Chatroom, published in the volume Enda Walsh: Plays One

Enda Walsh

WHO    Jim, fifteen.

TO WHOM    Eva, fifteen.

WHERE    The conversation takes place in an internet chatroom, but we assume that Jim is in his bedroom.

WHEN    Present day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED    The play follows the conversations of six teenagers who meet and chat online. William and Jack have been discussing the merits of children’s literature, Emily and Eva, the pernicious influence of Britney Spears, Laura has been listening to Jim, who is depressed. Then William, Jack, Emily and Eva come together to form a chatroom they call ‘Chiswick’s Bloody Opinionated’. Jim joins the group late one night. He wants to talk about his depression. Emily is sympathetic to Jim, but when she tells the group about her own experience of anorexia, the others ridicule her, and she leaves the chatroom. William then asks for a private chat with Jack, leaving Jim alone with Eva. William is bored and is looking for ‘a cause’. As we are about to learn in the following scene, William’s plan is to toy with Jim, to ‘Mess him up a bit. See how far he’ll go’. He wants to encourage Jim to kill himself publicly as an act of solidarity with all forgotten teenagers. Eva is already having the same idea, and now that she is alone with Jim she plans to get him to talk. Jim’s speech comes in response to Eva’s:‘So tell me about the day your father went missing.’

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	Jim has been talking to Laura in a suicide chatroom. Is he really ill or does he just need someone with whom to talk?
•	Jim is one of four brothers growing up in a single-parent family. Decide to what extent this has fed his need for attention.
•	Jim seems to hold himself responsible for the fact that his father walked out. The point of the day Jim describes was for father and son to bond. This clearly did not happen. Decide to what extent Jim blames himself for his father’s disappearance.
•	The significance of Jim at first being very fat and then not eating, the stress it placed on his father and then the relief when he started to eat again. Decide to what extent this is somehow linked to the milk and biscuits that Jim gets for himself at the end of that day, and the overall need to please his father.

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To be heard and to be understood.
•	To be forgiven.
•	Reassurance that he was and is not a bad boy.

KEYWORDS  bond  worried  alone  worry  stay

Jim

Right, well, I’m six years old and my three brothers are going away with my mother for the weekend… a treat for something or other. My dad’s staying behind and my mother says that he’s to look after me. That it would be a chance for us to bond. So they’re gone and me and my dad are sat at the kitchen table looking at each other. Like we’re looking at each other for the first time, you know. He asks me what I want to do and straight away I say I want to go and see the penguins in the zoo. When I was six I was going through some mad penguin obsession. I used to dress up as a penguin at dinner times and always ask for fish fingers… stuff like that. If it wasn’t penguins it was cowboys. Cowboys were cool. A penguin costumed as a cowboy was always a step too far, funnily enough. (Laughs a little.) […] So we go to the zoo and I wear my cowboy outfit… get my gun and holster, my hat and all that. We get the bus and it’s sort of funny to see my dad on a bus and away from the house. We start to have this chat about when I was born and what a really fat baby I was… but how after a week or so I stopped eating any food and everyone was very worried. That he was very worried. That he was so happy when I got better and they could take me home. (Slight pause.) We’re in the zoo and I go straight to the penguins. Standing in my cowboy gear… looking at the penguins… having such a great chat to my dad on the bus… it was a perfect childhood day. (Pause.) He lets go of my hand and says he’ll be back with my choc ice. And he goes. (Pause.) He’s gone. (Pause.) I’m happy looking at the penguins but it’s an hour since he’s left and I go to look for him. I’m walking about the zoo and I’m not worried yet. And I don’t talk to anyone. I leave the zoo and I go to the bus stop we got off at earlier. I get on the bus. I tell the driver my address. He asks where my parents are and I say they’re at home waiting for me. I stay on the bus in the seat nearest the driver. After a while we end up at the end of our street and the driver says, ‘So long, cowboy.’ (Smiles a little.) He was nice. (Pause.) I get the key from under the mat and open the door and go inside the house. And I’m alone there. I take off my cowboy clothes and hang up my hat and holster. It being Saturday night I have a bath and get into my pyjamas because my dad would have liked that. I have a glass of milk and some biscuits and watch Stars in Their Eyes ’cause that was his favourite programme on the telly. (Slight pause.) It’s getting dark outside and I start to worry. The house is feeling too big so I get my quilt and take it into the bathroom and lock the bathroom door and it feels safer with the door locked so I stay in there. And he’s not coming back. (Pause.) He’s never coming back. (Pause.) I stay there for two days.