The Fatal Question - A One-Man Play

 

The Player(s)

LUKE - A Mortal Man

 

Props  

Fixed - Blade Knife

 

Setting

LUKE’s House - Front Yard

 

Scene the First

 

(Complete darkness. A single figure [LUKE] enters from stage left and walks to center stage, slowly and methodically. Upon reaching center stage, LUKE turns toward the audience, his head lowered, looking at his feet. He stops. After three seconds, a single spotlight lights up LUKE who is still looking at the stage floor. After another three seconds, LUKE looks up at the audience).

 

LUKE (solemnly): Every man in his lifetime asks a question of his creator; of his God. A single question filled with such potency that it defines who they are and how they live their life. Some people are given the answer early in their life, while others never receive an answer. But still, the rest of them get part way through their lives and become so distraught in looking for the answer that they feel as though there is nothing left to live for.

 

(lights fade out.

 

Exit LUKE).

 

END SCENE

 

 

Scene the Second

 

Enter LUKE

 

(Again, there is complete darkness. LUKE is standing center stage, looking at the stage floor. There is complete silence).

 

(lights fade in. A single spotlight illuminating LUKE from above).

 

(Luke still silent, a look of remorse, anger, heartbreak, confusion on his face, looks out toward the audience. Without a word, his eyes and head raised upwards as if looking towards Heaven. He raises his hand in a fist toward the sky, shaking it).

 

LUKE (yelling): Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani? My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!! (calmly, firmly, almost crying) Have I not followed You and Your commands all my life? Everything that I did was it not for Your honor and glory? I tried to be a good person. I put others before myself. I went to church every Sunday. I look out for other people. I’m a preacher’s kid for goodness sake. I gave up on myself and my personal effects for the betterment of other’s lives. (yelling again) Isn’t that good enough for you! What else do you want from me! (calmly; breathes in out an out three times, heavily) How do you repay me? Three people closest to me die within months of each other. The son of a close and dear friend commits suicide for no reason. (yelling) I thought that you loved me. Is this how you treat your children? (starts laughing, but it is the laughing of someone crazy out of their mind) You tell us that we are your children, right? I thought that you cared about me? I thought you loved me.

 

(LUKE falls to his knees, clenching his head in his hands, not crying, he is beyond that point.

After a few minutes he looks up again towards the sky; his face looking like death itself)

 

LUKE (calmly): What do you want from me? What is the reason for all this turmoil? Why? (yelling) Why? (calmly; sadly): For the love of all things good and right in this world, give me a bloody answer. I can’t take it anymore. It’s tearing me apart. I feel like I do doing the right thing and then my world turns upside down.

 

(LUKE reaches down to his belt and unsheathes a fixed-blade KNIFE, gesturing with it as he talks).

 

LUKE (calm, confused): I know that I have done things in my life that hasn’t been the best. But isn’t that why You sent Your Son to die on the cross? To forgive our sins? What good did it do anyway? Wasn’t that supposed to fix all the horrible things that happened in this life? Wasn’t it supposed to make things good again? To make up happy? To make our lives easier? (laughingly) Yeah. Sure, it did. Ever since that day that I repented of my past life, my life has become worse. (Pauses for a moment) Well, correction: My life become a literal, living hell. Every person I talk to; that I try and get close to turning their back on me. I am worthless to them. They want something that I can’t give them. Once they came to the conclusion that I couldn’t give them what they wanted, they left. (yelling) They threw me away, stomp me into the ground and went on with their lives. I’m nothing to no one! No one cares about me! (stares up to the sky, still gesturing with the KNIFE) And you sure as hell don’t!

 

LUKE (yelling): What’s the point of this life anyway. We’re born, we live for seventy plus year if we're lucky, we treat people nice, they treat us like dirt, and we die. Big whoop! Well, I’m over it! I’ve been over it! I’m done!

 

(LUKE lifts the KNIFE, grasping it with two hands, holds it out before his chest for a count of three and then stabs it into his chest.

 

LUKE takes a final long gasping breath, and falls forward, dead).

 

(lights fade out.

 

Exit LUKE).

 

END SCENE

 

 

Scene the Third

 

(Again, there is complete darkness. LUKE is standing center stage, looking at the stage floor. There is complete silence).

 

(lights fade in / a single spotlight illuminating LUKE from above).

 

(Luke is all alone, there is no setting, nothing. It is as if he is standing in a white room all alone. The audience looks on; the only ones allowed in).

 

(LUKE stands there, saying nothing, his clothes and the knife in his hand, limp by his side, drenched and dripping with blood)

 

(Moment go by. One. Two. Three. The knife slips out of LUKE’s hand, clattering to the floor, the noise echoing through the theatre.  Once the sound stops…)

 

(…Lights fade out. Darkness fills the room; silence all around;

 

(Three moments go by)

 

(The light comes back on, shinning on LUKE).

 

(He is no longer bloody; the knife is no longer in his hand. He stands there, arms by his side, dressed in a sparkling white suit).

 

Luke (clear, calm, penetrating; speaking to the audience): And that ladies and gents is the end; the answer to the question. It doesn’t matter what you do during your life. How good you are. What you do; the good, the bad, even the ugly. in the end, it doesn’t matter one bit.

 

(Lights fade out. Darkness fills the room; silence all around;

 

(Exeunt)

END SCENE

 

Finis.