The only thing disappointing about an evening of theatre like last night’s Hoodies Up! is that it only happens once and then it’s gone forever. I suppose that’s part of what makes it special. I certainly felt blessed to watch some truly gift actors bring back to life a cherished chapter from my days working in D.C. Witnessing such miracles is one of the unique perks of being playwright that helps explain my continuing gluttony for its punishments.
Because it is unlikely that my contribution to last night’s offerings will ever be staged again, I offer the script here to anyone who missed it and might want to check it out in script form.
White Boy Can Take a Punch
by Paul Mullin
for HOODIES UP!: An Evening of Protest Plays Inspired by Trayvon Martin
(The ensemble for this piece consists of three or four African American men and one young man of obvious European descent to play “WHITE BOY”. Whenever a line is headed with “PLAYWRIGHT” anyone in the ensemble may speak it, director’s choice.)
PLAYWRIGHT: The playwright owes you a protest play.
PLAYWRIGHT: And the playwright owes you someone in a hoodie.
PLAYWRIGHT: The playwright isn’t sure what to protest
PLAYWRIGHT: Even though all these hearts are broken.
PLAYWRIGHT: So we’ll start with the hoodie.
PLAYWRIGHT: 1987. Washington, D.C. The National Archives.
PLAYWRIGHT: A white boy, college age, sits hunched in the break room, his hoodie pulled up so he can sleep
PLAYWRIGHT: Or at least faking being asleep.
PLAYWRIGHT: He’s the only white person in the room.
WHITE BOY: He is not the playwright.
(An older African American actor becomes Roy, the supervisor. He shepherds Paul or “WHITE BOY” into the break room.)
ROY: Allright y’all. Get off your lazy asses. I got a new worker for the crew. His name is. What’s your name now?
WHITE BOY: Paul Mullin.
ROY: Name’s Paul. This here’s Virgil, that’s Prescott and over there in the corner’s ... uh... Brian.
WHITE BOY: Hey.
ROY: I want y’all show him the ropes and such. I don’t want none of your shuckin’ n’ jivin’. We got a pallet that’s to go pronto from stack C-17 to uh... well, I’ll find out where it’s got to go you just get your asses up there and get it ready to move. All right?
VIRGIL: He summer help?
ROY: Yeah, he summer help, but I just might take him on permanent I like the cut his jib. So get your damn asses up to... what was it now?
PRESCOTT: C-17.
ROY: Yeah. And take Paul with you, hear?
PRESCOTT: Yeah.
ROY: All right. I’m a leave you to it then, gentlemen. No bullshit please. And take Paul with you.
(Roy leaves.)
VIRGIL: Where he say the pallet at?
PRESCOTT: C-17.
VIRGIL: A’ight. Let’s hit it.
(Brian doesn’t move. Virgil and James get up and put on their navy blue “laborer” dust coats.)
WHITE BOY: Where do I get one of those coats?
VIRGIL: One of these? You gotta earn one of these, Summer Help.
WHITE BOY: Okay. So we’re heading to stack C-17?
VIRGIL: Yeah. We heading there. You can just relax your ass.
PRESCOTT: We got this one.
WHITE BOY: But didn’t Roy say--
VIRGIL: Check it. He thinks Roy run the show.
PRESCOTT: Just the same we better take ‘em.
VIRGIL: A’ight, Summer help. You wanna work, we’ll work you.
(They leave the break room. Head down a corridor. Push a button. Wait for an elevator.)
PRESCOTT (to White Boy): Push “up.”
WHITE BOY (pushing it): What’s with that guy Brian?
VIRGIL: Who Brian?
PRESCOTT: He mean “Flash.”... Flash... uh... don’t care to come out on jobs.
WHITE BOY: So he just sleeps in the breakroom all day?
VIRGIL: Yeah, he don’t like to move too quick.
PRESCOTT: Which is how come he called “Flash.”
VIRGIL: He summer help. Just like you. Won’t be around come the fall. Be back at college.
WHITE BOY: I don’t go to college.
VIRGIL: Why? You stupid?
WHITE BOY: I wanna work.
VIRGIL: Hear that? Summer Help wanna work.
PRESCOTT: Yeah.
VIRGIL: Elevator door opens. They step inside.
WHITE BOY: The elevator doors close. And that’s when it happened.
And I probably shouldn’t say it like that. “That’s when it happened.” Because it makes it sound more dramatic than it actually was. That’s when something happened. Something that would change the duration of my working at the National Archives, and maybe me for the rest of my life.
VIRGIL: Yo, Mister Future Playwright Man.
WHITE BOY: Yeah?
VIRGIL: Why don’t we just show ‘em what happened?
WHITE BOY: Yeah, Okay.
The elevator door closes and instead of pushing a button for a floor, Prescott and Virgil start to swing arms on me.
(They do this.)
VIRGIL: Throwing some punches on the new blood.
WHITE BOY: Some nice hard shots to my body, my arms.
PLAYWRIGHT: And I knew I had a decision to make.
(Then go to slow motion.)
PLAYWRIGHT: I flashed on Flash, the white college kid sitting in the break room acting like he was asleep.
PLAYWRIGHT: And I knew what had happened to him. They had taken him for an elevator ride and he hadn’t reacted right.
PLAYWRIGHT: And now they left him abandoned, untrusted, alone.
PLAYWRIGHT: And I ran the numbers of the situation quickly in my head.
PLAYWRIGHT: I’m in an elevator in the National Archives.
PLAYWRIGHT: Even in the late 80’s you still had to run a gauntlet of federal security to even get this deep into the building.
PLAYWRIGHT: These boys ain’t gonna to kill me.
PLAYWRIGHT: And if they ain’t kill me, they ain’t gonna beat me too bad either. This was their full-time gig after all. I was just summer help. I was gonna take some punches and depending how I responded I was either going to be working on their crew or I was gonna be faking sleep in the break room.
PLAYWRIGHT: Now the one thing these boys didn’t know about me was I had a brother. Two years older, and he and his best friend, our next door neighbor, tortured me about as bad as they could think of.
PLAYWRIGHT: Beating on me endlessly.
PLAYWRIGHT: Sticking lit firecrackers in my mouth and then snatching them away at the last minute
PLAYWRIGHT: Pig-tying me and hanging me from the basement rafters.
PLAYWRIGHT: You name it.
PLAYWRIGHT: I knew a little something about answering some roughness.
PLAYWRIGHT: All of this took a few seconds. I made a decision. I took a chance.
PLAYWRIGHT: I went for the big one, Prescott first.
(Paul punches Prescott hard in the arm.)
PRESCOTT: Ho!
PLAYWRIGHT: Always go for the big one first. They’ll have less to prove when they hit back.
(Prescott punches back. Paul takes it and throws one on Virgil.)
VIRGIL: Damn!
PRESCOTT: Check out, White Boy!
(Virgil punches back. And then the three boys/men begin a laughing/punching/dodging dance with each other. Then they suddenly stop as all three simultaneously say:)
VIRGIL/PRESCOTT/WHITE BOY: The elevator doors open.
(Roy stands there suspicious.)
ROY: All right. What all y’all asses up to?
VIRGIL: Nothing, Roy. We just going to... where is we s’posed to me going?
ROY: You asking me?
WHITE BOY: Stack C-17.
PRESCOTT: Yeah, C-17.
ROY: Well, then get your dumb asses up there.
VIRGIL: Okay. Let the door go, Roy. And we will. Shit.
ROY: And summer help, don’t be joining none of these asses’ foolishness, now, you hear?
WHITE BOY: Yes, sir.
VIRGIL/PRESCOTT/WHITE BOY: The elevators doors closed.
(The boys burst into hysterics.)
PLAYWRIGHT: We worked hard—
PLAYWRIGHT: Like only young men are stupid enough to work.
PLAYWRIGHT: And we played hard—
PLAYWRIGHT: Like only young men are stupid enough to play.
WHITE BOY: They told me their myths.
PRESCOTT: White boys ain’t got no style.
WHITE BOY: Myth.
VIRGIL: Shit. Look at them nasty assed sneaks you got on. Shit boy, look like a damn base head.
PRESCOTT: White boys eat pussy.
WHITE BOY: True.
PRESCOTT: Aw shit!
VIRGIL: He sit right there and admit it.
WHITE BOY: What? Don’t you?
VIRGIL: Shit, boy. You crazy?
WHITE BOY: You’re missing out, Shortie.
VIRGIL: Fuck.
PRESCOTT: White boy can take a punch.
WHITE BOY: What?
PRESCOTT: Sure. Can’t fight for shit but white boy can take a punch. Like that dude Jerry Cooney Michael Spinks fought.
WHITE BOY: Oh.
VIRGIL: Yeah, but Spinks knocked his fat white ass out though.
PRESCOTT: True.
WHITE BOY: My crowning glory came one morning when Slim came into the break room.
PLAYWRIGHT: Slim drove the truck and was the hero of the crew.
(Slim can be played by the same actor playing Roy, but Slim is hard, all business.)
SLIM: All right. I’m going to the dump. Who comin’?
VIRGIL: Me.
PRESCOTT: Naw. Shit. It’s my turn.
VIRGIL: The fuck it is.
PRESCOTT: We can both go.
SLIM: Fuck that. Only want one. You know what? White Boy.
VIRGIL & PRESCOTT (appalled): What?
VIRGIL: White Boy summer help. He don’t get to go to no dump.
SLIM: He coming to the dump with me.
WHITE BOY: And so I got to ride with Slim.
(The climb in the truck and ride.)
SLIM: First we gonna take a little detour.
WHITE BOY: Oh, okay.
SLIM: You ever been to Southeast.
WHITE BOY: Uh... no.
SLIM: I bet you ain’t. That’s White folks worst fear, riding through Southeast. Right?
WHITE BOY: I uh... I dunno. I guess.
SLIM: Well, here it be. Look around. There’s my mamma’s church. That’s the store we buy milk and eggs. That court’s where I played hoops before I fucked up my knees. Look dangerous don’t it?
WHITE BOY: No.
SLIM: Fuck no. It’s people, white boy. Southeast is people. Black folks livin’.
WHITE BOY: Yeah.
SLIM: So you tell that to the next person talking shit on the Southeast and Harlem and West Baltimore and Newark and anywhere. You hear?
WHITE BOY: Yeah.
SLIM: Yeah. You ain’t gonna though.
WHITE BOY: You never know, Slim. I might.
SLIM: All right, White Boy. All right. Now we head to the dump. Deep breaths through your mouth as we ride in. The bumps and stink can make you sick, you forget to breath.
WHITE BOY: Okay. Got it.
SLIM: Good. Shit. White boy got it.
PLAYWRIGHT: The playwright got a job permanent with the archives crew but had to leave in November when he got cast as Young Scrooge in a production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL at Ford’s Theater.
PLAYWRIGHT: He only saw anyone again from his archive days once.
PLAYWRIGHT: It was a blizzard. No busses running. So I was hitchhiking my way home from the Rhode Island Ave. Metro Station.
PLAYWRIGHT: A truck drove by and there was Virgil sitting in the back of it.
VIRGIL (hollering from far): Yo! Paul!
WHITE BOY: Yo Virgil!
VIRGIL: You need a ride, yo?
WHITE BOY: Hell, yeah.
VIRGIL: Well then hop in, fool.
(Paul hops in the back of the truck, shakes hands with Virgil and they start shooting the shit.)
PLAYWRIGHT: The playwright realizes now what he’d like to protest.
PLAYWRIGHT: Fear.
PLAYWRIGHT: The fear that kept Flash in the breakroom. The fear that made George Zimmerman figure that the best way to greet the world is with a gun shoved in his waistband.
PLAYWRIGHT: It’s true.
PLAYWRIGHT: You’re right.
PLAYWRIGHT: Your worst fear is true.
PLAYWRIGHT: The world will kill you one day.
PLAYWRIGHT: But until that day...
PLAYWRIGHT: You simply have to bring it as much love and fascination as it brings you.
PLAYWRIGHT: Everyone you see is you.
PLAYWRIGHT: Throw your gun away.
PLAYWRIGHT: White boy can take a punch.
PLAYWRIGHT: And white boy can throw one.
VIRGIL: Sorta.
PLAYWRIGHT: But you ain’t need no gun.
PLAYWRIGHT: Throw your gun away.
PLAYWRIGHT: Ain’t no skin color can keep out a bullet.
PLAYWRIGHT: Throw it away.
ROY: Now all y’all asses get back to work. I won’t stand no more of this shuckin’ ‘n jivin’ now. You hear me?
(End of play.)
© Paul Mullin 2012
That is one beautiful play -- thank you for posting it. Wow. Beautiful.
Lucia
Posted by: Lucia | 05/19/2012 at 09:00 PM
Thank you for posting your script. I loved seeing it and I'm glad to be able to read it.
Posted by: Louise Penberthy | 05/20/2012 at 03:22 PM
Thanks so much for posting Paul. I really wanted to be there for this.
Posted by: Kate Kraay | 05/21/2012 at 05:34 AM