Written by Camille Scaysbrook

Cast :
MONTY - Damon Herriman

Produced by Libby Douglas, ABC Radio Drama Sydney.

First Broadcast : Saturday 28th June 1997 on ABC Radio National

About `HEBEPHRENIA'

This play was adapted from a short story that I wrote in my first days at university from the basis of my feelings about it, which were along the lines of `I think I'm going crazy. In fact, it may be a lot easier if I just did. Can you decide to go crazy ?'. Through my experiences working with teenage first-time playwrights, I've found that insanity and asylum scenes are an amazingly prevalent theme in their work. It's hardly surprising - as I've said many times before, teenagers have to metamorphose, slowly painfully and messily, into a completely different person -an adult - with no assistance from a society who calls them `crazy' delinquents but is unwilling to do anything to help them.

Damon Herriman, the Sydney Theatre Co. actor who had performed one of my favourite interpretations of the `BOY' character from AM I YOUR DREAM? came into the project as a complete coincidence. He did a brilliant job, nailing the whole script almost entirely in one take. As the ABC was partially on strike that day, there was no one to play Monty's ethereal girlfriend Rose - so I stepped in and did it.

Monty was actually originally Violet, from DON'T CALL ME SONNY BOY and a few other works not included here.

CHARACTERS (1 male, 1 female)
MONTY- A very fragile sounding teenage boy who has just had some kind of breakdown (the exact nature of which is not specified) and has been placed in a sanatorium.

ROSE - Monty's girl friend. She seems to exist somewhere between reality and his mind.

Other voices.

Setting
A mental hospital.

SCENE 1.

1. SFX Two voices - one belonging to Monty, the other an authorative female voice (ROSE), run through some form of distortion to make them sound slightly bizzare.

2. MONTY/ROSE `HEBEPHRENIA' - Dementia praecox occuring during puberty, Greek `hebe' - youth, `phren' - mind.

3. SFX This is replaced by a quick crescendo of fairground sounds, and a recurrent sound that is heard throughout - it's a compressed sentence, distorted beyond recognition. A voice whispers `crazy', snatches of the word `crazy' from popular songs emerge, it all builds up to a crescendo like a wave crashing, then .... Silence, into which Violet speaks.

2. MONTY - Well. It's kind of funny actually being here. Finally. Eventually. Now. I feel like I've seen this room a hundred billion times. I haven't actually been here before, ever, but it seems like I've always known what these four walls were going to look like.

3. SFX - The echoing sounds of the sanatorium begin. There are hospital sounds, but they are distant, as if happening in another room. A clock ticks as if it's ticked forever.

4. MONTY- The way my hands go numb when I pull them across the white surface, like some sort of stucco covered iceberg that you know you could see through if only you could get beyond the aching sensation of the ice pressing into your face. The window's frosted and disembodied T shirts with phantom faces above hover in front of the sky.

SFX ROSE's voice joins him in the following sentence as at the beginning. From here in, the lines that she speaks along with Violet will be indicated by bold type.

MONTY- Can you guys see me in here? Or am I a haze just like you? There's those glass bricks that look as if they're made of water and air. A glowing globe lamp and some magazines. Uninteresting. The sky and ground are one aqua melting mass outside the window. A chocolate wrapper is a red and yellow flower sprouting from the grass until the wind blows, and it's just a wrapper again. I bet it's going around.

SFX Male and female adolescent voices (which Monty is aware of) speaking and overlapping over one another -

VOICE 1 - Monty finally made it in. He's finally there.

VOICE 2 - You're kidding, aren't you ...

VOICE 3 - You mean Monty - Hugh Montgomery... him?

VOICE 4 - I never would have thought it of him.

VOICE 5 - But he's so quiet!

VOICE 6 - We all knew he'd end up there.

MONTY - And I am, I'm here. Monty finally keeled over, with a peppermint icecream in one hand, in the middle of the fairground with all of humanity swirling above him. And before his eyes shut, before his mind shut he saw the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire little life and identified with it some sweet, tragic sound that lingered where his mind feared to tread. I think this is why I fell over. It's a good thing I wasn't near the balconies.

SFX Below the next speech, many voices mumbling

MONTY- He saw all these faces, curiosity, mumbling lips, smirks of interest, pity, fear, above him. Finally he was the Centre of Attention. Over here, humanity. Something's happening.

SFX Like before, the following voices mumble underneath his speech. The fairground sounds begin again also.

VOICE 1 - Someone just fell over with an icecream in their hand.

VOICE 2 - Haven't you heard? Monty chucked the towel in!

I'd love to see Rose's face now. Touch her face slowly, slowly and softly, so slow it doesn't even seem to be happening, just being. I'd love to see every muscle in it drop when she heard it. Her, and Peta and Jay, he was there, he knows. No, he doesn't know. He doesn't really know. He's just the one confirming it.

VOICE 3 - Yeah, it's true, I was there. Bummer, huh? Still ... We all suspected.

SFX The fairground music begins going faster and faster until it is going at breakneck speed.

MONTY - But no, you didn't, you couldn't possibly in the world suspected it, there, in the middle of 70's music spinning out the speakers and faces passing, a procession, in front of that human wreck.

SFX Silence.

MONTY - But I'm not a wreck. Far from it, in fact, I feel better. I feel good. Relieved in a way. That human puddle, reflecting every face that looked into it. It's a good thing I didn't fall off the balcony, squash someone. That would've been horrible. No, no. I didn't do damage to anyone. Not even me really. I feel like the trailer of a movie. I feel like the silence as the curtains close and the lights ebb away just that little bit more into that darkness that turns everyone's heads into haloes of light. I'm living in the time it takes for one song to turn into another. The white margins of a page, and the book's outside the window. Out there. Anticipation. Emptiness. A vacuum. The waiting room between two moments. And it's only me, alone, like it always was.