Maddy's Adventures in Guacamole: Scene 1

posted Jul 12, 2013, 1:41 AM by Robert Schulz   [ updated Jul 12, 2013, 1:41 AM ]

From Maddy Ryen:

One of my scenes in She Creatures is as Cecilia the Selkie, who is reflecting on her time spent among humans before returning to the sea. She spends the entire monologue doing the thing she enjoyed most on earth: making and eating a bowl of guacamole. Best role ever, or best role ever? I tend to joke around Barnyard that I'll get on board with any event we do as long as there's food, but I'm glad someone's finally taken me seriously enough to give me a part where I get to eat every night.

Thing is, although I'm a guacamole fan, I've only made it a few times before, and never while delivering a 4-page monologue. Obviously, guac is not difficult to make, and I'm the only one to eat it in the scene, so if it doesn't taste good I only have myself to blame. I'm mostly worried about doing it in time with the lines without having to spend the entire scene looking at what I'm doing. It's a really great monologue, so I want everyone to be able to focus on the words and not on the inordinate difficulty I have slicing onions.

So I've started trying to make guacamole at home following the playwright's directions (she's nicely laid out the order of the ingredients and where they should be added during the lines) while repeating the monologue in my head, trying to get a sense of how long it will actually take me to make the food. Today was attempt #1. The results:

Photo by Maddy Ryen

-- Two forgotten ingredients (lime juice and cilantro, how vital are these?)

-- One cut finger (thought I had a good method for taking the pit out of the avocado, apparently not)

-- Concern about just how much I'm going to cry during a not-sad monologue simply because I'm cutting an onion

-- Too much time spent on chopping things (but I'm confident I can speed it up without upping the number of cut fingers)

-- Totally edible guacamole! I thought I'd be overwhelmed by onion and jalepeno, but it was tasty!

There's room for improvement, but so far I'm happy with my adventures in guacamole. I'll keep you updated...

(Here's a picture of the finished product, though I lack a real camera, so it looks much worse than it tastes -- how do the people who post pictures of their food to Instagram make it look so good?)

Maddy Ryen is performing in the roles of Cecilia and Helen in She Creatures.