All New People

Zach Braff

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781408179826
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

All New People is a slick, lively and contemporary comedy written by award-winning screenwriter and well-known actor Zach Braff.
The dead of winter, Long Beach Island, New Jersey, Charlie, has hit rock bottom. Away from the rest of the world, this perfect escape is interrupted by a motley parade of misfits who show up and change his plans. A hired beauty, a fireman, and an eccentric British real estate agent desperately trying to stay in the country all suddenly find themselves tangled together in a beach house where the mood is anything but sunny.
This pithy piece portrays a scenario of attempted suicide with mordant humour, where a basis of social alienation leads to unexpected connections. The richly-drawn characters are quick-witted and narcissistic yet self-aware and the dialogue is fluid and witty.
All New People is centred around a clever concept which works as a catalyst for both angst-fuelled scrutiny and morbid humour.

Contents

Cast List

Characters

Author Biography

Great upbeat music plays as the audience filters in. A scrim covers the stage. As the house lights go down:

Something like the song ‘The Buzzards of Bourbon Street’ by Gaelic Storm kicks in loud. The curtain rises to reveal Charlie, thirty-five, standing on a chair with an extension cord fashioned as a noose around his neck. He smokes a cigarette.

We’re in a high-end Long Beach Island, New Jersey beach house. It is the dead of winter. We see snow outside the windows. An unlit fireplace is stage right. On a downbeat of the song, lights are full up and the music changes to sound as though it’s coming from a stereo in the home.

Charlie looks for a place to ash his cigarette, but realizes his reach is limited by the noose. He stretches as far as he can for the ashtray on a nearby counter and tosses it in.

Suddenly, Charlie hears the ‘bwoop-woop-woop’ of a car alarm being turned on. His eyes register his confusion; ‘Who the fuck could that be?’

Emma (off stage) All right then, Mr Goldberg; well I just got to the house and I’ll put all the lights on for you and get the heat started so you’ll be able to have a look at the place without freezing yourselves . . . great, and you have the directions? All right, see you in a bit.

Charlie wrestles with what to do. Just as he begins to try and loosen the cord from around his neck . . . Emma enters bundled up. She sees Charlie.

Emma Oh my God!

In a scramble to get the noose off of him, Charlie loses his footing on the chair and knocks it over. He begins flailing around, swinging from the noose.

Emma Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!

Emma runs over and picks up the chair and helps Charlie steer his legs back on to it.

Emma Oh my God! What the fuck is wrong with you?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

Charlie Who the fuck are you?!

Emma Who the hell are you and why are you trying to kill yourself in the middle of one of my summer rentals?!

Charlie This is my parents’ beach house. You have no right to just barge in here without knocking.

Emma It’s the middle of winter at the beach! No one’s sposed to be here. I’m trying to rent the place for your parents! I certainly didn’t think anybody was gonna be in here trying to hang themselves! To Riverdance music!

Charlie I’m not trying to hang myself!

Emma Really?! Just going for a little swing then? Just gonna dangle by your neck for a bit and think things over?

Charlie Would you please just get the fuck out of here?!

Emma No I will not! You know, you might start off with a brief thank you to me for saving your life.

Charlie I didn’t ask to be saved. What I want, is some fucking privacy!

Emma Look, I don’t wanna be insensitive.

Charlie Try a little harder.

Emma I have no idea what’s going on with you or what your current situation is. It does seem a bit like you might be trying to hang yourself with an extension cord, but I’m fully aware that things aren’t always what they seem to be: book by its cover . . . tranny in a trouser suit . . . You may very well have been trying to . . . wire up some Christmas lights when you . . . tripped and got all tangled up in that extension cord. But if I don’t rent a house for next summer soon, I’m gonna be fired and they’re gonna try to send me back to bloody fucking England because I don’t have a Green Card or a visa and there aren’t too many jobs I can get. Pretty soon I’ll be right up there with you, accidentally hanging myself whilst merely trying to be festive. So would you please do a stranger a tiny kindness before you die and allow me to attempt to rent your parents’ ridiculously expensive beach house to this nice Jewish couple Miriam and Irving Goldberg. Please, fucker, I’m begging you.

He stares at her a beat. Lights a cigarette.

Charlie Go ahead.

Emma Thank you.

She sits there. After a beat.

Charlie Well, where are they?

Emma They’re not here yet. They said they were on their way. But they’re old and Jewish; it could be hours. They said they had to first pick up their grandson, Saul. Why Saul needs to come, I have no idea. Personally I think they’re gonna try and set me up with him. With Saul, a dentist. A dentist who does amateur dramatics. He probably wears Les Mis t-shirts to the gym. Jesus Christ; do you mind if I have a drink?

Before he can answer, she pulls a liquor bottle out of her purse and takes a swig.

Emma I’m sorry, I’m being completely insensitive and bloody fucking selfish. I suck at being human; desperation has made me evil. So I apologize . . . New chapter: why were you trying to do yourself in? And why hanging; it seems to be the most aggressive of all methods. Haven’t you any pills?

Charlie I have pills.

Emma Really. What have you got?

Charlie Xanax, Valium, Klonopin.

Emma Party, party, party. We could turn this day around for both of us real quick, couldn’t we? I’m just kidding. Well not really; but that’s irrelevant. Back to you . . . What put you over the edge?

Charlie I really don’t wanna talk about it.

Emma Well what’s the point in being coy about it now? If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it, right? They always say that people who really wanna do themselves in are gonna find a way. (Realizing.) Maybe God sent you me and the Goldbergs for one last shot at talking you out of it. Don’t you believe in fate? I’m sorry what’s your name?

Charlie Charlie.

Emma Don’t you believe in fate, Charlie? Here you are, in an empty beach house, on a deserted island, in the middle of the fucking winter, moments away from ending it all, when in I walk. Does that give you no pause? Maybe God sent me to provide you with some sort of . . . access to the doors of your mind that remain rusted closed.

Beat.

Emma Sorry. I should tell you that I am super stoned right now. So if I say silly nonsense like that, you’re gonna have to forgive me.

Charlie Sure. Look I . . .

Emma You want me to go.

Charlie You seem like you’re a very nice person –

Emma Really?

Charlie No. And I don’t wanna be rude . . .

Emma But you’ve got things to do . . . Hmmm. You know you’ve put me into a smidgen of a moral conundrum here; you do realize that, Charlie. I don’t think I can leave.

Charlie And why is that?

Emma I think I may have been sent here to help. You may believe that or not depending on where you stand on God and fate and destiny and all that; it’s none of my business. But I do know that it’s a little bizarre I walked in when I did since I wasn’t even gonna show them this house because it’s outside their price range. This morning they called up and asked to see it. Out of the blue. Spooky. A religious person might think God intervened. I don’t know what you believ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Cast List
• Characters
• Contents
• Author Biography
• Imprint