Calling Wanda
Looking for the script ’cause your teacher told you that you had to read the whole play first?
This one-act play has been lost in the annals of history. The script is no longer available. A stray fragment of the text has reappeared in The Ultimate Audition Book: 222 Comedy Monologues 2 Minutes & Under, which is available for purchase in many fine bookstores. If you have picked up this book and want a little context for what you find there, please absorb the following information. It is the only material that remains from what I’m sure will be considered a long lost masterpiece of theatre by learned historians everywhere.
What the show’s about:
KEVIN is an intense and lonely misfit with a dead-end job in a milk factory, surrounded by (literal) automatons and haunted by a fear of death. In a night of desperation, he calls a phone psychic. As luck would have it, WANDA the psychic is an equally intense and lonely misfit, surrounded by automatons and haunted by a suspicion that she’s not a real psychic. The two forge an impossible but probably destined friendship. Passions bloom, people get fired, phone lines and souls are disconnected and reconnected, love and life are reaffirmed and everybody escapes to Florida in the end.
Context for the monologue:
In the monologue, Kevin pours his soul out to his two robotic co-workers, Kenny and Bob. As usual, Kenny and Bob take no notice of Kevin, but continue to stamp the expiration dates on the milk cartons as programmed. Kevin, however, is long past expecting any stir of interest or recognition from the factory guys. His growing love for Wanda energizes him and protects him from spiritual frostbite.
Tip for actors: It’s better to play Kevin as a hopeless and romantic idealist, rather than as a creepily insane person. Let the audience judge his insanity for themselves. In other words, play up the love, and play down the stalker-ness.
