The Father Monologues – Part 2: Jenny.

Imagine yourself a full-blooded librarian, dodging judges and illiterate lovers to find honour and realistic literary heroes in a world gone large print and trash-romance mad.
Watch people fall in love on the Internet terminals. Through the sticky keyboards love evolves, sometimes real, sometimes a delusion. Perhaps even less real than is described with any believability in the trash-romances that line the shelves. Meanwhile, with your unusual lifestyle choice, you anger your estranged partner, and the “natural parent” of your son. Tragically, theirs is the ultimate punishment: Denial of access backed by an “authority” that too readily bandies about the insidious, witch-hunt-esque insinuation, nay, accusation of dubious mental health. In a final act of daring, where identity and sanity stay open to interpretation, you turn for help to an old romance writer, who reminds us all, “The play’s the thing.”

This play is a lot to do with identity and prejudice.
I have never met a father in the situation that this play deals with, although I do know people who have made similar lifestyle choices. My own feelings toward them are highly contradictory and this play forms an attempt to resolve some of the conflicting voices and give thanks for diversity. I make no apologies for any technical inaccuracies, and you’ll excuse me for not giving too much of the story away here, especially for those who haven’t yet seen it or guessed the themes of the story. I hope you enjoy an occasional surprise.
Many people when they met our new child immediately wanted to know only it’s age and gender, as if this will tell them what stance to take…how to respond to this person…. how delicate this flame is, how to relate to it… what to feel.
On hearing she’s a girl, the pink clothes come, words like “pretty” replace “handsome” and the kid gloves go on, as if she’s so much more breakable than a little boy. The emotional responses to her seem guided by what one would have thought were long defunct (but still very much alive and kicking) societal cues and prejudices.

“The Father Monologues” are a work in progress. There are three of them (Parts 1, 2 and 3) and they form an ongoing attempt to integrate the roles of writer, actor and father, which jostle with each other for my time, like shoppers at a jumble sale.
All the monologues are set in Brighton, my hometown, and can be seen as a trio or as individual pieces.
Jonathan Brown

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the (main) story so far:

Proteus has sworn love to Julia in Verona. But then his father thinks that to “become a worldly man” Proteus should follow his best friend Valentine to Milan. On arriving in Milan, Proteus is introduced by Valentine to Sylvia, the woman that Valentine is in love with.
Secretly, Proteus suddenly falls so “in love” with Sylvia that he decides to betray both Julia and Valentine to pursue her.
Meanwhile, in Verona, Julia is impatient to hear news of Proteus, and decides to disguise herself as a man with help from her maid Lucetta (an action that at that time would have been totally scandalous and social suicide for any woman of social merit to commit). She ends up in Milan taking on a job as manservant to an unawares Proteus who promptly asks Julia to take a secret love letter to Sylvia. Despite his appalling deceit, Julia is so honourable in her love of him that, as the manservant, she agrees to go and speak highly of him to Sylvia; despite the pain it causes her.
“How many women would do such a message?”

More images and info on this page soon.