Angry Alan & Fucked

Two Plays

Penelope Skinner

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786826183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

'Looking out over the country, this country, where I was born and raised, I wonder what's going to become of us. Because this can't be the future, can it? Everyone just... changing the rules?' Roger thinks the world's gone mad. He hates his job, his ex-wife torments him and to top it all, his girlfriend just discovered feminism. Roger's about to lose his shit. Until he discovers Angry Alan: online activist and "voice of reason"... A darkly comic new play about masculinity in crisis from award-winning Penelope Skinner, performed by Donald Sage Mackay.

ANGRY ALANFor Donald

Acknowledgements

Donald Sage Mackay. David Ledingham at Aspen Fringe Festival. Hemant Bharatram and Rukmini Chatterjee at the Shriram Centre, Delhi. Francesca Moody. Janfarie & Andrew Skinner. Ginny Skinner. Cathy King at 42. James Grieve at Paines Plough. George Spender and Konstantinos Vasdekis at Oberon Books. The actor Chris Campbell.

I.

Where It All Begins…

ROGER talks to the audience.

Do you ever do that thing where you think to yourself

I should really go for a run

so you look out the window

but hmm. That sky looks kind of ominous. Doesn’t it? So you pick up your phone to check the weather

see if it’s going to rain

but when you look at your phone you’ve got a message or an email so you open the message or the email and it contains like

a link to an article or whatever so you click on it and you read it and it’s interesting enough to keep you reading to the end so you read to the end and then at the bottom of the page you see another link and this one is like

‘You’re not gonna believe what they found when they cut open this giant snake,’ and you’re like well okay that I’ve gotta read so you read it and then next to that article is a photograph of a celebrity on the beach that you need to take a closer look at so you do and so on and so on and eventually

you realize time has sort of

and it’s forty minutes later and you put your phone down and wonder what you were doing and remember you were going to go for a run but when you look outside it’s raining so

why am I telling you that? Oh right. Because that is exactly how I first find Alan. Which when I think about it

is where it all begins. It’s Monday morning and just to provide you with some context

on this particular Monday morning

things are what I would consider to be

normal. Not the old normal. The old normal is long gone. On a Monday morning

Roger-from-before would be getting in his fancy car and heading into the office. But what you’re looking at here is Roger-Now. And Roger-Now is the third assistant store manager in the Walnut Creek Safeway and he doesn’t work Mondays and if you’re wondering what the third assistant store manager does

you know when you have to bring something back to the store and you’re complaining to the checker? And she’s not dealing with your complaint to your satisfaction so you say,

‘I’d like to see the manager’? The guy who comes along at that point? It’s not the actual store manager just so you know. His name is Tim and he’s sitting up in his fancy glass office on the second floor. We actually went to high school together which is how I got this job. But that’s a whole nother story. Point is you don’t need to worry about Tim because you never meet Tim. See? But me? Sure. I’m the guy who comes to help. I’m not in a suit I’m in a shirt and tie and I’ve got a badge and it says my name is Roger and I’m happy to help. And apparently it also says: I’m a guy you can yell at. Sometimes if you’re mad enough you can threaten me with physical violence. But I’ll just offer you a refund and tell you I’m very sorry and I hope you’ll continue to choose Safeway for all your shopping needs. Because that’s store policy and I know better than to go up against store policy. Where am I going with this? Oh right. I’m at the beginning. And it’s Monday morning

and I’m awake early and I’m considering exercising when I fall into your average google vortex but this time

instead of forty minutes of pointless surfing

I end up watching a video about history

which is kind of amazing

so I watch it again. Then I click on a link underneath to the man who uploaded it. He calls himself Angry Alan. And he’s a pioneer of something they call The Men’s Rights Movement. Have you heard of that? Apparently what it is is it’s a natural evolution from the women’s movement because basically:

in a nutshell: since feminism was so successful

things have gone too far the other way. We’re now living in a ‘Gynocentric Society’ and now

now it’s like Beyonce says: Who runs the world?

Women. And because of this

ordinary men are really beginning to suffer. And Alan doesn’t just say these things: he backs it up with evidence. Statistics. Data. He’s got his own website. Angry Alan dot com. He’s got his own YouTube Channel. Angry Alan TV. And before I know it I’m reading more and more

I spend five hours reading

and watching videos about men’s rights and at certain points I’m vaguely aware of Courtney coming in going ‘What are you doing?’ and I’m like

‘Reading,’ and she’s like ‘What are you reading?’ and I keep reading and she’s like ‘What are you reading?’ and I keep reading and she says, ‘You know Roger

your ability to ignore the sound of my voice is so offensively patriarchal,’ and I keep reading and she’s like ‘ROGER,’ and I’m like ‘What?’ and she’s like ‘Jesus Christ. Never mind. I’m making a sandwich then I’m going to Melissa’s,’ and I’m like

‘Okay sure I’ll take a sandwich. Thanks,’ and I keep on reading and watching videos and at some point

I’m not sure exactly when but at a certain point I find myself

up on my feet

in the bedroom

and something incredible happens and the best way I can describe it is like this:

A red light flashes and an alarm sounds. ROGER is in a state of rapture.

This is what they call: my red pill moment!

The light/alarm stops.

Because for the first time in a really long time I feel like someone is speaking to me in a language which I completely understand and for the first time in a really

really long time I feel like someone is saying something which makes me feel

like

good about myself. Because you know

I haven’t felt good for a while. And I mean maybe years. And I can say that now. Because one of the first things Alan talks about is that in our society

men aren’t allowed to talk about their feelings. It’s so hard for us men to say things like: Hey. I’m Roger. I feel like I could have done so much more with my life. I feel inadequate. I feel like a failure. And until this morning

I didn’t even know that’s what I was feeling. I thought maybe I had bowel cancer? Because I’ve also been reading a lot of medical websites? And I had a lot of the symptoms. Of a lot of different diseases. Most of em. Actually. But now I realize this pain in my gut and the fatigue and the rage I sometimes feel is the result of the toxicity of my own history and the bearing of the burden of my own suffering for all these years without ever acknowledging its legitimacy or even worse

blaming myself for it. But in this moment

here in my bedroom on a Monday morning in May

with the sound of the rain on the window I start to learn

thanks to Alan

that maybe it’s not actually all my fault. It’s like

it’s like

I’ve been living in a cage, right? I’m like a man who’s been living in a cage but he didn’t know it. He was unhappy. And the reason he was unhappy was because of the cage. But he didn’t know about the cage. So he didn’t know why he was unhappy. And when I take the red pill it doesn’t solve the problem. I’m still in the cage. But at least I know about the cage. And realizing that I’m in a cage. Is like

so liberating

that I make a decision: I say to myself these exact words: out loud I say:

‘Things are going to change around here.’

And once I’ve said it

there’s no going back.

MEN’S RIGHTS VIDEO
(about how men are intrinsically GOOD)

I text the video link to Joe. My son?

Me

www.angryalan.com/aremengreatorgood.av

He lives with my ex-wife. And I haven’t seen him for about eight months or something because he’s supposedly having this ‘rough time’ but no one will tell me what it’s about? So I text him the link. I want to make sure

whatever he’s going through

I just want him to know: you’re intrinsically good, son. We’re good and we’re brave and we’re clever and people just like us have done some pretty awesome things and don’t you ever let anyone make you feel like you’re not worth something just because you’re a man. Of course I don’t say that in my text I just send him the link. But I think he’ll get the message.

II.

fish tacos

So the next significant event

is probably this evening a few weeks later when Courtney makes fish tacos. Not because of the tacos themselves which are

like much of Courtney’s cooking

fairly unremarkable

but because this is when I first find out about the conference. I’ve signed up to a couple of men’s rights mailing lists and as a result I’ve been getting a lot of emails. In fact I haven’t had so many emails since I was at A T&T. And it’s keeping me quite busy. Which is why I’m on my phone during dinner

and I’m just about to open my last unrea...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Angry Alan
• Fucked