Hello. I’m an actor playing an American...

Hello. I’m an actor playing an American playwright. American meaning United States. Yes, that place. I assume you’ve been hearing a bit about us. There’s a saying that we have—“I’m like a bad penny, I keep turning up.” We, unfortunately, also then follow up this phrase by saying—“we keep turning up because we have a moral responsibility to keep turning up and that moral responsibility will justify just about everything that happens next.” It’s a long saying.

This monologue and this play is coming from all the way back in March, so God only knows what kind of sh#t has gone down between the Wednesday at 8 in the morning that the guy who sat down to write me finally sat down to write me, and whenever this is being performed in this fantastic theatre with all of you fantastic people, who are much better looking in person than in imagination. Maybe something miraculous has happened and everything has gotten better where I am.

Hate to tell you this, but I doubt that.

You see, since 11/8, we’ve been doing a lot of soul searching to figure out how we’ve been so f##king stupid. At first it was about the election. Then it was about the media covering the election. Then it was about the people who didn’t vote. And then the people who voted. And of course, there was also the whole thing about why we vote in this way that makes no sense except to people who’ve gone to school in the United States, and let’s be fair there, too, our educational system isn’t really the best, so who knows if we really understand it.

Point is: we’re here. Here we are, and it’s been exhausting.

Between the rallies and the protests and the outrage and the fake outrage and the signing of petitions and going to airports and checking your phone and twitter and what the f##k, did he just say that—you can’t actually SAY THAT?!

Recently—like when I decided to sit down and write this—I’ve decided to take the long view. To try and not be caught up in the machinations of the news cycle and say: hey—let’s take a step back and look at this.

There’s a long history in the United States of depictions of our people. Maybe our defining characteristic has been some attempt to define who we are.