How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse by Ben Muir

This Play is the copyright of the Author and must NOT be Performed without the Author's PRIOR consent

Characters

Although the 4 characters from the original show have been portrayed as both male or female, you may present the seminar in any gender mix you wish

The Original Characters were ...

Dr Dale Seslick

The Seminar leader. Cool, Calm, Collected, Charismatic. Fluent in zombie survival lore, he is never stumped for an answer. He punctuates his training seminars with continual use of hand gestures and buzz words

Judy O’Dea

Dr Dale’s second in command. She is scientific to a fault. Smart and to the point. She is the one who attempts to control the other two members of the team, although often gets drawn into the insanity unwillingly, she continues to act and react as if everything was carrying on normally

Donald Straite

The aged survivalist who has followed every conspiracy theory in the book and has attempted and succeeded many difficult training exercises (he once lived for seven days up a flag pole with nothing to eat but a cheese sandwich) Very keen to be involved in all aspects of training but can get easily distracted if there is a pretty lady in the audience

Tristen Granger

Dr Dale’s nephew. He tries so, so hard but has absolutely no idea what is going on during the seminar. His stupidity is that of a childish wonderment - and he always tries to listen and understand what’s going on … until his mind drifts and he starts thinking about puppies and clouds

As the audience enter the auditorium, they are greeted by Donald, Judy and Tristen who supply each of them with sticky badges that they can write their names on

Inside, the stage is set with a lectern centre and four chairs - two either side and slightly back from the Lectern

Once the audience are in, the cast leave and the lights dim

The opening track begins and Judy, Donald and Tristen re-enter at the specific points in the music that reference their area of expertise

They sit on the chairs - Donald Far SR, Judy Near SR, Tristen far SL.

At the end of the music, Dr Dale enters and stands behind the lectern

DALE: Good evening and welcome to How To Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, I’m Dr Dale, author of Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary and founder of the School of Survival or as we like to call it S.O.S (hand gesture) and I’m here to teach you today - How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse

Now here at the School of Survival… or S.O.S. (hand gesture) we don’t believe in just standing there and talking at you (hand gesture), expecting you to soak it all up like a sponge. No. That’s not how we roll. (hand gesture)

No - we believe in Inclusion with a capital I. (hand gesture) Working together as a team. Inviting you to participate. invoking Team Work And Togetherness. (hand gesture). We expect you to get involved with us

Share your thoughts, theories and ideas. In fact, to start you off slowly, let’s just try a little bit of that inclusion now. Very simple question for you. I want to know, how many people here believe that as of this moment that they could survive a zombie apocalypse

Audience put hands up

Dr Dale reacts accordingly with surprise or disappointment

DALE: Okay, well let’s break it down shall we, let’s put this in levels. Let’s see what varying degrees of survival expertise we have here. Now put your hands up if you truly believe you could survive. Now when I say truly believe I mean you know where you’d go, you know what weapons you’d use, you know which family member you’d kill.

Audience put hands up. Dale reacts accordingly


DALE: Okay, now how thinks they are at an intermediate level. You’ve got a good chance of survival. You’ve seen some zombie films, played zombie games, read zombie books. You’ve got a basic idea about the zombie mythology.

Audience puts hands up and Dale reacts


DALE: Okay, now who here couldn’t care less about the zombie apocalypse and has been dragged along here by someone else against their will?

Audience puts hands up (usually it requires encouragement from Dale to keep their hands up)


DALE: Okay, that’s good, no, be honest, keep your hands up, we need to see what levels we’re dealing with here today, nobody’s going to make fun of you. (Points at one person) okay. Stand up! Now don’t be alarmed, we’re not here to embarrass you, everyone just turn and look at this person. Look at them closely. Stare at them. You see this person here shouldn’t be mocked for coming here with no natural awareness of the fact that they would die the moment the apocalypse began. Now, this person should be applauded. Applauded for not only their honesty, but realising that they had a problem and acting on it. Acting on the fact they know nothing and coming here to join us to learn and ultimately thrive and survive when the dead revive. So give them a round of applause.

As the applause begins Tristen stands up and starts singing


TRISTEN: You’re special! You’re special! You’re a very special girl! You’re e Special! You’re a very Special girl!

DALE: Tristen…. Tristen! What did we say about the special song? We said we wouldn’t sing it anymore didn’t we …. It can mean other things.

Tristen sits slightly confused but in agreement


DALE: Okay now we know a little bit about you. That we’ve got some experts and remedials I think maybe it’s time I introduced you to some special people who will be working closely with me to work closely with you. You see no man works alone on such a great endeavour as learning how to survive. No, I work alone as a team, and I’d like to introduce you to that team now. First off, our survival expert Mr Donald Straite.

Donald Stands and steps forward


DONALD: Hello, I’m Donald Straite, and I’m a survival expert. Do you know. I once survived for a week on just a cheese sandwich. A week. Yes.

DALE: Thank you, Donald.

Donald sits


DALE: Donald is our survival expert, an expert indeed, as you can see, so far he has survived a very, very long time. Next up is My Science expert, Judy O’Dea.

JUDY: Hello, I’m Judy O’Dea

Judy stands up and steps forward


JUDY: Hello, I’m Judy O’Dea and I do experiments and things.

Judy sits down


DALE: Okay, thank you Judy, and finally. Tristen.

Tristen stands up


TRISTEN: Hello! I’m Tristen. Judy does experiments on me.

Tristen sits

DALE: Now, of course, we don’t just experiment on Tristen at the School of Survival. Obviously, the very nature of learning how to survive a zombie apocalypse is that there hasn’t been one yet, so no actual zombies exist at the moment so we have to do a lot of theorising, experimentation and looking on Wikipedia. As there are no live (or dead) zombie specimens around we do do some experimentation on Tristen, but nothing to dangerous… we do those kinds of experiments on the homeless. No, it’s fine. Completely fine. Nobody notices when they go missing and they’ll do anything for a sandwich. Now - we’ve all met each other, we all know what we’re here for, I think that the first thing to do is discover all about what a zombie is.

WHAT IS A ZOMBIE


The team get into position

Dale remains at the lectern

Donald stands POSITION A far SR to Dale at the front of the stage (preferably near a female audience member of a legal age)

Judy stands POSITION B far SL at the front of the stage

And Tristen sits POSITION C in the front row of the audience directly in front of Dr Dale (or several rows back if there is a centre aisle)


DALE: You see, if you’ve done any research into zombies, you’ll know that there are several different forms a zombie could take. There’s parasitic, viral, genetic, supernatural, dead, undead …. But here at the School of Survival we deal with only one specific kind of zombie so we know where to focus our research and keep the variables at a minimum and that particular zombie has four rules attached to it that we’re going to go through now. If you’re planning to make notes then now might be a good time to start…. Okay! Rule Number One : A Zombie is -

Dale points to Donald


DONALD: Dead!

DALE: A zombie is …

Dale points to Donald

DONALD: Dead.

DALE: Thank you Donald. Yes a zombie is dead! In some forms of media such as 28 days later, 28 weeks later, Left 4 Dead Zombies are portrayed as live human beings that have been infected by some form of virus that makes them crave human flesh or a little bit angry. These are not zombies. A live human being who wants to eat another live human being is called a cannibal and this is not ‘How To Survive A Cannibal Apocalypse’ that’s next year. So! Rule number one. A zombie is…

Dale points at Donald


DONALD: Dead!

DALE: Excellent! Rule number two concerns how one becomes a zombie. Now in the cases of other zombies it could be because of a virus, it could be radioactive gas, it could be magic space dust or a parasite could attach itself to your head like a jaunty hat. But in the case of our zombie. The infection is passed on by…

Dale points at Judy


JUDY: Biting!

DALE: Which means if you are…

Dale points at Judy


JUDY: Bitten

DALE: by a zombie you will end up…

Dale points at Donald


DONALD: Dead.

DALE: Very good. So next up we’re going to learn how to kill a zombie. Well, we know that we can’t technically kill a zombie because it is already…

Dale points at Donald


DONALD: Dead.

[end of extract]

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