In the final week of our Tiny Plays competition with Fishamble, we're printing a new play every day by leading writers. Today, ROSALEEN MCDONAGHpresents 'Beat Him Like a Badger'
Two teenage girls sitting on a bench in the corridor in front of the principal’s office. They don’t talk to each other. The monologues are criss-crossed as if they don’t know each other is in the same space.
Jessica Ward, Traveller and Aga Nowak, Polish. Two teenagers.
Jessica: Daddy put a suit on. I have to wait in the corridor while he talks to the principal of the school. He kept saying to me “Things are bad enough for us in this town without you making it worse. We don’t have the money for that window if that school comes looking for it.”
Aga: Best friends, the Traveller beoir and Polish dziewczuna. I’m sitting here because I love Jessica Ward. Living in the town for the last seven years, going to the same shops, chapel, doctor – and the same school. She won’t listen when I try to say sorry.
Jessica: Aga Nowak, my sisters said, Polish people will soon learn from the Settled Irish young ones how to hate Travellers. She was my friend. I trusted her. Back in the site older beoirs were saying no Pavee fein would marry me if they saw me wearing a school uniform.
Aga: Feelings were so strong about Travellers in this town, like back home. Polish people hate the Roma community. My father had seen the news and said “Travellers and Roma people; they’re all the same, liars and thieves.”
Jessica: Are you related, the girls were all asking, to X-Factor winner Shane Ward? They think all Pavees are cousins, so I got her to write “love from Shane”. It was our joke on the girls in our class. It didn’t matter that he is a Pavee.
Aga: Over the years, she’d explain about Travellers. But I knew it was the same to how we treated the Roma at home in Poland. That morning on December 22nd, the day after the verdict, at school, I didn’t want to be near Jessica Ward.
Jessica: The Joyces saying, “Well, what was that Pavee fein doing there in the first place? He was up to no good.”
The O’Connor beoirs said, “A settled fein killed one of us and got away with it.” One of the McDonagh young ones said, “A verdict from an all-settled jury. What do you expect?”
Aga: They asked me about being Polish. Did we have Travellers in Poland? I was ashamed to tell them about how we treated Roma people back home in my town.
Jessica: They think we’re all the same. And now I think buffers are all the same. She won’t be expelled. “Sorry.” That’s no good to me now.
As far as I’m concerned, Aga Nowak is just another buffer bitch from school (crying). Me begging a Polish buffer to be my friend. (looking at Aga).
“Fuck the lot of you.”
“Dirty, filthy, buffers.”
Aga: In the yard, the girls were shouting at her.
“Why don’t you fuck off back to that knacker site where you belong? Ye can’t be educated, you’re animals! Frightening old people.”
Jessica: My Pavee rage was building up inside me. Her letting me down. The stone was big and heavy. I flung it straight through the window of the school.
Aga: The rain was running down my face. Tears stinging my eyes. Calling Jessica’s name but it was lost in the December wind. A newspaper swirled around the yard. I put my foot on it – the headlines read, “Beat him like a badger.”
Think you can write a Tiny Play?
You have until this Friday, November 11th to enter the Tiny Plays for Ireland competition and have your play staged by Fishamble The New Play Company. E-mail a play of no more than 600 words to fishambletinyplays@irishtimes.com.
Fishamble will choose the winners and pay each selected writer a fee of €250. They will work with the writer on the development of the commissioned plays and produce them from March 15th to 31st, Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
