Stemme | Voices | Amazwi is LitNet’s series of 15 short, powerful monologues, written by established and upcoming playwrights, presented in collaboration with Suidoosterfees, NATi and ATKV.
In Jemma Kahn’s Not lost, a girl explains how she got fired while working on the set for a Barbie advert. Devonecia Swartz performs the monologue, directed by Jemma. Watch the performance here:
In this video, Devonecia Swartz and director Jemma Kahn discuss their approach to the performance of Not lost.
Not lost
Barbie has a hole in her left hand, punched out over the ring finger. It’s small comparatively but pretty disfiguring for her, shame. It eats up most of her hand. In the hole you plug her plastic ring, this teeny-weeny fizz pop with a stick to go through the hand and a tiny bobble on top, which is her rock. You clip the stick into the hole and then Barbie is married! Except Barbie cannot get married. Mattel won’t allow it. But she is permitted to imagine it. The ring in her finger hole is the … it’s imaginary. It’s real for little girls, but actually it’s only in Barbie’s mind.
I lost that tiny plastic ring, on set for the advert for Wedding Barbie, and got fired. The story of the ad basically is Ken picks Barbie up for a date at her house, then he and Barbie are driving, they go to the beach and Ken proposes. Barbie looks down and you see the hand of a little girl popping a ring into her finger socket, Barbie’s engaged! Then pan out to see the little girl playing with Ken and Barbie, waggling them around on the floor of her room. You only see the whole girl at the end but her hands are in every shot, that’s a Mattel rule. Dolls do not move without assistance, wedding Barbie comes with ring accessory, car and Ken doll sold separately.
In the morning, when I thought things had been going pretty good, the director approached Barbie’s stylist and I, where we stood apart from the action, but available.
I need your help.
He was talking to the stylist.
The kid. She can’t get Ken to look sexy.
Oh shit.
Ken needs to be more waaay more sexy with Barbie.
We stared at the child. She was standing getting her fingers repainted. She looked … well, she looked like a six year old.
The stylist said I’ll pop another button on Ken’s shirt!
and the director said Fantastic!
and they scuttled off and the stylist handed me the tiny ring, hold this!
Then someone else told me to run to the truck to find another pair of sunglasses for Barbie. The ones we had weren’t right. I came back with four more pairs as options but somewhere between the studio and truck, the ring went AWOL.
Do you know how many Barbie accessories fit on a truck? Ja, thousands. Little champagne buckets, little handbags, little take away Venti coffees the size of a suppository in an adult hand.
I never found the ring. When it became clear that I, the intern, had lost Barbie’s engagement ring, it became clear that there was no replacement either. I asked can’t we just use another ring? The director looked at me as if I was mentally deficient. No replacement rings. By lunchtime I was fired.
I’m telling you this, because this year I ended up at a bar in Laingsburg, at about 6:30 on New Year’s morning. It was pretty despicable but I wasn’t ready for home-time.
There were three people left there when I arrived: the barman, and a young woman dancing barefoot around the floor and old guy sitting at the bar. The lady on the dancefloor was staring at the old guy, kind of summoning him to the floor with her fingers, but he just stared at her without moving and then she would spin around. She had to pull her feet up each time she moved, coz the floor was sticky.
The barman yelled Go Sexy!
And the older guy said it too Go Sexy!
And then I recognised him … and then I recognised her.
I ask the old guy How do you guys know each other?
The old guy says to me I’ve known her since she was a kid.
And I said really?
And he says Yep. We knew each other professionally.
And then he raised his glass. To my wife!
And the barman raises his. To your wife!
And the woman put her hands up over her head, smiling and punching the air. There was a tiny glittering rock on her finger. To me! To me!
Stemme | Voices | Amazwi is supported by the National Arts Council.
Stemme | Voices | Amazwi is a New Writing project of LitNet and is supported by the LW Hiemstra Trust.
All the monologues are available here: