Dystopian Radio Play Opening

WOMAN 1:

I have become used to the constant cameras and the flashing of bulbs in my face. Everyone has. My life is a constant red carpet event.

MAN 1:

There’s a photo of me on the front page of the local paper with some girl I had never met before I got drunk. My wife will kill me.

WOMAN 2:

Tabloids know my name and how cancer killed my father.

MAN 2:

Everyone knows everything about everyone around them.

WOMAN 1:

It doesn’t ever stop. The bright lights and the sound of cameras clicking in my ears has become a forgettable noise. I focus on the bird song if I can hear it above the noise. I think it comes with the job. I am an actress.

MAN 1:

I am a banker.

WOMAN 2:

I work in the florist, delivering flowers for all occasions.

MAN 2:

Nobody knows who I am, and nobody knows where I came from. (PAUSE)

WOMAN 2:

He first came into the florist to buy ten baskets of flower petals. The order was so specific. I served him and that was the last time he spoke to anyone. That’s what they said on the news. I don’t feel blessed to have been that person. I feel worse. Like I could have prevented the ‘happy accident’ from taking place.

MAN 1:

The cashier approached me after the guy left. He had no records on the system, and he had no name but he let him walk out of the branch with his entire life’s savings.

MAN 1 SIGHS.

CASHIER:

Took everything, he did. But I found nothing about who he was. No story about him in the database. Everything seemed off but I let him do it. He seemed cool and calm. Not like he was trying to rob a bank.

MAN 1:

I picked up the phone at this point. The authorities had a right to know. It doesn’t make me a good Samaritan though.

WOMAN 1:

I met this person by their death touching my soul in a newspaper.

NATURAL MUSIC PLAYS. SOUND OF BIRD SONG FAINTLY IN THE BACKGROUND.

They lay flower petals at the scene of their death. A rope tied around their neck, tightly, a few times. There’s nothing we could do. The scene was almost romantic with the scenery and the sound of the running water but god, it was traumatic. A couple hiking found the guy hanging from his neck in the tree. It is all a bit of a cliché but I think that was the point.

WOMAN 2:

The only way we knew who this person was is through their death. The nobody became a somebody we still didn’t know anything about. If that makes any sense.