Dance Nation or Internal Exposition?
Dance Nation, a play by Clare Barron, observes a group of pre-teen competitive dancers clawing their way through their lives. Every physical dance represents the ambition and efforts closer to finding themselves. In this play, Clare Barron employs monologues to magnify the internal feelings of her characters. Monologues feel critical when another character pins the speaker against a wall, metaphorically or literally. The speech conducts like an instrument for the character to fulfill their want. However, the consequence of the monologue may not result in their want, thus thickening the plot. Specifically, we will be studying Connie’s monologue in scene fourteen. Out of context, Connie’s speech feels disconnected, perhaps abstract, and even too poetic. Nevertheless, unveiling Connie’s desires and when they attempt to acquire them, this monologue feels crucial and functions successfully because of her character arc.
When scene fourteen begins, Ashlee, Sofia, and Connie sit in the girl’s dressing room. Sofia finishes making magical coffee, which she dubs zalmsac (pronounced z-alm-sak.) She shares the coffee with the girls, then sticks her finger in her armpit, carries the sweat, and strokes it on their upper lip. They chatter about the power of Zalmsac before Connie delivers her monologue.
“CONNIE: And in twenty years, you will sit in my apartment in New York City, and I will tell you that I’ve spent the fall trying not to kill myself, and you will tell me that you spent all of high school trying not to kill yourself. You will tell me how you got on a bus, and found a doctor, and rode the bus to the doctor, and begged the doctor not to call your parents, and went on antidepressants at the age of fourteen, and all this time, our bodies were sharing spaces, and I had no idea. And we will sit on the floor and drink wine and cry in the same way we cry in banks and on airplanes and in all sorts of public places — quietly and full of shame together — and we will talk about our jobs and the people we are dating, and suddenly, for the first time in years, I will believe in fate. That somehow all of this was pre-determined. You and me sitting here now. You and me sitting there then. I always knew there was something about us that was the same.”
Clare Barron consciously positions this monologue in a realm only the audience and Connie can hear. To do this, the physical layout on the page separates itself from the rest of the dialogue, utilizing space and italics. While she directly speaks to the characters on the stage, the italics insinuate that it lives separately from the current conversation. The stage direction before the monologue contributes to this also. “Connie takes Ashlee’s hand.” Barron builds a moment of separation in time through this expositional monologue. Typically, we run into speeches like this in Greek Tragedies. Their objective is to recount wars, fill in the gaps from time passing, or explain a death not seen on stage. Here, Barron takes advantage of being literal in the dialogue while also feeling abstract and existential.
After the stage direction, Connie begins by saying, “And in twenty years.” Referring to this as Point A, we immediately project ourselves forward to muse on an image she paints for us. The beginning of this moment relies on the audience understanding what had just taken place previously in the play.
Peeking at the moments before this monologue, we witness Sofia and Ashlee as they begin to corner Connie. When Sofia brainstormed their magic coffee’s name, her first idea was “czalmsa.” To which Connie reacts, “But there’s no ‘c’ in ZALMSA!” Sofia asserts that the ‘c’ is silent while Ashlee and Connie debate the name.
“SOFIA: Trust me, Connie. It’’s cool to be the silent ‘c’
CONNIE: Yeah…
SOFIA: You’re like our secret weapon
CONNIE: I think I’m just tired of being a secret…
SOFIA: How are you a secret?
CONNIE: I don't know. I just feel like I am
ASHLEE: You’re not a / secret
SOFIA: We can be Zalmsakkk, then. We can totally be ZALMSAC”
Now, these beats do not feel impactful or consequential in the context of the entire play. Again, they may feel like throw-away lines. Regardless, in Connie’s character arc, they are piece by piece isolating her from the girls around her. Rather than the girls allowing her to elaborate on her feelings, they immediately continue chitchatting about the magic coffee. The conversation continues.
“ASHLEE: It kind of sounds like an antidepressant
SOFIA: Huh?
ASHLEE: Like those commercials? Feeling worthless? Take Zalmsac
…
CONNIE: My mom takes antidepressants and she says I’m probably going to have to, too
ASHLEE: Well, now you won’t have to because you can just take Zalmsac
CONNIE: Thanks”
Similarly, Connie reaches out to her friends to convey that she struggles mentally. In her monologue, she calls back when Ashlee shuts down her comment. “You will tell me how … you went on antidepressants at the age of fourteen” Now since Dance Nation deems itself intentional in every punctuation and scene, the reader can draw a correlation to this line and the exact number of this scene; fourteen. The girl’s ages range, but Barron again cues us by providing these hints. With lines like these, we witness how the existential part of Connie's speech draws on the future of their friendship while remaining in the present.
This leads us into our transitional point, “and all this time, our bodies were sharing spaces, and I had no idea.” The reason this feels transitional comes from, “and I had no idea.” Which, even then, feels as though it can be another throw away moment. However, because we have witnessed Connie be shut down time and time again, the line itself has a different meaning. “And I had no idea,” comes from the feeling of, she could have known, all of this could have been prevented, had they just talked. But instead of having these connections as adolescents, they have to wait another twenty years until it becomes trauma.
Veering into Point B, the end of the monologue, “You and me sitting there then. I always knew there was something about us that was the same.” Interestingly, this final line of the monologue seems to be the last of the lines we hear from Connie. At that point, she obtains most of her desires by the end of the monologue. I use the word mostly because of how we interact with the monologue. Barron executes this monologue in such a way that we see the entire arc of Connie’s life live in these beats. We witness her finally voicing her reflections and being understood via this moment. Typically, playwrights enforce the expositional structure which allow us to see deaths or wars. Here, Connie projects into the future and grants the audience comfort in knowing she eventually talks about her pain.
Overall, Connie’s monologue in scene fourteen feels the most authentically human from the rest in this play. The over arching theme of adolescence and girlhood bleed through every sentence in her sequence. By examining her character arc over the course of the play, this speech remains crucial to not just her, but Dance Nation and it’s purpose.
