Ethan is a high-spirited teenage boy who is painting in a room when Riley, an angry teenage girl enters and watches him work. She talks to him about what he’s doing and he tells her it is a painting of home. She tells him she doesn’t have a home and it is revealed that they are both foster children in a foster home. The scene progresses and Ethan gives her the chance to paint her “home” on his painting but she refuses. So with a swirl of his paintbrush they are whisked away into the “jungle” where they meet a family of monkeys and we get to see these two teenagers be kids again. Eventually they find themselves in front of a door. It is the front door of Ethan’s childhood home. He enters and we see his mother who is smoking a cigarette and taking pills. This is a moment in time that shows the kind of life he had before he made his way to the foster care system. Riley tries to comfort him but before they find their way home they transition onto a stage that both of them decide would be a great place to sing and dance right into the next door, Riley’s childhood home. They enter and we see her as a child playing with her dolls until her father enters and takes her hand leading her into another room for their time. They both transition back to the home and Riley is angry that he took them there. She doesn’t understand what he’s doing. He explains to her that she has to get past what brought her into the foster care system in order to ever find a home again. Eventually Riley crushes his painting out of anger. Finally they go back to their childhood homes again so we see how those moments in their lives ended, then back to the foster home. A new canvas is presented and Riley begins to paint her home.
Duo/Duet- Finding Home
$60.00Price
- (Scene opens with Ethan, an older teenage boy who is painting something that he is really focused on. Then Riley, a younger teenage girl enters and is looking at what he is painting from a distance. She is really interested in what he’s doing and for a few moments he doesn’t see her. Then he does, he smiles at her and begins to hum a song that then turns into him singing.) Ethan: (Singing, never looking at her) There’s no place like home Dorothy said. Home is where I am. Home is where I’m happy. Home is where my smile is free. Riley: (Aside) Home… Ethan: You gonna stand back there creeping in on me all day or are you going to come a little closer? (She takes a step, he laughs) Riley: I’m closer. Ethan: (Laughs) True, but you’re here because you want to see what I’m doing, right? Riley: Wrong, I’m here because…I’m here for the same reason you are. (Ethan, turns and looks at her, the moment has changed.) Ethan: Only someone new to this house would say that. I’m a veteran in this business. Riley: It’s a foster home. It’s not a business, except the business of them using us to get a check. Ethan: You’re small but the attitude is nice. You keep that up and before you age out you’ll be dead. (Silence) If you want to survive- Riley: I’m surviving just fine. This is my sixth home. Ethan: You say that like it’s a patch you won in some little girls club. Riley: Screw you. (She goes to exit. Ethan begins singing and painting again. She stops and turns, walks closer to the painting.) What is it anyway? Ethan: (Putting the finishing touches on his work of art.) It’s home. (Riley looks at it from different angles and doesn’t see it. Ethan laughs.) Riley: I don’t see it. Ethan: That’s your problem. (He moves her and adjusts her head, nothing. He laughs and moves her again to another angle, nothing. It’s a game he’s playing with her.) Riley: This is a piece of crap. I can’t believe I thought this showed “home,” what a joke.