Margot Lasher

We humans tell our dogs to stay, but are we ourselves any good at staying? When our children or dogs run off, out of sight, can we just sit and not try to follow? Don't we get very anxious? In this monologue the actor talks to her real dog who is onstage, and who responds to her changes in tone - calm, happy, upset, and at one point angry. The audience watches the subtle ways that dog and human respond to each other.

This monologue can be done with a stuffed animal, visual effects, or any other imaginative device.

A dog suddenly starts talking to his human, and they question each other about puzzling things, like why the human picks up the dog’s shit, and why the dog gets incredibly excited to see her when she has only been gone ten minutes. The human is a journalist who has an assignment in Japan and plans to leave her dog alone with a stranger. The dog tries to get her to see the danger, but it is only when the stranger actually comes inside their house that she understands the importance of the dog’s plea, “Take me with you”.

I Belong Somewhere shows how war affects everyone. This is not a realistic anti-war play. Through Jake, it shows the inner conflict of veterans, how devotion and trust in comrades can make a clear anti-war position impossible. The culture we grew up in, and the immediate present in which we find ourselves, can be difficult, conflicted, and sometimes senseless. A groundhog, Carl, finds humans absurd.

The culture of war and the sense of belonging are intertwined for each character. We belong to tribes or packs; to soldier units, world views, and the human world. Or, we don’t belong - but we want to. We want to belong because belonging means safely, it means a sense of knowing who we are, a reason to be here. It means a reason to just be alive.

An 82 year old woman, eccentric and distrustful of doctors, is interviewed by a young, inexperienced male psychiatrist in a test for dementia. Because of absurd misunderstandings, Dr. Grey assumes that Hannah has dementia, but as she begins to trust him and talks more about her aging, he begins to see the insights behind her words. He decides that her stories are not signs of ordinary dementia, and then he suddenly sees this as his chance to achieve his dream of fame as a psychiatrist: he will create a theory of the aging brain.

Act II begins with a monologue in which Hannah talks about her life with her dogs, especially her older dog, Jake, who is slowly changing. Late one night she has heard Jake speaking to her, and she fears that ‘hearing voices’ means that she is losing her mind. She returns to Dr. Grey, who now overcomes his ambition in order to show her that her communication with Jake is not dementia, but rather a part of their deep connection, and their aging and dying together.