Scenes from Well Transcript

MONTAGE
LISA KRON: The play we’re going to do deals with issues of illness and wellness. It asks the question: why are some people sick and other people are well?

VOICE (Sings): When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother: “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?” Here’s what she said to me: “que sera sera”

ANN KRON: I don’t even like to have my picture taken—I certainly don’t want to be in a play.


SCENE 1
LISA KRON: I want to tell you a little bit about what we’re going to be doing. The play we’re going to do deals with issues of illness and wellness. It asks the question: why are some people sick and other people are well? Why are some people sick for years and years and other people are sick for a while but then they get better? Why is that? What is the difference between those people? This play is not about my mother and me. That is my mother there—on that lazy boy recliner, which is where she spends most of her time because she doesn’t feel well enough to get up and do other things. But it’s not about her. It’s not about how she’s been sick for years and years and years and I was sick as well, but somehow I got better.


SCENE 2
ANN KRON: Course, I didn’t get any sleep today because the telephone started to ring about ten o’clock this morning and I just…people kept calling all through my prime sleeping hour, so…oh, darn it! Did I forget to set the VCR ice skating crimeny nitwit! I can’t believe it! I just..oh! I think I set the VCR upstairs to tape it. (Notices the audience) Oh, hello. (Whispers to LISA) You didn’t tell me there were people here. (To the audience) Hi. How you doin? I’d offer you a more comfortable chair, but then where would we put the coats?


SCENE 3
ANN KRON: Okay, what would you people like?

LISA KRON: They’re good.

ANN KRON: Really?

LISA KRON: Yep.

ANN KRON: Okay, well suit yourselves. I found these in there—I found them at that little restaurant supply place. Aren’t they cute? (Throws  bags of snakcs into the audience. To LISA) Here—you don’t want one? They’re so cute. Okay, well suit yourself.


SCENE 4
MALE NURSE: Here are your forms for the food testing. Before you test for water or food, you take your baseline pulse and you write that number here. Then you drink or eat whatever you’re testing and you take your pulse again after 10 minutes, 20, 40, and 60. And you describe the reactions you have here and rate them from “okay,” meaning no reaction to plus 1, 2, 3, and 4.

JOY: With plus 4 being the most severe.

MALE NURSE: Let me show you here in Joy’s book.


SCENE 5
LISA KRON: Just in case I wasn’t clear about this, at the time I went into the allergy unit I believed in allergies. In my family we believe in allergies and I did. We’re a family that believes in things…like racial integration, for instance. I would say actually that the two main things we believe in, as a family, are allergies and racial integration. In the same way, my mother believes that a whole host of symptoms often dismissed as psychosomatic—including her own inability to stay awake—are really caused by allergies, she also believes in the positive effects of racial integration. “It’s important to be different,” she says, “if you’re a part of the main group all the time you never learn to see the world from anyone’s point of view but your own.”


SCENE 6
KAY: Now, what are your symptoms again?

LISA KRON: I have trouble staying awake.

KAY: Yeah, very common.

LISA KRON: And some…concentration problems: focus difficulties, that kind of thing…

KAY: So common.

JOY: Very, very common.

Do you have night terrors?

LISA KRON: No.

KAY: I have night terrors. Are you really sensitive to loud noises?

LISA KRON: I don’t like loud noises.

That’s allergies! You have any hair loss? No, I can see you don’t have any hair loss! Joy does. Do you have chest pains? Joy gets terrible chest pains.

ANN KRON: Ooooh! Sorry.


SCENE 7
ANN KRON: Hi there—how are you doin?

LISA KRON: Mom—

ANN KRON: What? I just wanted to introduce myself while we were stopped.

LISA KRON: We’re not stopped.

ANN KRON: Well, we seem to be in some sort of pause here.

LISA KRON: Because you were talking over the scene.

ANN KRON: Oh, I’m sorry. Go on. I just wanted a quick hello.

LISA KRON: No!

ANN KRON: Well, it seems a little awkward to be going along here without a little introduction, don’t you think?

LISA KRON: Okay, go ahead—quickly.

ANN KRON:  How are you doin?

LISA KRON:  It’s okay, she just wants to say hi.

JASON: Hi.

SHANA: Hello. Hi.

LISA KRON: Okay, good.


SCENE 8
LORI JONES: Show us how you dance!

LISA KRON: You know what? You’re not in this. Look? See? Seriously. You’re not in this! See?

LORI JONES: I don’t care about those! Now me and Pam and Tyrell and Belinda and Antoinette want to see you dance. Go on.

(Music starts)

LISA KRON: Nine years-old, third grade. The teacher has left the room. Oh, I hate when that happens!