Play Details
Overview
this lay script is based on interviews with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Teenagers.
This play is easy to stage and tour for middle school and high school. Great for Readers Theater, classroom use and Competition Pieces, too.
In this 50-minute drama, a cast of 7 young men and women face the audience and each other as their stories of sexual confusion emerge. Playing roles in each other’s story, they grapple with growing up and older in a society that largely neither recognizes nor accepts their sexual preferences and gender identity dilemmas.
Among the most basic fundamental need is to have a voice in your own life; to be heard, accepted, and to be respected. Perhaps the voice of LOST AND FOUND will contribute a little more clarity and humanity into a world brimming with preconceived ideas, primitive notions, and prejudice about people who are not plain garden variety heterosexual.
By Marsha Lee Sheiness.
From the Play
Each main character plays the other characters in each individual’s story
CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
ALEX
KATHERINE
MARTY
CARL
GLORIA
VIOLET
ROLAND
ALEXIA
From the Play
PROLOGUE
(As LIGHTS go up, we hear each Cast Member randomly saying these lines that appear in each character’s scene)
ALEX: I tried to act like a boy to protect myself.
CARL: I’m a nine-year-old – child, and my uncle is telling me to have sex
with a girl.
MARTY: I don’t know if I’m bisexual, straight, gay or what – I don’t know.
ROLAND: Fashion tip 101 – never wear a white shirt with a black bra!
KATHERINE: I have a thing with butts; I love butts.
VIOLET: Every time you call me butch I take it as a complement.
GLORIA: Being bi-sexual is just as awkward as being gay.
ALEXIA: I said to myself —I can’t stay a boy. It’s not who I am – I’m
gonna become a girl. And, it’s happening.
I knew I was gay when I was seven. I didn’t know the word, gay — But I knew
that I liked to dress like a woman sometimes – just for fun. And I was attracted
to males.
* * *
MOTHER: I can’t deal with this. If you’re gonna be kissing boys, I’m gonna put you in foster care.
CARL: I don’t understand. Why would you do that?
MOTHER
Are you telling me you’re going to be kissing boys?
CARL: I guess I am.
MOTHER: Then I don’t want anything to do with you.
CARL: But — you loved me all these years before you knew.
MOTHER: Well I don’t love you anymore!
CARL: And she did put me in foster care. Imagine the frustration – the pain – so – at
twelve years old I said to myself. — I’m gonna make it for me – and nobody else.
– I can’t fail –
* * *
ROLAND: I think my mom knew – even though she never talked to me about it; maybe she was scared. My mom was real nice. Mommy. I love you. (Throws her a Joan Rivers kiss) She was pretty. She was cool. She was too quiet. — When I was eight, she passed away and I moved in with my grandmother but she couldn’t handle me. . . I started takin’ things from my grandmother – just misbehavin’. When I was nine – (Pretends to cry) this is so touching – my grandmother found me with my sista’s bra. (laughs) – I had a white shirt on – and a black bra – that’s how I remember fashion tip 101 – never wear a white shirt with a black bra! That’s how my grandmother found out.
GRANDMOTHER: Pato? Pero, pero conyo, Pato?
ROLAND: I don’t know why my grandmother was shocked? She already knew because my stepfather told her when my mom died. It wuz so funny – Oh my God, I remember that like it was yesterday. My grandmother ripped the Victoria’s Secret. I was so mad. . . So was my sister.
SISTER: Roland, I paid forty dollars for that bra!
ROLAND: (To SISTER): It was an old one.
SISTER: (To ROLAND) It was Victoria’s Secret!
GRANDMOTHER: Ay-dios mio!