The scene reveals a man, a woman and a teenage boy in the kitchen of a semi-detached house. A television can be heard coming from the living room. Two or three dogs are roaming the kitchen floor looking for scraps.
S: Go on, tell your dad about the floor pasta.
I: The what?
R: It’s because I brought home a packet of spaghetti that I found on the floor. It’s still sealed, it’s not minging or anything.
I: I see. Dubious but still useful I suppose.
R: Oh come on, don’t tell me you wouldn’t because I know you would! It’s free food and it’s perfectly usable.
I: Whereabouts did you find this?
R: When I was walking home from school.
I: A lone packet of spaghetti just lying there on the floor.
R: In the street, yeah. I looked around to see if anyone had dropped it but I was the only one there.
Later that evening. Still in the kitchen.
I: We’re a little concerned about the floor pasta. Are you sure you didn’t steal it? Come on now, if you’re going to risk going to jail for a 50p pack of spaghetti then I think we need to get you to a psychologist.
R: I knew you would do this.
S: If you’re a klepto just own up to it, we won’t judge you.
R: This is nonsense.
I: You have to admit the story sounds a bit too convenient, a bit too farfetched if you ask me.
R: Yes it does but it’s true, well, apart from the bit about finding it on the floor.
I: Come again?
R: I didn’t find it on the floor I found it in a trolley.
I: Here we go.
S: So it wasn’t on the floor, you stole it from a trolley in Sainsburys?
R: The trolley wasn’t in Sainsburys, it was in an alley.
I: This sounds even less believable. Which alley?
R: You know the one that’s equidistant between Sainsburys and Dhillons fish shop?
I: No, surprisingly not. I’m not out measuring equal distances between two places near where you live.
R: It was a trolley there and it was full of pasta.
I: Full of pasta, a trolley full of pasta lying in an alley sort of behind a supermarket, just left there for anyone to take.
R: Yes. I checked and it’s in date, it’s not as if it was out of date goods or anything.
S: So with all that pasta available to take you only took one small packet of spaghetti?
R: Yes! I didn’t want to be greedy.
S: This is sounding less believable the more he says.
I: You’re telling me.
R: Look, I know you don’t believe me and that’s fine. This isn’t the first time it’s happened anyway.
The man and the woman look at each other with the same confused look.
S: So how many times has it happened?
R: <thinks> about nine or ten.
I: So nine or ten times you’ve been walking from school and you’ve come across a shopping trolley filled to the brim with pasta and this is the first time you’ve thought to mention it?
R: Like you would have believed me anyway…
Lights fade.
The End.
14 comments on “Floor Pasta – a short play”
You call this a play, but I think its more ‘minutes of a meeting in Siobhan’s kitchen’.
How many of the 10 previous times have you eaten the illicit mystery trolley pasta unknowingly?
I agree with Kev. The attempt to fictionalise the account by referring to “a man, a woman and a teenage boy” is immediately lost with the initials I, S and R, none of which relate to those three descriptions but all three of which match attendees of a meeting about pasta that took place in Siobhan’s kitchen.
Those initials could stand for ‘Isobel’, ‘Sinatra’ and ‘Roberto’. You don’t know that.
Who are Isobel, Sinatra and Roberto? What’s their back story? What is their motivation?
Roberto is a street sweeper living in the city. His passion, outside of sweeping the mean streets of Bournemouth, is making houses of cards. Isobel, his sister, is struggling to make ends meet and her job in the salon isn’t enough to pay the rent and keep the interdimensional portal closed, and if she can’t the bats of Nexus will fly into the sun and crush the stellascope.
Sinatra is a puppy with a cute sneeze.
I see.
My next question is this. If Isobel and Roberto are brother and sister, and Sinatra is a puppy, why does Sinatra refer to Isobel as Roberto’s “dad” in the opening line of the play?
That ‘dad’ character was actually offscreen, polishing the floor hammers. You can hear him tinkering away on stage otherwise he is merely referred to and not seen.
Can you explain why Isobel and Sinatra are referred to as “the man and the woman” when one of them is a puppy?
I dont think he can. I think he’s been hoist by his own petard.
I think you’re right. I think his petard has been stalking him since he posted this and it’s finally caught up with him, like a very patient wolf, but a wolf made of truth.
There are so many strands to this conversation that I’m not sure I’m up to speed.
Let’s not forget I am but a shaggy sandwich trying to make my way in the world.
You’re now a shaggy sandwich that has been hoist aloft by a petard that belongs to you but which is also a patient stalking wolf made of truth. Keep up.
Hey, name-calling is juvenile and you know it. I may be a petard but at least I’m round (what?).
I’m going to allow this.