The Flat
Drama, clearing the house
- Drama
- Two-hander
- 3 min
- Female role
- Adult
- Intermediate
Casting
7 lines- ELLE Female role, Adult your role
- LUI Male role, Adult
Full text
(A half-emptied flat, cardboard boxes. A brother and sister, each on one side of a pile of belongings.)
ELLE
What do we keep, out of all this? We have to decide today. We hand back the keys tomorrow.
LUI
You decide, as always. You were already deciding when we were ten.
ELLE
Someone had to decide. You were never there. Not at ten, not at the end.
(A silence. She takes a small music box out of a box.)
LUI
…Her music box. She used to play it for me when I couldn’t sleep.
ELLE
For me too. I thought it was only for me.
(She winds the mechanism. The fragile melody fills the empty room.)
LUI
We each thought we were the favourite. Maybe that was her real success.
(She holds out the box.)
ELLE
Take it. We’ll keep it between us. It’s the only thing we never knew how to share: her.
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.