Eric monologue from The Inheritance

Eric’s monologue

Our culture is being co-opted. I mean, sure it’s great Sean Penn won an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk but American students are still taught nothing about queer history. It feels like we’re getting stripped for parts and the inside is hollowing out. It feels like the community that I came up in is slowly fading away. When was the last time any of us actually hung out at a gay bar? (Pause) My point exactly! Gay bars used to be safe spaces for people like us to be ourselves and to find others like us. Now everyone just goes on to Grindr. But what about thr twenty-year-old kid who’s not looking for sex, but rather for community, for a connection with something that helps him understand himself? Or the sixty-year-old man who’s looking for the same? What happens to that shared culture? If being gay only describes who we love and who we fuck but not also how we encounter the world, then gay culture and gay community would start to disappear. And we still need that community. Because this country is still filled with people who hate us with vengeful, murderous fanaticism.

Excerpt for study and audition practice. Read the full play for context.