Mothers Group

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Mothers Group

by Hamish Darby Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0

Synopsis: Comic sketch about the trials and tribulations of a group of women, united only by their family status. three female with an optional male.

Characters: (all childbearing age - fifteen to fifty)

Tranda – Pale, horsey, plummy and very rich

Carita- Intelligent, plain, solid and well presented

Uma- Slender, Bronze, Blonde, Good looking, the youngest

Buffin (Optional) - a teenage male

Act one – The Swimming Lesson - interior, day, municipal pool

Very empty set – perhaps a garden background from another play.

Lights up with Tranda and Carita on stage. Both are wearing a swimming costume. Depending on the modesty of the cast – full-body-sun-suit or board shorts coupled with bandeau or halter-neck top is fine. Even neck to knee frilly britches will work, as long as it looks entirely aquatic. Flippers and goggles are ideal and add to the humour. Both carry a plastic baby doll, also wearing something that suggests a swimming lesson, a pair of plastic pilcher pants at the least. There is no water in sight – the idea is to suggest they are standing in waist deep water by their actions. Both are in the pool, waiting for the lesson to start.

Carita: (looking closely at Tranda's 'baby') It was a difficult birth, wasn't it.

Tranda: How do you mean?

Carita: The kid looks a bit ...squashed.

Tranda: Speak for yourself!...Eight hours, from nought to nappies. This little one was quicker than yours!

Carita: Too quick perhaps. I mean, fast births sometimes don't give them time to swivel as they come though.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Tranda: (alarmed) Don't talk like that! Swivel? You're giving me a camel burn just thinking about it. (pause) Hey listen, who are we going to get, do you reckon?

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Carita: Get who? Uma said she would be late.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Tranda: (jealous) Give you a ring, did she? (quickly changing subject) no, I meant the teacher. Who do you think we will get this time? My neighbour said the teachers here are pretty useless. I mean, I learned how to swim here and I can barely stay afloat.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Suggested plot – the instructor turns out to be Uma, who is very sweet and gorgeous too, but thick as a post and giving swimming lessons to make ends meet, she was late as she failed to arrange a baby sitter and just decides to bring the baby and join in the lesson as instructor and friend to the other two.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is some dialogue around a teenage lad, who need not appear but can be off-stage unseen while they talk about him. He distracts Tranda and Uma while Carita is aghast and righteous at their unrepentant interest in his undressing to swim. Tranda gets a few word to him, while Uma reveals he is a cast-off with whom she has lost interest. Tranda is distracted enough to upset her baby and the three decide to get together and drown their sorrows with tea and home baking.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Uma: (to Tranda) Done a pooh, have we, by the smell?

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Act two