Border Control
Thriller, one stamp too many
- Thriller
- Two-hander
- 3 min
- Male role
- Adult
- Intermediate
Casting
8 lines- L’AGENTE Female role, Adult
- LE VOYAGEUR Male role, Adult your role
Full text
(A border post, at night. The officer leafs through a passport, unhurried.)
L’AGENTE
Purpose of travel?
LE VOYAGEUR
Tourism. A few days. The mountains.
L’AGENTE
In February. No luggage. A one-way ticket.
LE VOYAGEUR
I like to travel light. And decide on the spot when I go back.
L’AGENTE
Your passport was stamped leaving a country you never entered. Strange, an exit stamp with no entry stamp.
(A beat.)
LE VOYAGEUR
Bureaucracies make mistakes.
L’AGENTE
They do. But not that one. That one, you have to manufacture.
(She sets the passport down, flat, and keeps it under her hand.)
L’AGENTE
So let’s start again. Purpose of travel. The real one, this time. We have all night, and only one door.
What you can do with it
Original text written for Acto. Read it, print it, work on it in class, perform it at an audition or on a self-tape: that is what it is for, and you need no permission. For a public performance or any commercial use, write to us at contact@acto.re.
In these selections
The same text, elsewhere
Close to this one
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The Hands
You’ve washed your hands three times. They’re not dirty. It’s worse. They’re clean, and I can still feel it.
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The Lift
Don’t worry. It happens, in these old buildings. They’ll get us out. You’re calm.
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The Meeting
Nice envelope. Thick. You’ve been sensible. It’s the last one. Do you hear me? The last.