CHARACTER LIST:
OLYMPIA
(26)Young, ambitious woman who has not been handed everything in life, but has had a stable safe life with no real room for plot/hardships. There is a longing for a journey.
THE BREAKING POINT
By Pedro Villa
Time: Monday, early morning, 2021
Place: Outside of New York, a high school classroom.
At Rise: English classroom with dull white light fixtures. 30 wooden desks, 6 rows of 5, none filled.
Olympia, at the chalkboard, standing empty minded, but full of thoughts of ‘what if’, reminiscing on the moment of the breaking point, still in shock, legs crossed with arms crossed behind her back.
THE BREAKING POINT
By Pedro Villa
I was right here. I was talking about “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. You know the crisis where Jane is on her damning quest for independence and self-respect. (picks up a piece of chalk, plays/fittles with it, staring blankly.) And the room just stopped being real. Like genuinely. The lights, those damn white fixtures that usually hum, just went FLAT. And I saw them. All their little heads…all 23 that day. 7 were missing so they missed me being a spectacle. But I realized I was just standing there, lying. Fraudulent. I felt like such a hypocrite, teaching them not to settle and that they need to find their passion. I looked down at the 5 year old lesson plan and my HOKAS. The same comfortable ones I taught AND ran in. And that’s when I realized, I’m just comfortable. That’s literally all this is. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. And the thought came. Not a doubt, but like a physical jolt. Like I put my hand on a hot handle of a pot over fire. This life I have, have lived, it’s too small. I was there, talking about meaning, and I have completely muted and shut out my own. I have been ignoring the big, loud, messy journey of life I KNOW is waiting for me out there…like a missed phone call or somethin’. I am not passionate about this anymore. Who am I to teach, when I can barely teach myself? I babble about freedom and this and that, but I’m here chained to a syllabus. like HELLO? I just stopped mid sentence when I realized. I think I was saying the word “absurd.” And I just blinked. Each wink of my eye like a thunderclap. I couldn’t remember what I
was doing. I mumbled something about homework and got them out of class early ‘cause of how dumbfounded I was. (the stack of ungraded papers sits on her desk, loudly.) This is my life. These are my days. I am so tired of correcting their mistakes. Beautifully tragic and clumsy attempts at critical thinking. I don’t want this anymore. I want to START something new. Something that’s bigger than me. Is it crazy to ask myself if my journey in life has even started if I haven’t faced a real life challenge or hardship? I honestly don’t know what this is. Maybe it’s a mission or somethin’. Maybe it’s me running away. Who the fuck knows. All I know is that I have to go. Because if I stay here for one more year, I think I will vanish. Part of me feels like I already have…the seed has already been planted. (she picks up the syllabus and lesson plan and slowly crumples it into a TIGHT ball.)LORD HAVE MERCY! I AM LOSING MY MIND! Before that bell rang, I thought my life was set. I thought I’d be here until retirement. I don’t know where the story goes now. I’m walking out that door. And when I step into that hallway, for the first time in 5 years… I have absolutely no lesson plan… And, God, does that feel like the closest I’ve ever felt to freedom. I’m out. I think…no I know. I quit. (Olympia takes off her ID lanyard from around her neck, softly places it on her desk, and exits.)I mean hey, all shots missed are the ones not taken, right? (pauses) Thanks Wayne Gretzky (chuckles).
