Three Sample Monologues from Life After Life

Life After Life has over 40 individual characters, each based on people buried in the Common Burying Ground and God’s Little Acre. The play itself takes audiences on a tour of the Graveyard where audiences encounter various characters presenting scenes and monologues. The language the characters say either comes directly from their words or were written based on the research we uncovered.

These are three monologues that may give you a sense of a few of the many characters we’ll encounter. As you prepare for your audition, feel free to select one and get to know it.

Desire Tripp

  • Buried in 1793. Her stone depicts an image of her arm, which was buried in 1786 after amputation alongside her two young children. We imagine that she is nervous, quite religious and perhaps superstitious.

  • It’s my arm. See. Well, now it’s here. Attached . . . As it was most of my life! But then the troubles came and William thought it best to see Dr. Senter. He said it would have to come off and when he said that well I about fainted I said no no please anything but that, but William said hush now and be a good girl and stop making all this fuss when I knew it was a sickness and that the devil was all around us and that Dr. Senter was saying something true. [beat] He cut my arm off in 1786 when I was 41. It took 6 minutes and I felt every moment. William paid ￡6 -- nearly a month’s wages for the procedure and then that was it. Two babies dead and one arm gone. The devil hung about me and now everyone could see it plain. I’m sure William thought this would be the end of it, but for me it was the start. Of the phantoms. The feelings -- my arm itching but nothing to scratch. My babies -- William and Wait -- crying out for me, but no babies to soothe. I was sure to go mad but then William brought John Bull to the house to discuss a stone. [John Bull approaches.] Oh there you are! 

Dr. Harriet Rice

  • Buried in 1958. She was a doctor awarded prestigious honors despite facing prejudice throughout her life. She is intelligent, hard-working, funny, and honest about what is frustrating.

  • My name is Harriet Alleyne Rice. Daughter to George and Lucinda Rice. Born in 1866 in Newport, Rhode Island. I graduated from Rogers High School in 1882 and went on to be the first African heritage student to graduate from Wellesley College in 1887. I earned medical degrees from the University of Michigan Medical School and the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. However, as a highly educated woman of color during the late 19th century, it was nearly impossible to practice medicine at any American hospital, so I joined Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago to provide medical treatment to poor families. I eventually came home to Newport and opened a medical practice out of our family home on Spring Street right around 1900. Later I moved to Boston and lived at the Harriet Tubman House and served on the medical staff at Plymouth Hospital.

    When World War I broke out, I offered my services as a medical doctor to support the troops, but the American Red Cross didn’t want me as a doctor because of my race. But I am from Newport. I am the descendant of people who do not give up, and so I contacted the French government, who gladly accepted my offer of medical help. When I was 49 years old I went to France and served in French hospitals treating wounded soldiers. I was there on the frontlines from January 1915 until just a few days after the Armistice in November 1918. In 1919, the French Government awarded me the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française, -- the Medal of French Gratitude -- for my work treating wounded troops. Of all the times in my life, that was when I felt most useful. Most inside my purpose.

    After the war I moved back home to Newport and lived with my sister until she passed in 1925. I was nearly 60 and devastated. I was “a lonely wanderer on the face of the earth, without friends, without home, without employment of any kind.”

    After that I went to New York City to work in a Columbia University Medical Center lab. I was sure they were about to lay me off in 1933, so I wrote back to Hull House in Chicago, seeing if they needed a doctor. I didn’t hold back much about how hard it was to find my way. I wrote that I was thinking about “jumping out of a window, or turning on the gas, or the like.” Dramatic I know! But the struggle is REAL. At the end I said I knew I must “keep on fighting a while longer.” Because what else is a Newporter like me going to do? In any rate, I left New York in 1935. 

    I died in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1958 when I was 92 years old. They brought me home -- to be with all of you. I’m buried in my family plot here in God’s Little Acre. Just over there.

Edmund Briggs, Jr.

  • Though not technically buried in the CBG, in 1822 he was accused of murder and his victim was buried in the CBG with Edmund Briggs’ name carved into the stone naming him as his assassin.

    Much of this language was written directly by Brigg’s in a deposition, but some of it we imagine based on his circumstances. He is frustrated and also maybe not telling the truth.

  • I went on the Point with my brother and father on the evening of September 20, last past for the purpose of getting my brother’s clothes which were at Mrs Murphy’s to be washed. This was not far from 10 o’clock. After sitting there sometime we sent for some gin. I sent first for a pint. My brother afterwards sent for another pint. Before it was all drank there came in four or five men. The only one I knew was Lewis Lawton. We asked them to drink, which they declined, but sent themselves for a pint of cherry rum. They asked me to drink, which I declined as I thought I had drunk sufficient and mentioned that I was then going down on board the vessel. In time the cherry rum was brought, several others in. I then, with my father and brother, went out of the house. After I got out, about a nod from the house, I stopped against the fence to make water. Four or five of those I left in the house came and took hold of me and insisted on my going back into the house to drink with them. Which I declined for the reason before given, that I had drunk enough. They still held on, until I jerked clear of them. I then started and walked off with my father and brother until I got near to Washington St, when I looked back and discovered they were in pursuit of us, being as I concluded, six or seven in number. We then started and ran on which they began to throw stones after us. One of the stones hit me in the back part of the head; and also several times in the legs. They chased us nearly to where Holmes’ Candle Works formerly stood. There I got away from them. They came near enough to strike me and kick me. This was some distance above. I do not wish to state anything more at present.

    All this and it’s my name on that blasted stone of that louse who had it coming for all eternity. I’m not buried here in this crummy place. Nor my father! Yet we are trapped here because his idiot family chose to carve my name on their son’s stone! As if our punishment wasn’t enough. It has to be for all time that my name is here. In 1822 I find myself in Newport mixed up in this silly drunken mess and now. . . Over two-hundred years later my father and I are still being called back to recount the night. Truly once I was out of prison, I never looked back. None of this mattered much in my life or my children’s lives. (to Tennant) You idiot. I never should have accepted that cherry rum. None of it was worth this. I didn’t even know your idiot family had kept my name on your gravestone until after I’d died. “Why am I getting pulled back to Newport” I’d wonder. Then finally I saw it -- Killed by an assassin there on YOUR STONE is MY NAME. Edmund Briggs. This should be illegal. You should not be allowed to get away with this. And yet, here we are. Pathetic.