zero percent decrease after twenty four hours. Virus has been contained past the forty eight hour count. End of quarantine commences. Citizens may resume routine.

Daughter switches the radio off.

A silence ensues.

Mother: Well. All’s good.

Daughter: Right.

Mother: They’d let us out.

Beat.

Daughter: I think so.

Mother: They’d have to come talk to us, sooner or later.

Daughter: They’d have to.

Mother: And we…

Daughter: Don’t worry, Mother. We’ve got time to figure it out.

Beat.

Daughter: We’ll make a good plan. Like what we did. We’ll talk about it, weigh the pros and cons. Test each other’s stories and alibis.

Beat.

Daughter: The best part is, we won’t have to run it by each other much. We’d just…. know. We just know each other, Mother. It’s a gift. We can use it.

Beat.

Daughter: No one else knows us, like we do ourselves.

Mother looks at Daughter. Mother lets out a slow smile.

They look at each other, basking in happiness.

END

p.s. This is the final scene of Euginia Tan's Quarantine.

We will be posting the entire play written during this first part of her residency with us shortly.