The Revenge of the Howling Ring-Tailed Spider Monkeys

The Revenge of the Howling Ring – Tailed Spider Monkeys is a comedy about a distraught tour guide, Chris, who has been recently arrested for having a rather large meltdown. Chris tells the cop that she had taken a group of children to the zoo and explains how everything went horribly wrong. The girls got stuck together in a mass of cotton candy and the boys played in elephant poop and then had a peeing contest – well, can you blame her? This insane comedy for older teens and adults explains what happens when children start monkeying around!

Scot Walker is a retired middle school teacher of English who’s been writing stories, poetry and plays for over half a century. His passion is to involve students with fine scripts and he longs for your questions and input about his plays.

Excerpt from the play:

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CHRIS: Male, Female or Transgendered, schizophrenic tour guide
COP: an older teen or an actor holding a puppet vaguely looking like a cop (it could be a sock puppet or anything that tickles your fancy; if you use a puppet the puppet will say the lines.)

SETTING
A bench center stage

AT RISE: CHRIS, totally disheveled, enters, screaming at COP (either as an actor or as an actor holding a puppet)

CHRIS
Leave me alone!

(COP pulls away, then gets in CHRIS’s face)

COP
Calm down, clown, or I’ll cuff you!

CHRIS
I didn’t do anything!

COP
You left a group of children unattended!

CHRIS
That’s no big thing—

COP
And broke a bus window.

CHRIS
Oh, that?

COP
And barricaded the Tri-Borough Bridge!

CHRIS
Oh that? That’s nothing!

COP
And you beat the holy crap out of a bus driver!

CHRIS
I can explain that.

COP
This had better be good.

CHRIS
You’d have done the same if you’d been in my shoes.

COP
Just tell me why you did it. The other clown hasn’t pressed charges . . . yet.

CHRIS
I’m a tour guide. I was leading a—

COP
I thought tour guides were calm.

CHRIS
(screaming) I am calm!

COP
You just beat up a bus driver . . . an innocent, sweet, young bus driver!

CHRIS
That man? Sweet? That sweet young man pushed me too far! Too doggone far! Look, I’ve been up since two-thirty this morning packing peanut butter sandwiches, filling thermoses, baking homemade lemon cookies . . . . for the thirty-seven young urchins I was scheduled to ferry to the Bronx Zoo. Ferry, I say, like I was that ancient god who stuck the dead souls in his boat and ferried then to Hades!

COP
The hell you say! . . . Hades?

CHRIS
Is there an echo here? (CHRIS speaks slowly, over-pronouncing each word) I was leading a group of children!

COP
Isn’t that what tour guides do? Take people places? Slow them things? That’s not difficult!

CHRIS
I’m sure people say that about your job, but they haven’t walked in your socks, (If a puppet is used, he looks down to see if he has socks) have they? They haven’t had to deal with . . . people! (Beat) Listen, I’ve had one of those days . . . . one of those Chucky Cheese Days! Those kids drove me bananas!

COP
Kids are kids.

CHRIS
Kids are brats! For three hours, the girls carried on about taking a trip to Montana. Hannah Montana, wherever that is, while the boys sang all ninety-nine verses of “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”

COP
That could be a little nerve wracking.

CHRIS
Then as soon as we reached the zoo, the kids spewed out like a troop of Howling Ring-tailed Spider Monkeys, slithering and scurrying everywhere.

COP
I see.

CHRIS
No, you don’t see. Leroy Wallace and Marvin Brooks spent the entire day jumping into piles of elephant poop! Can you picture what they looked like . . . what they smelled like?

COP
(COP snorts)Well, boys will be boys.