ATWAS: Coffee and Conditions

Introduction.

This action project is for my class "All the World's a Stage." In this class we connected the idea of drama, including the roles such as designer, actor, and writer into our world today, focusing specifically on discrimination in the world. We stepped into all three roles throughout the course, from designing the room we performed in out of cardboard, writing our own version of Goldilocks, and visiting multiple theaters to learn the different setups, ways of performing, and the tricks that go behind it. Our end result was to make our own play that included four different monologues that all tie together into one concept. The challenge is that these monologues were sheerly focused on discrimination, leaving little room to play around with due to how specific the requirement was for these monologues. This meant that literally every single one of our monologues had to describe a certain struggle that the character was facing, and piece them together into a play that runs smoothly and naturally. 

The Play and its Characters.

We had a total of four people directing, acting, writing their different characters and creating a scene all together. In the four included me of course. We ended up creating this scenario where we all were in a coffee shop, which was set up in the cabin room with tables, cloths, a whole book shelf we used as a wall and a place to store where the coffee was being made by the barista. Our four characters names were:

Trinity as Tiffany (Customer #1)

Kaylie as Laura (The Barista)

Enjoli as Dahlia (Customer #2)

Me as Milly The Rock Johnson (Customer #3)

The purpose of my monologue was entirely founded on Enjoli's monologue, as I decided to elect myself as an ally because anything I came up with either didn't make any sense or wasn't oppressive enough to be considered oppression or an issue. Look, I'm a white straight guy with Mexican heritage, the only thing I have going for me is being a Mexican, but even then I've never been in a situation where I found it as oppression in any sense. The character I had to create had to represent something similar to my own struggles. Not ENTIRELY the same, mind you, but just enough to be comparable. That didn't work out so I just decided to hop on the feminist train with all my pals. 

Milly the Rock Johnson is an average guy that works a 9-5 job, he never does anything outside of his house, he doesn't hang out with his friends or goes to parties. He is a regular guy with literally nothing going for him.  So the idea I stormed up after significant delay is that he ends up hearing all three of these women talk about their struggles and decides that he never recognized this due to him only being so self-indulged in himself, so he makes the change to jump in and propose that they could in fact be the final generation that could be the big change for the better. I decided to start off my soliloquy inside this guy's head, where I recorded myself saying these lines beforehand and playing it over speaker, whilst making facial expressions to match the tone of my voice, giving the illusion that the audience could hear Milly the Rock Johnson's thoughts. Here's my soliloquy, which later transitions into a monologue:

“Wait.. guys actually do things like that? You’re telling me that their mothers never taught them where to put their hands when walking past a woman? Never bothered to tell ‘em how to greet a girl like a human rather than opportunity for a one night stand? Holyyy shhhhh….oot. I just realized I don’t even like coffee. Why am I even in a coffee shop? Wait, wasn’t that a line to one of Eminem’s songs? Really getting this outta hand that she feels like she’s gotta crack a joke to keep the pressure low. If there is a man that can only speak with his... Well, his... You know..” (pause)

“...Isn’t really a man at all if the only thing flowing off his tongue is the thoughts of a pubescent thirteen-year-old boy. But then again, what is a man. Is a man defined by his actions? His words? Or rather his kindness, his consideration, his ability to recognize when to keep his tongue in his mouth, and when to speak out. Consideration, that’s the key, isn’t it? To be able to address situations before he forms his words. His words should not be built on patriarchy, but equality in the sense he knows when he speaks, he expects to be met with equal force, an equal power, an equal voice.”

He stops for a minute, looking stunned at what he just thought of.

He speaks, stretching as he says it:
“Whoo wow, this coffee’s got my mind buzzing. Either that or I just fueled a fire I didn’t know wanted to burn so badly. After hearing all of your experiences and views, I’ll be honest. I want this generation to be the last one that knows the feeling of catcalling, the expectations of others to fit into a group, the anger of knowing you’re getting paid less for the same work. We got to be the final shot to put it down, the last nail in the coffin. We gotta be the people that think with our brain and not our lust. I’m not trying to sound smart, I just wanna be real. It isn’t fair that some can walk down the streets with no fear and others do. I think we got the power to do all of this and more. There’s a door of opportunity to be explored, and it’s up to us to be the one to truly decide whether or not we’ll be the last one to endure the toxicity that had been fueled long ago.”

End.

Part of it refers to my friend's monologue, where she talks about catcalling for the entire bit, including a poem and a mixture of speech into one entire monologue. 

Rundown

Due to our setting being the cafe, our clothing was casual and displayed our characters dependant on their actual personality and/or role in the play. Kaylie wore an apron to show to the audience she indeed does work at the cafe, while Enjoli wore a christmas themed outfit as the cafe is set in the month of December. I wore a long black sleeve with jeans because I intended to make my character not stand out until he was queued, as it seemed fitting for his introverted personality. Trinity chose a more "loud" outfit by wearing a bright white long sleeve, with high waist jeans. She is meant to be eye-catching as she can be seen as the leader of the play with her lead on the script. She's first to enter and first to speak, so it fits her character.

The "data" that I had connected my monologue to was entirely based on Enjoli's monologue, since he was an ally. Milly the Rock Johnson was overhearing all of this and he develops his opinion based on her experiences. That's where the data is pulled from, so if you want to see what data I used, I'll leave the link to her blog, and everybody else's because it's required.

Links to others blog posts:
https://khgcelabschool.blogspot.com/2019/12/coffee-with-conditions-all-worlds-stage.html
https://tggcelabschool.blogspot.com/2019/12/all-worlds-stage.html

https://emsgcelabschool.blogspot.com/
Slideshow:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S0qtBAGzJhPpr_x_7mQ8-QFhDKcJVtJ2SlPEcxeHgrs/edit?usp=sharing