The Monday Girls: An Original Screenplay

Downtown Chicago, 1985: a young girl from a broken home loses her identity and falls in love with rock ‘n’ roll. This thesis uses the medium of scriptwriting to explore how coming-of-age stories grapple with identity, purpose and fear. In the places where our narratives, both written and unwritten, intertwine, we as humans must seek to comprehend, empathize, and understand. Anne Lamott, in her memoir Bird by Bird, says of writing, “…this business of becoming conscious…is ultimately about asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be?” Part music homage, part coming-of-age farewell, this thesis has evolved over multiple drafts into an exploration of how we honor the things we deeply love. As poet Tracy K. Smith says, in her poem “The Largeness We Can’t See, “All we live blind to grows into the ground. And all we live blind to leans its deathless heft to our ears and sings.” This intersection of the seen and the unseen form our roots, our backbone. The richest place, I believe, where stories grow.