Script Excerpts

Script Excerpts from An Air Balloon Across Antarctica (© Darragh Martin):

Scene 5 - The Incredible Courtship of Caitlin Delilah Evans and James John Hennigan. The ‘Pinch-Me-I’m-Fainting’ Ache and Ecstasy of Falling in Love, Part One.

Scene 8 - The Salvation of Ham

Scene 5 - The Incredible Courtship of Caitlin Delilah Evans and James John Hennigan. The ‘Pinch-Me-I’m-Fainting’ Ache and Ecstasy of Falling in Love, Part One.

JAMES
The alarm bells should have gone off. Scarf indoors, ponytailed galah on her arm. She was the type of arts student that uses a magic eight ball as a ballcock and sprinkles ‘discourse’ into sentences like a condiment. All the signs should have pointed to ‘miss a turn’, and yet there was something about her that made you believe that when she was in the room, colours were more vibrant, music was louder, food was sweeter.

CAITLIN
I was sleepreading the questions. What is the capital of Guatemala?

JAMES
What do you look like when you wake up?

CAITLIN
How many in a gross?

JAMES
A heart in love expands at what density?

CAITLIN
Which element precedes Einsteinium in the periodic table?

JAMES
What is the colour of infatuation?

CAITLIN
Answers: Guatemala City, 144, Californium-

JAMES
Wait, that’s not right, it’s Fermium. Fermium precedes Einsteinium. Excuse me, you’re wrong.

Pause. Caitlin stares at him.

CAITLIN
It was pretty sexy. The two of us arguing absurdly, folding arms in fuck you, fuck me fashion, running breathless through Uni corridors searching for a periodic table as if the future of humanity depended on it. It was taking a while to find, so I start talking about my trip, the boat, he’s crinkling his face, like he knows anything about the bush, then I mention the engine-

JAMES
It was as if the laws of physics didn’t apply to her because she found them inconvenient, that she could dismiss the founding principles of our planet with a turn of her chin-

CAITLIN
So we find the lab, climb in the window, check out the periodic table in the moonlight, of course I am right-

JAMES
She’s arching her eyebrow, like she even knew what Einsteinium was-

CAITLIN
And he’s still going on about the engine. It was strange he’d be all calm and cardigany and then he’d talk about something he was passionate about, something involving elements or electricity and it was like his eyes would plug in, his arms would come to life and-

JAMES
I didn’t see the cylinder, just brushed against it and then there’s this bright green liquid spilling towards us, the smashing of glass, the liquid drip, drip, drip across the desk and we grab hold of each other, because this could be it, this could be the end-

CAITLIN
And it was only water with universal indicator in it, but it could have been hydrogen peroxide for all we knew, it was fizzling like crazy-

JAMES
It wasn’t fizzling, it wasn’t dangerous, it was just green water, but it charged us together and that was it, I knelt down in the glass grit and Bunsen burner fumes and said “Caitlin Evans, I love you” and she smiled and said

CAITLIN
What’s your name?

JAMES
James. James Hennigan is my name. As if I was a knight of the Holy Grail or something.

CAITLIN
As she walks away
James, I leave for Darwin at six am on Tuesday. I'll see you there.

JAMES
And I did.

An Air Balloon Across Antarctica © Darragh Martin

Scene 8 – The Salvation of Ham

Ham is addressing the audience directly.   He clears his throat, unsure where to start his story.

HAM

Deep down, I always knew I was a lemming. Sure, geography wasn’t on my side. Neither was circumstance. And biology didn’t like me much either. But deep inside, I knew. Even before I met him, or the Day of the Drip, Drip, Burning Bush.  I knew that I was a lemming trapped in a hamster’s body.

You see, lemmings are the rock stars of the rodent world. They live fast, die young, tumble off the edge. They idle their lives away, sucking devil-may-care on the choicest lichen until they’ve bled their supply dry. Then it’s on to the hard stuff - hallucinogenic drugs, baby.  First they scoff a bunch of herbs. Then they go to the nearest cliff, flex their muscles and dive in en masse. The water’s really beautiful and they bob about. They’re pretty happy, ‘cause of the drugs, see - so happy that they kind of forget how to swim. Then they die. Beautifully.

Hamsters?  Lemmings are James Dean, hamsters are Tom Hanks. What sadist invented those wheels?  Talk about gym bunnies … When did you ever see Bugs tread on one of those torture circles for seven hours straight?  And that’s it. That’s the social opportunities for hamsters. Sit. Eat grain. Tread torture wheel.  Sleep.

I’ve nothing against wheels.  As shapes go, they’re up there with the square and the triangle. But for entertainment they’re not exactly a combined CD, mini-disc and DVD audiovisual console. Turning round is about what they do.  So I stopped.  The anti-revolution revolution, so to speak.  That’s when my eating problem started. Looking back, I think it was the peer pressure, the jibes, the expectations, the crushing weight of failure.  My cousin Speedo broke the record for the fastest continuous wheel turn.  I broke the wheel.

I became addicted to Special K. They say it helps slimming as part of a calorie controlled diet. But when it constitutes your diet… let’s just say that this K was King-sized.  Obesity is not embraced by the hamster community.  My folks tried to ignore me, but they couldn’t because I took up half the cage.  And then he came in.  And he saved me.  In every way a hamster can be saved.  And before I turned into a lemming, before the Day of the Drip, Drip, Burning Bush, before that everything was colourful and cumulus, everything was halcyon happy…

An Air Balloon Across Antarctica © Darragh Martin

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