Character
Anna (can be Alex, gender-neutral) — mid-30s, restless, carrying the exhaustion of someone who has made a decision but not yet lived with it.
Setting
A small flat, late at night.
A single chair, with a half-open suitcase on it. A few clothes scattered around. A lamp glows dimly.
(Lights up. ANNA kneels over the suitcase, struggling with a zip that won’t close. She tugs, swears under breath. Finally gives up, flings it open again. Looks at the audience.)
Anna:
Don’t look at me like that. I said I’d go, and I’m going. That was the deal. You slam the door, I pack the bag. Simple.
(She yanks a shirt from the back of a chair, folds it badly, stuffs it in.)
This one? You bought it for me. The wedding where everyone got drunk before the speeches. Remember? I spent the whole evening telling strangers what I did for a living while you danced like a legend. I hated the shirt then. Too stiff. It’s still stiff. But if I leave it, you’ll think I’m leaving you too neatly.
(Shoves it in. Finds a paperback book on the table. Holds it up.)
This—God. I never finished it. Too many words, not enough time. Every time I tried to read, you started talking. About bills, about plans, about how we were going to knock down that wall and make the kitchen bigger. Always more noise. You hated silence. I loved it. There’s no space left for silence here.
(Drops the book in. Rifles through drawers, pulls out a cheap plastic snow globe.)
And here’s the romantic gesture. Blackpool, three quid from a stall, half the glitter gone. You said we’d laugh about it when we were old. Maybe we would have. Maybe we’d sit in our big kitchen and shake it and laugh like idiots. But we’re not old yet. And the snow’s stuck. See? Even the fantasy jammed up.
(She shakes it; the glitter dribbles slowly down. She shoves it in the suitcase, a little too roughly.)
You’ll say I’m dramatic. I’m not. I’m practical. Flights leave at stupid hours, suitcases have weight limits, and my life is measured in what I can carry through security. That’s not drama. That’s logistics.
(She grabs a handful of socks, shoves them in. Then finds something small: a photo frame, a toy, or a folded letter. Stops. Holds it carefully. Her voice softens.)
This shouldn’t even be here. I swore I’d thrown it out. (beat) Look at us. God, we look… happy. Not fake-happy. Actually happy. The kind of happy you only notice when it’s already gone.
(She sits with it on her lap. Silence. Then, quietly.)
I still love you, you know. That’s the part you won’t believe, but it’s true. If love was enough, I’d stay. But if I stay, I disappear. Piece by piece. A sock here, a laugh there, until one day there’s nothing left of me but a polite smile across a bigger kitchen.
(She folds the photo or letter, places it in the suitcase with care. Stands. Breathes. Zips the case slowly, the sound sharp in the silence. She lifts it, heavy, holds it by her side. Pauses at the door. Looks back once, directly at the audience.)
Don’t wait up.
(She exits. Blackout.)
Author’s Note
The Suitcase is a one-person, ten-minute play built around two simple elements: a monologue and a task. The monologue gives the actor emotional depth to explore, while the task — packing a suitcase — grounds the piece in physical action and prevents it from becoming a static speech. The combination of words and action is what keeps an audience engaged for the full ten minutes.
The premise is deliberately ordinary: someone is leaving someone else. What gives it theatricality is the specificity of the objects. Each item Anna (or Alex) packs carries a story. A shirt recalls a wedding, a book recalls silences never allowed, a cheap souvenir recalls promises of a shared future. By attaching memories to tangible things, the play shows how love and disappointment live inside the most mundane possessions. Props are not decoration here — they are triggers for revelation.
The form of the play mirrors the process of leaving. At the beginning, the speech is brisk, almost flippant. By the middle, the objects slow the character down; memory interrupts, cracks appear. At the climax, the character finds the one item they didn’t mean to see again — a photograph, a letter, something small but devastating. The anger falters, and love is admitted even as departure becomes certain. The suitcase is zipped, the decision finalised. Structurally, it’s a compressed arc of denial, confrontation, and acceptance.
For performance, the tone should avoid melodrama. The actor doesn’t need to “act sadness” — the task will do a lot of that work. If the folding, stuffing, and tugging feel real, the emotions will surface naturally.
The play works best when it balances humour and ache: there are jokes about stiff shirts and broken snow globes alongside the quiet devastation of lost intimacy. Audiences recognise that mixture because it feels like real life.
The final line — “Don’t wait up” — is chosen for its ordinariness. It’s the kind of phrase you’d toss off casually to a partner. But in this context it becomes a farewell, a closing of the door on a whole chapter of life. That is the power of the short form: ordinary words, in the right place, can land with extraordinary weight.
In ten minutes, The Suitcase doesn’t tell us everything about this relationship. We don’t know the partner’s name, or the exact reasons for the split. We don’t need to. What we see is the moment of departure itself: messy, funny, painful, and utterly human.