First Person Shooter
Paul Jenkins
WHO Nugget, a soldier, now in charge of recruitment, fifty (but could be played younger).
TO WHOM Ade, seventeen, a wannabe soldier.
WHERE Army Careers office, Worcester.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The play tells the story of teenager Ade, his mother Maggie and her colleague Tom. Tom is developing a new technology that will detect faulty rail track ensuring a safer transport system. Maggie is trying to convince him to sell the idea to the Ministry of Defence, who can use the innovation for surveillance operations. Ade, meanwhile, is obsessed with playing violent war games on his games console. He is desperate to try out the simulators the Army use when recruiting and pays a visit to the Army Careers office. Here he meets Nugget, who, understanding that Ade has a completely warped sense of the reality of war, does his very best to dissuade Ade from joining the Army. But Ade has a romantic notion that he has ‘to risk my life to take another’s.’ In the speech that follows, Nugget explains to Ade that war is not necessarily like that and that he himself never did what he was trained to do – actually kill anyone.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
• | In the context of the play, Nugget is about fifty, if not older. However, out of context and because he is talking about an event in the past, he could be played much younger. If the speech appeals to you why not use the opportunity to create a somewhat different characterisation and backstory for yourself from that of the actual play – one that will fit with your own age. Decide to whom it is you are speaking and why. If you choose to perform this monologue at an audition, make sure you are clear about this to the audition panel if questioned. |
• | Make a decision about the war to which you refer. Is Nugget talking about the first Gulf War of the early 1990s? How might the speech work if it is used to describe other more recent conflicts? |
• | Research the time span of the SA80. If you want to contemporise the speech, to what type of gun or rifle might you refer instead? Or just substitute the word ‘weapon’. |
WHAT HE WANTS
• | To explain the reality of war. |
• | To reveal its raw humanity. |
• | To understand why it was that he was unable to pull the trigger. |
KEYWORDS joy destiny beautiful
Nugget
Wouldn’t call it fear. This old mullah and a boy come up to the checkpoint once, the old fella’s waving his arms and the lad’s grinning, but mad like, pushing a wheelbarrow. There’s a body, young woman, kid’s mum by all accounts, and she’s had her foot blown off by a mine. Must’ve seen me coming, eh? I walk over to patch her up and just as I get there the boy pulls something… a string or something… and I see a bag of explosives under the woman… in the barrow. Well, something went wrong, coz it just sort of smoked and went all runny and the smell… poor woman had shat herself. Just then the old mullah pulls out a pistol, but I’m quick so we’re just standing there. Know he’s a knacker, know my SA80 is going to drop him, but I couldn’t… his eyes, he was smiling, like the old bastard was ready for it, looking for it, his death, shining he was, like one of them paintings of Jesus, a Saint or something, and I just felt this… I felt this… joy… this is it… our destiny, the old man, the young boy, his mum… and the British soldier. I was two inches in tomorrow’s newspaper… but it was beautiful. Apart from the unholy stench. Stood there like that… felt like fifteen years. The old boy coughed – something come up out of his lung, spat it on the floor, put his pistol in his pocket, said something to the boy, turned his wheelbarrow… and walked away. Can’t explain that to this day. 