Scott MacLeod
    Theater & Performance Texts

Written in 2006, as yet unproduced.

STANLEY'S GREAT JOURNEY FROM SEA TO SEA

“While on this disastrous march he lost five of his people, who wandered on helplessly, fell down, and died.”

In a long Nuutaq sled near the Fissures of Trotsky, off the harsh coast of Nova Zemlaya. Leader of the expedition, Colonel Baby Baby Baby, surveys the wreckage.

Baby Baby Baby:
Stave noncontributing cockiness dragger. Bent harbor lack. Monocot gallon venture. Bugger.

Tom:
Dictum perlocution interpolator.

John M:
Deaconship.

Sheila:
Lightheartedness.

None truly sense the impending. Their carrack slides inexorably across the Adenauer Plateau. The Aachen Narrows lay between them and their goal: the Chimborazo Fist.

Paul:
Onvoid, Cretin sutures.

Scott:
Poleward magnetically. Radiopathetique compulsiveness.

Baby Baby Baby:
Adrenaline’s adrift. Anglicized Argonauts’ abject attempt.

Scott:
Smothered cuss.

Paul:
Adana pledge nightlife. Cylon cyclotron neon café promendade. Liquor in Ice. Land.

Baby Baby Baby:
Accountability’s accosted, accursed.

Sheila:
Apt Accusations.

Tom:
Abdul against Abelard.

Scott:
Abraham’s apeish abrujo. All arrogance abrogated again.

Tom:
Aeneas and Aeolus anticipate Aeschylus, apparently.

Scott:
Alternatively, Aesop, arguably.

Paul:
Aargh.

Baby Baby Baby:
Aaaaaaaaarrr!

Paul:
Matey!

Tom:
Blimey!

JohnM:
(from the crowsnest): Acadia!

Sheila:
Agriculture. Animals. Aperitifs. Anouk Aimee.

JohnM:
Ahab’s abattoir. Achilles’ acropolis. Agamemnon’s Alamo. Aladdin’s alabaster airport.

Sheila:
Misty equestrian illusion. Indianan foal ogler. Adipose toughly towards indorsed geranium mutableness.

Scott:
Radiotelography truce.

Tom:
Unarguable phaeton production centralizer inflictor.

JohnM:
Rescind starry eroticism tartly.

Paul:
Eldest bawdy grease diver tubing obscenely.

Baby Baby Baby:
Avicenna tessellated seventieth peruse medicinal Dore emoter activation atomizer horsetail ingeniously mappable binational Wren melodramatics reportage Pilate anneal sulfa jitteriness gerontology metabolize refurbish waggery Baden manageably minuscule bluets tipi instantly fusible actinic Methodistic layperson unsupportable nibble predisposed sooth gawk shortie cheaply Darryl pellagra preemie torsion inherent undeterred kabob nonagenarian disturb frisker adopt estivate nobly Latino marauder nontarnishable dungarees tendon radicalism diplomatic Durban sweatpants cassock Writings overexertion donkey Beduin herpetological hotbed angelic denunciative flouncy ouguiya Saipan shillalah

JohnM:
Stereotypical protofascist tremulously speaks.

Tom:
Agreed: another of Appalachia’s abstruse academics.

All:
Alleluiea!

They wander off helplessly, fall down, and die.

Written 1996, as yet unproduced. Photo is from my performance "Open World" in Beograd, Yugoslavia on July 21st, 1990.

A COFFEE-HOUSE

Lights up on three characters seated at a small table.

Strabismus the Archigion (waving his left hand near his left ear, as if shooing a mosquito):
Tentantun.

Polcross the Phlogician (taking a quick sip from a glass of golden liquid just before he speaks):
Excabremus.

Giolconda the Escricci:
I can see Kirk, and Yoeman Rand, dressed in pastel abstract Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts, carrying round trays loaded with margaritas and crab dib, but I’m not really in the same room with them.

(Giolconda the Escricci flings himself backwards out of his chair onto the floor, where he lies motionless.)

After a long “significant” pause:

Strabismus the Archigion (waving his left hand near his left ear, as if shooing a mosquito):
Excabremus.

Polcross the Phlogician (taking a quick sip from a glass of golden liquid just before he speaks):
Tentantun.

Lights out.

Lights back up very soon after.

A man in a suit stands facing the audience, holding a microphone, as if reporting live from the scene.

Bechtidus the Straumpdort:
A detailed analyses of these dramatized events reveals-

A man in the audience snorts loudly and derisively, jumps up as if exasperated, and stomps out of the theater. Bechtidus stares sorrowfully after this man even after he’s left the theater. About fifteen seconds after the man has left, the lights go out for good.

Written 2006, as yet unproduced.

C’EST UN AMI

"We're going to spend all summer looking at this thing. On one piece of paper or one canvas and we're going to look at it until we get it exactly the way it is. Then we're going to keep working on it until we kill it. And then we're going to keep working on it until it comes back on its own."
-de Kooning

“We're summers already going past what examines this thing. We're this part of the document or a canvas, and will examine précisement the manner jusqu'nous with death. Then we're this jusqu'à us is be to with and will hold active when we're this, will hold with activates on its cost.”
-MacLeod

(A few stragglers occupy Outcrop Zero, a military base/refugee camp on a windy, rocky promontory overlooking an ocean.)

Major Brass:
Tough tactics. I long for a piece of self-absorbing ass.

Cemetery Stoner:
As soon as whales’ ghost gives up Daisey’s tush & booboos.

(Clock ticks)

Major Brass:
Pull chains, fold in mechanism’s sprung lungs, broken links, calling foul.

Global Villager (reading lips):
According to my expectations, the Sea intends big waves to flavor the partyline, bloom like Big News on the day’s recitals. Papyri bob like apples.

Bubbles:
Inside, outside or upside down, it’s all just rectal brunt to my stone-ground nose.

Major Brass:
Drops design the ocean, drunks design the road. Drivers’ edges earn crap beach space, say “cheese” and bite deep into chino pasture.

Bubbles:
Koran harlots may guzzle copula prism like puffing hot bobble heads, but mature sprites, we ark the lactase cellophane knife, help Kobe flap labs, juggle erotic euclidean tasks.

Major Brass:
Taste embosses the center’s deceit-wide myth while stinking thief Uncle Dotcom rifles baggy-waist jeans in pantheistic mid-life transition. Months haggle, time runs outs, Nature runs all hacks to ground.

Cemetery Stoner:
Man, the cuts tic d'erts botched! Donut we lung for soma ocher pierce?

Global Villager:
Poor us! Right when the toe of the dish soap suits the portions, right when we finally obtain the rights of the radon ring, the edge of wild disco wind sweeps habit out the edge of our backyard ermitaño, falsifies the dirt-yellow periscope, hasjiejs the matinee out the edge of the next street! Slumber falls! And where the spur of the wolf frows, the edge meows by maymythe, for which they Tarn!

Bubbles:
The transfer of khaki hydra starts off the prolix texts of wily young snoot kin: street octopi filling parking lots to the brink.

Major Brass:
Piqued parking glut.

Bubbles:
Code lurks in ratio to patio.

Global Villager:
Read burnt rugged byline, mope.

Major Brass:
Glossary = All Knowing = Thumbtacks

Cemetery Stoner:
We axe the lasts cipher bagel. Woeful impetus.

Global Villager:
Cuprous digression candidate!

Cemetery Stoner:
Hey, young person-nap of CHÈVRE, go pneumatic tumble hasjiesjmatinee edge zalige! By the may my my, why the muskus of the hiring store? The typestyle afflicting with oodjeimpuls? Pemmican without leaven to penetrate the coa? Curb your few blurts while slates tern in wind-bootlegging shambles. Whittle mantic ore botch, browse cain phase secretive roisters, spell drinks for effect. Climb down off your fief hoarse and let shops hire chord musk tarns, tumble graft wherever cotton hashish matinee!

Global Villager:
The lung works at the edge of hocks up, at the edge of the meat gepooide. The disco edge of the crap hound pings the infinite diplomacy. (sighs)

(Zeefje, snapping snaar muskus, uses the store)

Bubbles:
Myth of the slipped-on sausage portions of the soap dish on the ice cream sidewalks of Musewelhaak.

Major Brass:
Global edge-cap dyed diameter of the impact at Outcrop Zero.

Zeefje:
Minutely-felt dirge of the wild emptiness of the blue cotton sky.

Written early 2006. As yet unproduced. Photo is from my performance "Action Is Ineffable" at The Lab on October 5, 2001.

ENORMOUS

I freely broke wind in the dairy. Another summer day crowbarred its way in through the rotting rafters of the barn. The broken sunlight blew my mind. DMT is nothing like BGH. I was bored and there was no closure.
- Gerry O'Nanymous

Some number of characters on or off stage. Lights on or off. Stage bare or not.

Some armed invasion. These pierced spells. Blood sinking in my breath. Drowning 1942.

The canoe filthy never stopped. Consumer weakness body. Abundant free freeway.

A liquid meditation. From economic bones and hail mary blood. Filthy pee free.

Death a spell. Hints flung by collapse dummy. Get the job off the freeway.

I’m here devoid. Empty comes under the bunkhouse. Pity raccoons.

Rain it’s Mary the Red Army. Our holes our Mary. Weakness of ripe blinks.

Drugged duty at bunkers. I remember the form. After lunch oops.

And blinks drop me. Stain shrunken dead didn’t. A thing with that.

Geronimo poured forth until there was not a single drop of peaceful goddamn.

Get out your hidden old USA. Let the army love facts. Nobody there.

Come on grandma. Finally in broad daylight nazi Germany.

Come to death again fluttering all aflutter.

That’s great gerandma but sex that big shouldn’t stop.

Face it. Hard weak gangbusters sex had you looking pretty dim.

American flowering unfortunately.

Hugs and kisses to all except Sacagawea.

I think I wrote this late 2005 or early 2006. As yet unproduced.

HOOLIGAN’S ISLAND

Lights up suddenly & very bright, to reveal Napoleon standing downstage center in strong frontal spotlight. Whole stage is fully lit also. Napoleon is wearing a fully-buttoned greatcoat and his trademark hat. Left hand is inserted fully into coat, right hand is wrapped with a blood y bandage. He is facing the audience but looking out over it rather than directly at it.

NAPOLEON:

Beached here. Sans ocean. Sucking moisture from sand, in lieu of water.

I will not weary the reader with a description of measured, floating, unconcerned intervals, taken for targets, into which the storm has fallen, destroying the object before it.

Pretend instead we are secure again in the presence of the military, in the dark tides of safety, watching church towers slide down into ruin, carring away both rudder and anchor, night and the dawn rising up like flotsam, and an almost continuous streamer of loneliness in human skins.

Apparently we are getting ready for a struggle. Schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism amid the failing hands we throw to mark our place. And in the sky the sight of all this armament, imagination mysterious as well as busy, and morning contains only a vague, sketchy description of the killing of an inch of ourselves, every jolt, the blood busy in our pit with a hollow sound of hammering as the dead on the outskirts lock up, lights out, and leave.

The man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole, become belligerent for some desperate glory without success.

We are helpless in that pit of ours, swollen full of flags and pennants and sadness come clattering down like hussars burst into smoky red flame under the railway bridge where men fall into heard music and the colours of earth. The horrible eyes all vaguely flickering with the inevitable suggestion of dense black shadows and the night swallowed up with wind, and every morning bitter.

Our heritage, that colossal mechanism so lonely laid away. The night skies coil into burning funnels of broken red fragments upon the flower of dawn.

A wounded soldier runs in from stage left, in a tattered uniform, head bare except for a bloody bandage wrapped horizontally around his forehead. He is reaching towards Napoleon but collapses face down at Napoleon’s feet. Pause a few beats. Soldier raises his head to speak.

HEAD WOUND SOLDIER:

Music means more words. Then the widows start to cry. I don’t know how Márechal Rumsford manages it. Pause. They say he is a pretty remarkable man: the bread of life that motivated and sustains these wars. The manna of the hour. His legacy is, perhaps, the saddest song ever written.

Head Wound Soldier dies.

NAPOLEON:

Some funerals, okay. Rise, arise, rise again other nations from the tomb.

Everyone is OK with captured plunder and lands to count. From the tomb to the sacrament we rise.

So many of the dead are women and children and a justification for nothing in particular. Exult, rejoice, not having a chance to warm up.

And there's dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight from death to triumph.

Empire into funeral. I left friends like that. In chaos and unable. It's always the young that lose their lives.

From death to triumph you arise, you rise again, sweet terribleness of war. Behold, what thou hast already desperately needed, flown dark and troubled to an oily sea.

A wounded soldier stumbles in from stage right, in a tattered uniform, one of his arms in a bloody sling. He slumps to his knees at Napoleon’s side. Pause a few beats. Soldier, remaining on his knees, straightens his spine and raises his head to speak.

BLOODY SLING SOLDIER:

Grave report from the lands around. Taps on a boombox, lowered into the grave. Brave, likable soul mourned for just a few seconds. The nation's way of saying thank-you, and goodbye. Pause. For his army remembers him as a heavy burden, a grim intimation of what is to be.

Bloody Sling Soldier dies.

NAPOLEON:

Both mine eyes run down with water. There's sadness, of course, at a funeral for old laws.

Nowadays, Paradise lies out of reach for us. The rapid spread of war makes foes of us all for evermore.

One of the advantages of being a member of the conquered nations is that all that is on earth will mourn you. How you are crushed. They mourn in groups, wearing the river of lost love and dedication. Sad songs from sweet mouths acting out the day's grief.

Or, here's another view: 'How can I compensate you?' As you were destroyed through betrayal.

By then, the rapid white golf pants and navy blue blazers are again attracted with anxiety to their fount of faith: conquest. Fresh blood without remorse.

And bear this paranoia upon mine heart for ever.

A wounded female soldier stumbles in from stage left, in a tattered uniform, one of her legs in a bloody splint. She stumbles across the stage and comes to a stop just behind and next to Napoleon. She is bent over slightly because of the pain. Pause a few beats.

BLOODY SPLINT SOLDIER:

Another catalyst emerges from the battlefields, restricted by taxes and weakened like locusts at the moment of truth. Your bridegroom is absorbing the burgeoning success of conquering countries with ease.

O sorrow! O woe! An honor guard lies over the land. One world, one soul enslaved, denounced and departed.

Times pass, the rivers roll. The bugler finally cracks the sixth note.

How can we not bemoan the death of a trumpet player?

Bloody Splint Soldier does not die but sinks slowly to her knees, clutching her stomach.

NAPOLEON:

All those faint, lurid reports.

The Nile, the Euphrates, the Thames. It's hard to get a bugler to all of them.

Now the people find themselves crucified and the bugle spread to the unused land. It was the eve of unclear lights. Sword, rapine, and flame where there had been a garden. Subjects belonging to the place which was as yet unused.

The melody, unadorned and understated, wiping out riches, terrorizing people with the defense of itself. Paired with aggressive expansion, it seems a fitting tribute to the spirit of pitiable murder.

Everyone attacked but in awe, a delusive transition between the last note of each phrase, which had been taken down, and silence. Sounds like music coming from nowhere.

From a purely technical standpoint, it isn't a difficult song to play.

The people were the property to be defended, a scene that he mourns for. I let my emotions get to me.

Burial customs connect all the broken functions. Numerous and ardent.

Life, it’s obvious: inches beyond the possible.

Also that you be made to remember.

BLOODY SPLINT SOLDIER:

Had Mr. Rumsfeld willed, he could have explained the prodigious amount of mourning. Writing melancholy verses with a sorrowful hand, himself. A cascade adjacent to prophecy. One listener said it sounded like a swiftly stifled sob.

You may strike the necks of those who disbelieve in verse in wartime.

NAPOLEON:

I have several explanations for this situation, a war situation, a situation that lasts until the war ends.

I stand where the trumpet set them free.

MyChristianEurope.org

BLOODY SPLINT SOLDIER:

His knees encircled with blood seas. Some days, he says, are troubled, counter to, rather than survival and the continuation. Fighting to keep his lips from quivering.

A gunshot rings out and Bloody Splint Soldier falls forward, dead.

Center spotlight on Napoleon begins to slowly dim throughout his following speech, so that by the end of his speech he is in darkness. The rest of the lighting remains the same, so Napoleon is dark and the rest of the stage is brightly lit. At least I mean that this is the sense of things and should be approximated as much as possible without overdue fuss.

NAPOLEON:

Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld.

Your insurgencies hang heavily down upon the desert. All the people have now acknowledged: it's not enough, it's not enough.

Believers are once again trying to use the horrific tales of the continuing past as a staging post to the future. So here they come to destroy the will of the law. The law is no more, and the lack of alliance annihilates what is left of the people.

The best proof of this occupation is the tombstones stretched out in perfect formation under the bright and cloudless space of a thousand years.

In this super-flat space there shall be no more need of plots, nor contrivances, nor designs to creep into our skirts, burrow in our walls. The enemy does not need captains, engines, soldiers, or men of war, or the noise of the drum.

Behind them, this unfortunate boy was blinded. He's the best proof of their eagerness to destroy and murder. He’s standing still and straight at the graves of veterans, waiting to hear seven bugle blasts, his cue to raise his rifle to his lips.

He is in his youth or in a dream, he can't be precise. The tone wavers. So many enemies made for silence.

He awakes to a morning with no reason for waking.

But it is a duty as agreed. Nothing is more sacred in the days of apostasy.

Somberly: Allaheluia.*

ALL DEAD SOLDIERS

Fairly loud but without raising their heads.

Allaheluia!*

A military drummer wearing some sort of helmet on his or her head marches slowly in from stage left, carrying snare drum horizontally at belt-buckle-height, playing it with drumsticks. The drummer’s tune is the theme song from “Gilligan’s Island,” arranged as a military march. The drummer should play a couple bars, so that the audience has a good chance of dissecting the arrangement, realizing what the song is originally from, and, hopefully, laughing. After a couple bars or after a good gust of audience laughter, a gunshot rings out and the drummer falls dead.

All lights out.


* Note that this is not the standard “Alleluia” but a pun, & should be pronounced “Allah-heluia.”

Well this is really more of a thought exercise than anything else. I'd like someone (not me) to stage it someday though. Silly to have a photo for this, but I like providing markers for you when you're scrolling, so here is a still from a video (shot by Margaret Tedesco I think) of my "Shallow Grave" performance at The Lab on September 20th, 2000.

DIRECTIONS 1

Lights up
Full on the face
Sitting
Staring
Thinking naked
Thinking naked, acting naked, wishing naked
Wishing naked
Sitting not naked
Wishing naked
An action of the hand
Full on the face
Acting not naked
Staring
The face
Thinking naked
Action of the hand
Repeat as necessary
Until sitting
Not naked
Acting as wishing
Thinking not necessary
Full on the face
Lights out

This is a retrospective script/report for a 15-hour performance I did at the San Francisco Art Institute on February 26, 1998. I'm told that a couple art students took photos of me that day, but no one's ever offered me any, so the photo I'm using above is of my "Gypsy Trial" performance at the Perfomedia Festival in Ponte Nossa, Italy on August 29th, 1990. In the lower right-hand corner you can see Gianni Bedolo & Giorgio Bulzi, who are "helping" me.

A VIOLIN IN THIS DARK SHED

7-8 am: A figure lies on a well-worn steamer trunk just inside the main entrance of the San Francisco Art Institute. He is wearing a white shirt, black suit, black tie, black shoes and a featureless black spandex hood. He lies without moving.

8-9 am: He arises and begins walking slowly (as he is blinded by the hood) through the hallways and stairways of the Art Institute buildings. He drags the steamer trunk by a heavy rope which is attached to its leather handle. As he circulates, he deposits small tent-like cards which advertise his action as performance.

9-10 am: He stands stiffly at a highly-trafficked corner, just outside the main administration offices, holding out his right hand. Some people shake the hand, say good morning, some do not.

10-11 am: He travels slowly to the wood-working area, where he sits in Pamela Blottner’s class and builds a wooden construction.

11-12 am: He purchases breakfast in the Cafe and attempts to drink coffee through his hood.

12-1 pm: He tap-dances on top of the steamer trunk at the top of a stairway inside the Diego Rivera gallery.

1-3 pm: He purchases tempera, ink and canvas from the supply store, collects newspapers from the racks in the cafe, and sits outside plaza making collage paintings.

3-4 pm: Purchases his lunch at the cafe. Unable to ingest the sandwich through the spandex hood, he sits at a table and stares at the sandwich.

4-5 pm: Makes charcoal sketches on paper at a desk in a quiet basement hallway.

5-6 pm: Makes another tour of the entire building complex, dragging his trunk.

6-7 pm: Pretends to read a book, in German, on a chair near the entrance to the library.

7-9 pm: Enters Anne Chamberlain’s installation class, participates as much as possible in students’ site-exploration exercises. During a subsequent class discussion it is revealed that some students have been very frightened by his appearance. He unmasks himself in order to enter into discussion concerning relevant issues.

9-10 pm: Remasks himself, goes to fountain in the central courtyard. Plays the violin while thinking of his dying grandmother. Ends performance at 10 pm and leaves the Art Institute grounds.

This play was developed as part of Margaret's & my contribution to Southern Exposure's "Urban Renewal Laboratory" project in 1998. I don't think it's ever been produced. This was one of four plays in an online chapbook "Twentieth-Century Plays" published as "108:94" in 3rdness Press' series. They're out of Hermance GA.

THE INSOMNIACS
by Margaret Crane and Scott MacLeod

Dramatis Personae:
Robert Benchley as Daniel Burnham - Creator of the San Francisco City Plan of 1901
Gary Cooper as Robert Moses - Creator of the New York City Freeway and Park System
Drew Barrymore as Myrna Loy - screen legend and straight-talking gal
James Mason as Gore Vidal- writer and suave man-about-town
Johnny Depp as the Zodiac Killer - part-time sociopath, full-time heart-throb
and featuring Dusty Springfield as herself - an emotionally-fragile pop icon

A small group of very relaxed, very important people are drinking cocktails in Daniel Burnham's very modern, very spacious and very sophisticated penthouse atop Twin Peaks on a mild April evening. To the east, a rose-hued neo-classical sunset blooms over the city. The mellow sounds of the Dave Brubeck Quintet playing “Take Five” waft through the open sliding-glass doors from the living room. The time is the near future.

Daniel Burnham, Robert Moses and Myrna Loy lounge against the onyx balustrade of the penthouse’s very large balcony. They look out over the massive marble stairway that curves down Twin Peaks toward Market Street. The Great City which Burnham has built unfolds its broad avenues like gilded fleurs-de-lys below him, but Burnham is in a troubled and pensive mood.

Daniel Burnham: I'm feeling a bit out of order, all shards and powder.

Robert Moses: (gesturing expansively over the skyline) Life is so much grander now that we've made the sun set in the east.

Daniel Burnham: I'm puttering among the giftware, confused and hesitant. The avalanche of marvelous new stuff that suddenly begins pouring over the transom into a previously parochial, hidebound, closed-in American subcontinent. The flaws of the past translated into the present.

Myrna Loy: (flicking a cigarette butt over the edge of the railing) A marked increase in Western penetration?

Robert Moses: (pointedly ignoring Myrna's wisecrack) This colossal centralization, this heaping together of 50 million bodies, has raised San Francisco to the summit of the commercial world.

Myrna Loy: (indignantly) There is no getting used to pain and suffering. You only become hard-boiled. You lose any capacity to be impressed by feelings.

Robert Moses: I am simply drawing the map of a city great and large enough to give some space to an extra 50 million human beings eager to work and to find happiness on earth.

Myrna Loy: I spit into your face. I spit at you and your whole damned breed. Swallow that! You won't hear me whine again. I am ready now for battle.

She turns and stalks back inside the penthouse, nearly bumping into Dusty Springfield and Gore Vidal as they stroll arm in arm onto the balcony. We suddenly notice a handsome young man crouching on the balustrade. Neither we nor the players are sure how longs he's been there. For centuries, perhaps. The young man looks mournfully across the city. A single tear runs down his cheek. His long slender shadow undulates across the floor like Nijinsky's silhouette. Moving independently of the young man’s body, the shadow lewdly swivels its hips at Robert Moses.

Robert Moses: (loudly to Myrna as she disappears into the shadows of the penthouse) What a pity that the times of piracy are all over and gone forever....

Daniel Burnham: I am conscious of distorting probability, yet am goaded by an overwhelming desire to make something definite out of what is now equivocal.

Dusty Springfield: (walking up to Burnham and laying a gentle finger on his lips) Darling - please. (She struggles mildly to free herself from the evening air, which now seems bitterly cold.) Soon it will be raining too hard to leave the windows open.

(The young man’s shadow rubs up against Dusty's feet like a cat who needs to get scratched. Some fluffy pink clouds break off from the sunset and bounce onto the balcony. Gore Vidal pats one into the shape of a chaise lounge, sits in it)

Robert Moses: (grandly to Daniel Burnham) I am merely suggesting that the structures of modern convergences -those fixed chains of command and rational rules and regulations - may themselves contribute to produce a sado-masochistic orientation.

Gore Vidal: (gesturing with his cocktail as he reclines on his cloud four feet above the balcony) The sadist may, however, grow more and more incensed at the inability to sustain pleasure indefinitely. N’est ce pas, Robert?

(The young man, whom we now understand to be the Zodiac Killer, nods in agreement from his perch on the balustrade. The sound track kicks into a throbbing tropical beat - all percussion, bird calls and forbidden love-chants. A second tear streaks down Zodiac’s perfect cheek.)

Zodiac: (trying to get Dusty’s attention) Man, I hate the media - they’re so fucked up. They distort the slow accumulation of Ground Zero - which must always remain an imaginary terrain.

Dusty Springfield: (happy to be noticed by anyone) I myself spend most of my time lying in my wide bed, in my spacious room. From my fortress of pillows I can watch all the activities of the non-possessing class, their small figures moving about the broad avenue. Reducing the figures’ size increases their overall clarity, brings them into focus. (She leans closer to Zodiac Killer, whispering conspiratorially) The energy needed to oppose an assault like this is phenomenal... I'm anorexic...I'm doing drugs.

Zodiac: (pointing a finger at Robert Moses) The landlord's son has taken revenge on them all!

Robert Moses: (defensively) For the first time, citizens are willing to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature in order to achieve all the marvels of civilization which crowd their city! You could throw open the door and be at the beach! Or the Jacuzzi! Or the pool!

Zodiac: Tokyo must be destroyed!

Dusty Springfield: (trying to be helpful) I have three cars.

Daniel Burnham: (slugging back his martini) I’ve begun to wonder where the trains are arriving from, and where they are really going. You know, I remember when Cary Grant used to walk down Mason Street - the city was on fire with excitement. Nowadays it wouldn't mean a thing.

In a corner of the balcony, Zodiac Killer's shadow savages Myrna's pet terrier. On the balustrade, Zodiac broods. Far below, the sparkling avenues of Burnham’s city fan out out behind his perfect profile. Tiny people with jobs are going home. As the evening fades, lights in the office towers snap on. Their reflections gleam in Zodiac’s eyes.

Zodiac: (voice full of wonder) It all looks so clean from up here.

Daniel Burnham: It wasn’t the airplanes, it was Beauty left it in ruins.

Robert Moses: Beauty can be an effective social control device. Emotions once channelled towards the supernatural can be redirected towards the civic ideal. This is the idea within which I make myself real. This is the cultivated indifference which defends me against all the significance of this city and its inhabitants.

Gore Vidal: Oh, Robert, Robert, I've been brought down to your level. The Twentieth Century lasted much too long, like a film suddenly beginning to play backwards, and there is no defence against your free market of ideas. (Exploratory wisps of smoke from his slim black cigarillo swirl around Zodiac’s hips) Looking for a taste of glamour and fun in a city where both are in short supply, I mingle with the groundlings in the station's waiting room, between the Space Invaders game and the cafeteria. Night’s children are not mere abstractions. This is about as close to Heidegger as we’re going to be able to get.

Robert Moses: The struggle for urbanity is necessary for the attainment of a balanced, developed, and articulated rationality - in which the technical, moral and expressive elements will be co-ordinated yet remain autonomous. Senseless anguish and vulgar pastimes are comfortable safety valves for human uneasiness.

Daniel Burnham: (working over another martini) Aiming at ambiguity, my streets lay strewn like broken arrows on the ground. I'm afraid to stay and afraid to leave. Afraid of all the full tables at Trader Vic's - of wanting to fight them all.

Myrna Loy: (Walking back out onto the balcony wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and a white towel wrapped turban-like around her head. She leans close to Burnham.) Your right hand’s trembling so much you can’t raise your martini to your lips. Try using your left.

Daniel Burnham: I’m just trying to keep the White City - the tiny stage - in focus while I drink.

Myrna Loy: I’ve just been standing in the rusted bathtub letting the hot shower run over me for a full ten minutes. I am brimming with something too enormous to be contained much longer.

Daniel Burnham: Little plans have no magic.

Gore Vidal: Sometimes at night, unexpectedly, I come upon scenes of crushed intimacy along the dark and twisting alleys. The eerie mottled light of a distant lamp. The danger of detection in the last moments of exile. The crux of these fears is that if we do not conform, we do not survive. My old isolation is increasingly difficult.

Dusty Springfield: (plopping down on Vidal’s cloud) I hang around City Hall with itchy fingers. I’ve got a living to make - and I don’t make it bucking the police department. Later I’ll eat again - Greek - eat and go to some strange hotel, register under a false name.

Zodiac: (gesturing over the toy-like landscape) Water drips into the kitchen from a hole that’s never fixed. There’s still no heat after twenty years. The landlord thinks I’m someone else.

Daniel Burnham: I do NOT want my car seen in the parking lot. I do NOT want myself to be seen entering the exposed front door.

Dusty Springfield: We all prefer the magical explanation. (Gore and Myrna shoot each other knowing looks while everyone else sighs in agreement with Dusty. The Zodiac Killer’s shadow helps itself to a pitcher of martinis.)

Zodiac: (struggling out of his shirt) The flaws of the past translate into the present! Vague insecurities over the promotion or demotion of co-workers fester unabated. (Tears are now streaming down his cheeks) A panoply of emotions - from little pleasures to rage - stirred when bossing or being bossed, affect our daily existence.

(Everyone sighs and rolls their eyes at Myrna, who for the next few lines is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh.)

Myrna Loy: Maybe I told him who I was because he ordered Early Times. Maybe I looked into his eyes and saw the fog off the Farallones. Some remnant of my predator/prey days. Maybe my disintegratory social process is nourished by many sources.

Zodiac: (stripping off his pants and shoes) If you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel you’ve got to strike a match in the dark!

Myrna is suddenly transfixed by Zodiac. An over-sized golden arrow slithers out of the clouds like a bolt of lightning. The arrow pierces the center of her heart - its sharp tip jutting out between her shoulder-blades while the feathered end quivers between her breasts.

Zodiac climbs naked over the edge of the balcony and glides down through the surrounding shrubbery. As he descends the colossal marble stairway towards the White City, he is on fire with excitement.

The music stops. Silence thunders. Myrna races to the edge of the balcony, the arrow still lodged in her heart. Below her, the avenues are becoming luminous ruins, stretching brokenly towards the horizon like bones in the moonlight.

Myrna Loy: Of the buildings we once knew...and the places we used to go - we will find nothing - for they exist no longer. Everything solid melts in air...everything gets lost.

Dusty Springfield: Sometimes, when the telephone rings, in the middle of the night...I wake and hear the front door close.

This performance was made at Southern Exposure on January 25th, 1995, within the large installation, Even If Such An Object Outside Us Were Unimportant, that I'd made on the main floor of the gallery. Like the installation, the performance was focused on the ambiguous nature of ideological language and physical symbols, particularly as they refered to Communism, Fascism & recent political transitions in Eastern Europe. For all intents & purposes, this was the end result of the mutations undergone by the first Southern Exposure Brief Amaze performance (described in the previous post.) This text below is the actual script for my performance. I don't think there's any documentation of this performance, so the photo above is from my 1991 performance at Dobřany Psychiatric Hospital, Czech Republic, entitled The Dreams of Albrecht von Wallenstein: Coal.

AN ATMOSPHERE BUT FOR AN INSTANT

Performer enters space wearing dark suit and two-wheeled “golf caddy” strapped to one leg, so that performer’s gait is: step, roll, step, roll, etc.

Climb short ladder and smash hanging light bulbs with hammer.

Turn on boom box which plays Mekons’ Eve Future from Retreat From Memphis.

Turn on light bulb hanging over table center stage.

Turn on German Vocabulary tape. Sit unraveling used typewriter ribbon from IBM Selectric II cartridge.

Kevin Pontuti walks on stage and carries boom box offstage while Mekons song still plays. Turns volume all the way down slowly after he’s completely offstage.

Keep unraveling typewriter ribbon until German tape stops & tape of Laurie Amat singing Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer begins.

Put down typewriter ribbon, take of suit jacket, shave head with foam, water & straight razor.

Put suit jacket back on, open suitcase, take out black paint & brush and paint a necktie onto my white shirt.

Put the brush into a glass of water, get out shot glasses and Stolichnaya bottle.

Turn videotape on. Turn slides on (auto-advance).

Stare at audience for awhile, then ask for a volunteer to read the following play with you:

My Struggle

Two actors sit at a table with a bottle of vodka and two glasses between them. One close light suspended above. One pours into both glasses, they toast each other, “To the Fatherland!” or “To the Motherland!” or similar sentiments, and drain the glasses quickly, in the Russian style.

The Old Professor:
All my experiences, particularly after I had outgrown my adolescence (which in my case was an extremely painful process), reinforced my profound distaste for the profession which my father had chosen for me. My conviction grew stronger and stronger that I would never be happy as a civil servant. The fact that by this time my gift for drawing had been recognized at my high school made my determination all the firmer.

Mephisto:
Neither pleas nor threats could change it one bit.

The Old Professor:
I wanted to become a painter and no power in the world could make me a civil servant.

Mephisto:
And yet, strange as it may seem, with the passing years he became more and more interested in architecture.

The Old Professor:
At that time I regarded this as a natural complement to my gift as a painter, and only rejoiced inwardly at the extension of my artistic scope.

Mephisto:
He did not suspect that things would turn out differently.

The Old Professor:
There arises in me a confused muddle of memorized facts. Facts which are not only useless but also make me, their unfortunate possessor, conceited.

Mephisto:
He now believes himself in all seriousness to be “educated,” to understand something of life, to have knowledge, while, in reality, with every new acquisition of this kind of “education,” he is growing more and more removed from the world until, not infrequently, he ends up in a sanatorium.

The Old Professor:
Or in parliament. Pause. Never will my mind succeed in culling from the confusion of this “knowledge” anything that suits the demands of the hour.


Mephisto:
His intellectual ballast is not organized along the lines of life but rather in the sequence of books as he has read them, in the same order as their content has piled up in his brain.

The Old Professor:
If Fate, in the requirements of my daily life, desires to remind me to make a correct application of what I have “learned,” it should indicate title and page number, since poor fool I will otherwise never in all my life find the correct place.

Mephisto:
Poor fool he.

The Old Professor:
But Fate does not do this.

Mephisto:
These bright boys in any critical situation come into the most terrible embarrassment, cast about convulsively for analagous- He is interrupted by the Old Professor.

The Old Professor:
Anyone in this world who does not succeed in being hated by his adversaries does not seem to me to be worth much as a friend!

Here there is an awkward and silent pause as the two actors look at each other. Then the Old Professor passes out drunkenly, his head lolling onto the table.

Mephisto:
For if a generation suffers from faults which it recognizes, even admits, but nevertheless (as occurs today in our bourgeois world) contents itself with the cheap excuse that there is nothing to be done about it - such a society is doomed. The characteristic thing about our bourgeois world is precisely that it can no longer deny the ailments as such. It must admit that much is rotten and bad, but it no longer finds the determination to rebel against the evil, to muster the force of a people of sixty or seventy millions with embittered energy, and oppose it to the danger. On the contrary: if this is done elsewhere, silly comments are made about it, and they attempt from a distance at least to prove the theoretical impossibility of the method and declare success to be inconceivable. And no reason is too....

A bell ringing at some point during Mephisto’s last speech ends the speech and wakes up the Old Professor, who pours two more shots of vodka and thanks the volunteer. The bell is followed by a tape of Lenin speaking. When it’s over, the performer once again solicits a volunteer from the audience and performs “My Struggle,” which is again interrupted just before the end by the ring of a bell and then an audio excerpt of Stalin speaking.

The performance continues in this fashion, alternating performances of “My Struggle” with audio segments featuring, in order: Hitler speaking, a Cancerian astrology tape and an excerpt from Peter Maxwell-Davies’ “Eight Songs for a Mad King.”

During “Eight Songs…” the performer will make a sort of bed or ceremonial bier of the table by throwing a red sheet or Russian flag over it. Performer will then lie on the table motionless during the first movement (“Elegy”) of Shostakovich’s String Quartet #15.

When it’s over, the performer arises and once again solicits a volunteer from the audience and performs “My Struggle,” which is again interrupted just before the end by the ring of a bell and then an audio excerpt of Trotsky speaking.

The performance continues in this fashion, alternating performances of “My Struggle” with audio segments featuring, in order: Breshnev speaking, “Love On the Dole,” “Der Leid der Begarbeiter,” “The Red Flag” and a song about Stalin. After this final audio segment “My Struggle” is performed once more. When it’s over the entire performance is over.

[Note: In a situation in which there is no desire for or possibility of video or audio, the actors may simply repeat the toast and “My Struggle” over and over until the bottle is empty or until they are too drunk to continue.

This was a solo performance at Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, at the old location on San Pablo Avenue, on April 19th, 1991. I shared a bill with, if I remember correctly, Nina Wise, Bob Ernst & Rachel Kaplan. I have no documentation of this event. The photo above is of me participating in Nao Bustamente's "Frigid Bride" performance in Klariska Cathedral, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia on October 11, 1991.

OLD SOD

A body made of bundled white sheets is shrouded by a white sheet and lying atop a table. A lamp is suspended from and sways beneath the table-top. A large silver bowl filled with water is on the table next to the corpse’s head. Man is standing at the head of the table, arms spread as if crucified, holding candles in his hands.

The last approach. Wings down. Face down, faith down; the steep dive and failure to compensate, failure to perceive the spectacle of your own -

Man lunges to one side trying to blow the candle out but his arm remains stiff and he can’t get his mouth any closer to the candle. Tries thus in vain each side several times, fails always to blow them out. He then slowly forces his arms in front of him and sinks candles into the bowl of water, extinguishing them.

A driven approach to what ails you.

Before each of the following lines, Man moves table slightly but noisily, with his hands or thighs.

And after each line he spits.

Move. A wheel around the heart. Spit.
Move. Redemption. Spit.
Move. Cynical humor. Spit.
Move. Radical strategies. Spit.
Move. Carnal postures. Spit.

Man then immediately plunges his whole head into the bowl of water for a long time, until he absolutely can’t hold his breath any longer. He then pulls his head from the water, yells out his line.

Oh sailor!

Man grabs a quick breath and immediately shoves his head back in the water until he can’t hold his breath any longer.

Oh actress!

Repeat.

Oh warrior!

Repeat.

Oh politician!

Repeat.

Oh sculptor!

Repeat.

Oh husband!

Repeat.

Oh seamstress!

Repeat.

Oh butcher!

Man plunges his head in a final time and this time draws it out very slowly when he must. He slips his hand into the water and tosses some onto the corpse. He is no longer yelling; his voice is quite gentle and mournful.

Oh priest.

Man moves to the side of the table opposite audience, runs his hand lightly over corpse.

Oh seamstress.

Man moves to the foot of the table.

Oh butcher.

Man lifts up the bottom of the shroud and crawls in under, to lie shrouded atop the corpse.

She dreams of a forest in exile. A problem of her own special intellect, rootless and flowering along flat roads leading nowhere. Thighs clattering. All the dry sticks of all bodies in conflagration.

Man starts to hump the corpse slowly and gently.

Oh sailor.

Keeps humping slowly.

Oh politician!

Man stops humping, turns on flashlight which has been concealed under shroud.

Searching for that story you imagine buried deep inside that heart of lead you’ve been handed. Following the faint metallic taste inside your useless and unresponsive mouth. Crawling out of bed every morning, pulling the wool over your head and legs and going out into the field again to look for -

Man sits up and strikes a kind of heroic pose, with arms uncovered but torso and head still shrouded. The flashlight is held high, pointing skyward, while the other hand gestures or points generally in the direction of where the flashlight beam strikes the ceiling.

Oh gleam. Oh faint stars.

Shroud begins to slowly slip off Man’s head and torso. As his face is revealed, flashlight goes out. Man looks around for the “gleam” but it is not to be found. He sits back on his heels and pulls shroud around shoulders as if possibly against the cold.

Just look where we’ve landed, old sod. For all your silly flirtations and evasive answers. Buried in smiles and daft perfumes of pity. Where’s the good stout bottle of bitter sorrow when you need it? Aged sixty years inside the muscle of a dead tree, corked up with the skin of a living one. We put our liquors inside of wood, as in “we would have done.” As if memory were anything but our own speech come tunneling back at us. Ah, don’t mind me. Here, let’s pour you a drink. You look like you could use one.

Man detaches “head’ bundle of sheet/corpse from “torso” bundle and submerges it into water bowl until it’s soaked through, then pulls it out and attempts to wring it dry, allowing the water to drip back into the bowl.

Drink deep. And think of me.

Man unbundles the damp sheet and spreads it out over his face, head and torso. He then picks up another bundled part of the corpse and holds it to his chest as if nursing a baby.

Something’s bothering her. Oh actress: not bombs, not horror, not decision, not report, not blame, not squalor, not sex, not injury, not words, certainly not words.

Man pulls the damp sheet off his head and wraps it around the “baby” bundle so that it can be slowly, rythmically and repeatedly slammed against the tabletop, for perhaps thirty seconds or perhaps longer. When the Man is exhausted, he speaks in a weary voice that grows fainter and finally fades away to nothing.

The whole sky lights up. Wings spread, you lie there. The faint stars brighten and dive down, you lie there. Carnal house, the earth rises up in expectation, you lie there, you lie there, failure to percei–

Lights out. End.

This is not the most representative of the 15 or so Brief Amaze performance "scripts" but it is the only one at hand. This was the second performance, made at Southern Exposure on June 29th, 1990, just before taking the piece on tour throughout Eastern Europe. Brief Amaze was specifically designed as a modular, mutable inquiry into the physical & conceptual nuances of each site in which it was made, and thus each has, in retrospect at least, a thematic core. Responding as it is to recently lost love, an imminent birthday & an impending adventure, this version heaps on the bathos in an attempt to suture it through irony and exaggeration. The attempt is probably a failure. For more discussion of this version's merits & deficits, see the appropiate posting on the Brief Amaze 1990 blog.

BRIEF AMAZE

Man, blindfolded with a gauze bandage, naked, crawls out from under a white shroud. Around his neck hangs a rope tied to a parking meter, which he drags over to a pile of clothing, also shrouded, center stage. He uncovers this clothing and dresses himself: black suit, tie, shoes, white shirt. Taped to his hands are two quarters. Once dressed, he moves drags the parking meter to the front row of the audience, where he feels the faces of the audience until he finds the one he’s looking for. When he has found her he tears the quarters from his wrists and offers them to her. He holds out the parking meter until she places the coins in the meter, turning the handle. He then takes the rope off his own neck and ties it around hers. He then moves to sit at a chair in front of a table.

This is where we begin.

He takes a stone from the table and crams it into his mouth. He pours water from a large silver bowl into a glass. Water spills. He holds the glass with his right hand, which begins to shake more and more violently, spilling water as he raises the glass and attempts to drink. The stone prevents this and finally the glass falls from his hand to the floor. After a moment he takes the stone from his mouth and carefully wraps and ties it with twine.

Pray for me who am so miserable. He laughs.

He ties the stone around his neck, then holds his hand out as if reaching to touch someone.

Anyone.

Eventually someone from the audience comes up and touches his hand. As soon as this happens, he unwraps his blindfold to reveal bloodied eyes. He pulls a paper from the pocket of his coat and reads.

It is precisely for this reason that we continue to regard these phenomena as extensions of ourselves, continue to put words around them as if we are describing what we see. As if remorse had four legs and feathers. As if joy raised blisters on the fingers. As if sorrow laid lips on our neck. As if pain were actually the tip of the knife.

He picks up a large razor blade and makes several incisions into his forearms, deep enough to provoke a steady flow of blood. He moves to a standing blackboard and begins to write.

THE HORRORS OF
THE
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR LOVE
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR REDEMPTION ARE ENDING
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR REDEMPTION ARE ENDLESS

He erases ENDLESS, writes it again, erases it, writes it again, over and over until his piece of chalk is reduced to nothing. He then dismantles the blackboard, lays it on the floor. He walks over and takes the rope from around the woman’s neck, puts the end of the rope in her hand. He moves to another shroud, uncovers a heavy suitcase which he drags over to center stage. When he opens it, light shines out from flashlights, already on, under the stones which fill the suitcase.

Blistermen. Pus for seventy and down again, that noise again. Wagons of salt, heaps of salt. He whistles. Your mother’s crawled out of her basket again, witing to be fed. A trail of burnt-out campfires. Empty food tins and small piles of shit poorly buried. I lay down again in the dirt to spit my love out. Later we separate, look up at stars and try to dream.

He removes flashlights from suitcase, lays them on floor, shining onto suitcase. He picks the suitcase up and dumps the squarish stones onto the floor. Puts suitcase away, then piles stones into a pyramid. Put flammable paste on top stone, lights it. Takes off his clothes and crawls in a circle until the fire goes out. About ten or fifteen minutes. Puts his clothes back on. Goes to audience, gives someone a razor blade with which to cut rope holding stone around his neck. Then Man gets this person to come up on stage, bringing his chair with him and sitting in it.

Then Man gets a woman from audience to stand on stage with him, holding his hand for one minute. Then he puts camouflage mask on, holds her hand again for one minute, takes mask off, gets woman’s chair and seats her in it next to the seated man. Then Man fastens a large dog muzzle over his face and somewhat brusquely tells another woman to take her chair and sit on stage next to the others. Then he takes off dog muzzle and puts on a black vapor respirator and pays a man a five-dollar bill to move with his chair to the onstage row.

Then he removes the respirator and puts on a kind of jester’s hat, picks up a short golden hoe and gets a man to stand on stage with him. He shoves this man around until this man gets angry, then Man gives him the hoe and kneels before him. Once the man does something, anything, the Man tries to talk him into getting his chair and adding himself to the onstage row. When all these people are in place, Man hangs golden yams around their neck and places party hats on their heads. Man then takes off his jacket and shirt and sits at table. After he finishes painting half his face black and half white, he begins a conversation with himself which quickly turns to an argument. As he speaks, he turns first one side of his face, then the other, towards the audience. As White speaks he is seated. As Red speaks he stands.

White:
Despite that. In spite of that. Because that exists to be struggled against.

Red:
Relax.

White:
Passion. Commitment. Madness.

Red:
Hah! Get Real.

White:
And anger....

Red:
A lifetime of vicious and inconsequential lies.

White:
Sort of growls, then holds up a fist, uncurls finger for each of his points: Penetration. Squalor. Romance. Ignorance. And injury.

Red:
Bends over closer to White’s chair. Laziness. Points at his own head. Sentimentality. Points at his own eyes. Cupidity. Points at his own lips. Nostalgia! Points at his own ass.

White grabs Red’s neck.

White:
Imagination.

Red pushes White’s wrist away.

Red:
Imaginary.

White slaps Red’s face, Red slaps White’s, they slap each other four or five times until finally White spits at Red. Red grabs White by the neck and lunges at him. Together they go tumbling backwards over the chair onto the floor, where they roll around wrestling with each other until they are too tired to continue. After a moment’s rest, Man crawls over to pyramid of stones and tries to stack stones one on top of the other. He stops when the unstable stack finally falls over.

Then he gets up and unshrouds a bundle of red candles upstage left, crawls onto table, lights candles and holds them over his head so that red wax drips onto his naked back. Then he crawls back down off table, takes off the rest of his clothes, goes over and unshrouds wheelchair, puts on party hat, grabs bugle, lights firepaste which is on a stone on the seat of the wheelchair, pushes wheelchair to downstage center, plays Happy Birthday to himself on bugle. Then he drops to the floor and crawls around wheelchair until fire goes out. Man gets up and puts clothes back on, sits at table, powders his face, puts makeup on lips and eyes, sips from large silver water bowl for awhile. He takes some deep breaths and then lowers his face and head into the water for as long as he can stand it. When he finally comes up for air, performance is over.

We wrote this for a Valentine's Day show at Artists Television Access, I think it was curated by Steve Perkins. It was well into the AIDS crisis, it was late 1988, and we were both bored bored bored with the de-sexification that had happened all over town. Parties were no fun, it was harder to get laid, no one was allowing themselves any pleasure anymore. So we wanted to write something that (in its own odd way) celebrated fearless love. There are several slightly different versions of this piece, but I think this is the very first version, that we did at ATA on February 10, 1989. The picture above is a still from a videotape of that first performance.

Two days later we did it at The Lab, then in Kevin Radley's class at the Academy of Art College on April 27th. A girl got totally freaked out, a Chinese student nearly flew back to Beijing & Kevin caught a raft of shit. On May 19th we did it at Southern Exposure & during the part where I grope the audience, I chewed on Bob Gluck's neck. That got us an invite to read at a Poetry Center reading, at the old Grove Street Arts Commission space, on September 26. Many years later, 1997, I performed it with Margaret's sister, Nancy Crane, an actress living in London. We did it on January 14th at Production, a space Ingrid Swenson ran in Finsbury Park. This was published in "Blind Date #6" in 1989 in San Francisco.

ROAD KILL
by Margaret Crane and Scott MacLeod


SUSAN

Somebody's highbeams are shining in your rearview mirror. And I think that they just might be ours.

It's hard to take those turns when you can't see the road ahead and a big LTD is riding your tail and your neck jerks back hard and sparks fly into the night when the bumpers smash together.

This is when you must remember that you don't have to be afraid anymore. Your number has finally come up. We are right behind you in that big shiny car doing what we do best. This is the time I like the most. Just before something happens. Before it all turns red. This is when Dave get all tense and pissed off and he's just dying for action, but even he knows how to make a good thing last for a long time.

DAVE

The thing about driving a car is that you can decide where to put it and how fast. There's a road right here stretching out towards the next place, but that's just for speed and for convenience. I could just as easily put the wheels onto the gravel shoulder or out past the guard rail. If I close my eyes tight I can imagine each car as it shoves past in the opposite direction, in the next lane.

SUSAN

Dave makes us wait for miles until we can hardly stand it. And I keep saying please baby do it now, until, coming out of a turn, he slams his foot on the accelator and the impact causes you to let go of the wheel as you skid across the gravel and over the dirt, and even though I can't hear you I know that you are screaming as your car flips over and over and rolls across the desert.

DAVE

This is one of the good things, pushing highway 80 past Green River, past the borax mine near Little America. The way it's off in the distance so you can't really see it, just the white puffs from its smokestacks. Like it's something I can want but I don't have to have.

SUSAN

We gotta stop. I want a Slurpee. It's hot in this car. We should've gotten an air-conditioned one. I'm starting to get in one of my moods. I want a big tall Slurpee so I can stand in the sun, right in the parking lot, with my clothes sticking to my skin and suck the icy green Slurpee through the straw as fast as I can. I won't stop until I hear the sound at the bottom of the cup. Then I'm going to get a wicked headache. That's one of the little things I like to do.
Get a carton while you're in there, okay? It's damned hot in this car. Better get another six-pack too. I'm starting to get in one of my moods and we've got a lot to do.

SUSAN

He bought a six-pack and I bought a six-pack and we went driving. I mean, it used to be okay to do that. Everybody did that.

DAVE

He was working late inside a shitty little real estate office in a strip mall just outside Vernal. I tapped on the glass and held up jumper cables.

What a fucking idiot.

We pulled the curtains shut and shoved all the brown desks down to one end, piled all the chairs and wastebaskets on top. I slid my cock in and out Susan's ass. We were both spread-eagled on the grey shag carpet in the middle of that emptied room. He was tied up with jumper cables and phone cords, over by the furniture pile, his polyester tie stuffed in his mouth. His fat cigar-like cock got hard watching us.

We fucked for awhile then I dragged him over. Susan sucked on that fat cock while I straddled his chest. I slit his throat all the way and told him if his car didn't have air-conditioning I'd come back and kill him. He was so confused he got scared thinking about that $600 he'd been too cheap to spend for air, and how it could've saved his life. What a fucking idiot. I bounced up and down on his chest to make the blood flow quicker.

SUSAN

After the fourth beer I put my arm around her. Drive us to your house. That's all I had to say. She had speakers with red, yellow and blue lights inside that flickered in time with the music. She had vericose veins on her ankles and stretch marks from having children. She was starting to like us. That's the way we are. We're likeable people. I worked her good. Dave was going through the refrigerator, rubbing his cock and kind of watching over his shoulder once in a while. She was still moving a little when I let Dave have her.

DAVE

Susan's ass was moving around on the woman's face. It was going to be a long night. I went out into the back yard but there were three or four dogs out there and the air was turning cold. The fridge was pretty full but mostly just pickles and cheese and whatever. When I finally went back in the living room, her eyes were rolled back all white in her head and she was bleeding from all of her holes. I came on her floppy tits so Susan could see how grateful I was.

We sat around the next day watching television. In the afternoon somehow the dogs got in and went crazy. I had to beat them off her with a hammer.

SUSAN

Dave is the only one who can do all the things that I think of. He has a kind of magnetism or something that attracts anyone we could ever want to meet. And I know that you feel it too.

DAVE

There's the slow fire of Las Vegas up ahead, burning up the sky. It's easy to be good to yourself.

SUSAN

I'm the kind of girl who likes the best and I don't like sharing. One thing you can say about me is that I'm good to my friends, and you're my only friend, so I have to be good to you, even if it means sharing.
Pull off the road. There's something I want to do and I want to do it now.

(Dave holds up a cardboard sign:)

DEAR FRIENDS - WE ARE TRYING TO MAKE BAKERFIELD AN OUR CAR HAS BROKEN DOWN! BUT WE HAVE NO MONY TO REPAIR IT OR BUY FOOD FOR OURSELVES AN OUR SMALL CHILD. WE ARE NOT BUMS! WE ARE "HONEST PEOPLE" WHO HAD A "BAD BRAKE." IN ORDER TO NOT DISTURB YOU WE HAVE PLACE THIS NOTE HERE. PLEASE HELP US IF YOU CAN!" WE ARE IN THE BLUE IMPALA IN THE PARKING LOT. WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU TO HELP US.

SUSAN

When you're not moving all you're doing is getting old, and getting old is what all these people who are just a bunch of ants do. They are always afraid and getting smaller all the time until they are the size of ants. When I get afraid I don't get afraid I get mad, and when I get mad I get even bigger than I am, until I start leaking out of the car like the tule fog here in the Valley. I just want to go fast.

DAVE

I don't want to disturb you nice people, but . . . we need a jump. Usually when our car runs out of gas, we just get us a new car. Car's about the easiest thing in the world to get. I mean, if things are going bad, well, you just change what you are doing, you do something different. Then things are good again. Things are always good if you can change fast enough when you need to, if you can make decisions quick enough. I'm not a vindictive person, if you see what I mean.

Having a decision to make means having choices. That's a good thing. I'm pro-choice. On the one hand you could give me a jump. On the other hand, a new car's about the easiest thing in the world to get.

SUSAN

I keep thinking about the way you are different from us. You have to keep a secret hidden and are always scared it will slip out. You are all deformed or something from pretending. You are scared because we are inside you and we just might rise to the surface. You believe there is such a thing as safety and this is what makes you afraid.

We are what you've been expecting for a long time. You don't have to wait any more, because we've finally found you. You let us enter into you like your next breath. It's just a matter of positive thinking. It is the power of two people in love.

You are so lucky that you've met us.

SUSAN

Sometimes I go crazy thinking of all the things that haven't happened yet. Or all the things that happened that I wish were still happening but won't ever happen again, not even once.

DAVE

I dried my hands on the filthy towel roll and walked back out into the neon. I gave the cashier in the dark booth ten dollars for gas. He kept looking over at the Impala with all its doors open. Susan was sitting there with one hand up her skirt, feeding herself Cheetos with the other and smiling at him the whole time. She seemed like she was getting just generally over-excited again, like she did day before yesterday.

Sometimes I think we should just get a nice house somewhere quiet. But I guess that's not too realistic.

Anyway, we better not go anywhere near Rock Springs again for awhile.

SUSAN

Don't stop talking I can't see you when you stop talking. Especially when these seats are torn up from all the screwing we've been doing lately and you know how I hate it when the springs start sticking up into my back and then I start to notice I'm getting very angry and I'm so hot I can't stand it and there's nothing I can do about it except bite you real hard and then you think it's just because I'm having a good time and I start humping on you to get away from those springs and instead of springs they are tongues of flame and I start thinking of all the things we do together and I wish they were still screaming because I can never cool off.

DAVE

We're standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. An oily black puddle is forming under the Ventura. North of us a huge wall of thunderclouds rises up from the opposite rim of the canyon. I stop pacing and stare down over the edge.

SUSAN

A real nice Cadillac convertible pulls up smooth as ice. This old guy in sunglasses and white white hair gets outs and walks over to me, running his hands through his white white hair and smiling his smile. Where does a thirsty man find a cool drink around here, he asks as he looks me up and down. I smile my smile while I reach into my handbag for the .38.

DAVE

One night in South Shore it was raining and starting to snow with dirty ice. At the light this old woman was leading a tall stooped-over blind boy across the street. His cane was scratching across the wet asphalt. I think it was glowing and they were all stooped over and walking so slow I just couldn't stand it. I told Sue we must never go into the cities again or I might really just lose my mind.

SUSAN

Dave puts the Ventura into neutral and pushes it off the edge and down into the canyon, like in slow motion and it's really quiet.

He's ready to go now but I just want to stand there while the storm pushes itself over me. I want to take off all my clothes and let those fat raindrops batter me. If I could take my skin off, then all things would come to me.

DAVE

The pictures in books always had them kneeling in a circle around Custer who was standing in the middle. Kneeling in a circle around Custer and an American flag, shooting their rifles at the Indians riding in circles around them. But we're right here and the white stones where the bodies fell are scattered all over the hillside, so that's not the way it happened. There was no circle. They died crawling or lying down alone behind their dead horses, hundreds of feet apart, or sitting back-to-back full of bullet and arrows and firing their pistols into a forest of moving hooves. I'm walking around in the tall grass where it happened and I can't get the two pictures to match. It's real quiet here and it seems like a lonely way to die.

SUSAN

They suddenly appeared on the road in front of us when the whole sky flashed with lightning over the salt flats, like in a movie or something. She was sitting in the car all soft and pale, like she was part of the seat, like she was always tired and always resting, big and pillowy with dry blonde hair all over the place and black lines around her eyes. I've always been high-strung myself. Her big hand with those long pink nails made her face look so small, and she was rubbing the side of her face like something hurt. I've never touched anyone who didn't want to be touched.

DAVE

When you don't want the song to end but someone changes the station.

SUSAN

He was this skinny jumpy guy, always jerking his head towards her, pounding his hands on the wheel in time to the music. They were in the slow lane in a brand-new Lincoln. It didn't even have plates on it. Dave was staring at them, not giving me his full attention. He pulled slowly in behind them, the turn signal flashing onto his face. I know Dave likes the feel of a car fresh off the lot. For a moment he was ignoring me. But I was starting my period and you know what that means. Dave was all inside himself and there is nothing, nothing I hate more than that.

DAVE

I think we must have passed all the green-and-white road signs in the world by now.

SUSAN

I thought that they were just like us even though she was always tired and I require hardly any sleep. I saw the four of us as joined by a single thought, by one big brain, like everything that came before them was thin and watery and anything that happened from now on was part of one long fuck that blots out the future. I thought that they were just like us even though she doesn't talk much and I have a lot of important things to say. For awhile I thought we were going to let them go. But they had joined us now in speeding towards the vanishing point. Dave killed the headlights as we raced forward and I said, hon, nail them good, okay? Take them where they've never been before.

DAVE

Susan wakes up when I shake her. We just leave the GTO there on the shoulder with everything in it, the cooler full of beer and salami, some clothes, whatever. Somebody once told me it gets cold in the desert at night but it doesn't seem so bad. The stars look like a couple of hundred flashlights. I want to remember but I can't. Just stars overhead and crickets and the way we stumble along.

We need a new car and pretty soon it comes along, some fat man driving it, pulls over for us. I sight along my arm, lining up my thumb with the back of his head.

SUSAN

Sometimes I wish I could remember all the things we do together, because we never waste a moment and everything we do is of the utmost importance. Some things I recall as clear as day even in the dark; then other times I'll wake up with the rusty taste of blood in my mouth and those big warm stains drying on my clothes - and you know that I only wear the best, so I'll be looking like the stone fox that I am - but there are these dark stains everywhere. And I'm all wet and sticky and I feel real good, so I know we've been fucking, and you're driving some new car I've never seen before. And I'm sitting next to you and it's pitch black outside except for the headlights.

It is then that I know that we have been shot through the forehead with diamond bullets and must always remain in disguise. Or we will blind all others with our radiance.

It is then that I know that our fever has burned clear through to the other side.

DAVE

I set it on fire and walk away. That convertible top flares up thirty or forty feet. Sue has broke a heel and twisted her ankle and can't walk very fast, but at least we are out of Scottsdale. She stumbles along, holding her arms out for balance. The sun catches on her big diamond ring I gave her. I watch her staggering towards me and it hits me we are geniuses, because we do not wait for anything.

I performed this in the basement of Artists Television Access on October 25th, 1987. The photo above is from the performance. It's just a papier-mache head with two faces. I had a clip lamp as my only illumination. I'd read a part, click the lamp off, turn the head 180 degrees, click lamp on, read & repeat. Audience was totally flipped out by simple effect, came up with very ingenious & complicated theories as to how I switched characters: with pulleys, etc.


BALLOONHEAD


Performer sits wearing a papier-maché Old Man mask over his head, and large white gauze bandage wrapped around his left forearm. He speaks.

One summer the boy’s father was home for a whole month. He drove his red car to the woods one day and shot a deer. He hung it from the central bean of the garage and slit it open. The dogs got in and he had to beat them off the carcass with a shovel. The cement floor was very slippery, there was deer blood and dog blood and some human blood.

After the Old Man finishes speaking, the lights go out for about five seconds. While the lights are out, the performer reaches up and turns the mask horizontally 180° so that he now wears the face of a Young Man.

We went out to the car like we were going someplace but there was no place to go. I put my hand through the window and unlocked the door, it was that easy. She lay there for the first time like that, with me.

Again the lights go out and the mask is rotated to become the other character, the Old Man. This switch happens between each speech.

The station wagon broke down and rusted away during the hardest winter. The boy, recovering from a fever, thought he saw wolves in the forest, but everyone laughed because this wasn’t true. The boy’s father came and went. Snow fell. The river froze.

Switch to Young Man.

I made here give it to me and then I felt better. She cried a little but I hit her and she shut up. I don’t feel bad about hitting her because she doesn’t really exist. No don’t try to make me feel bad about it. I won’t let you make me feel bad about anything.

Switch to Old Man.

Summer came like a blood hunger. The boy’s mommy withered while the trees bloomed and the wheat rose. The priest put his hand on hers and whispered Deus dedit dentes, Deus debit panem. The septic tank broke, and rats by the dozen entered the yard.

Switch to Young Man.

I had to beat the dogs with the stick-end of a broom to keep them out of the meat in the ‘fridge. She cooked me some breakfast while the sun went down. She wanted to give me a haircut but I told her the hairs are growing down inside my head so it wouldn’t do any good.

Switch to Old Man.

The boy spent his days sitting in the rusted station wagon, picking his teeth and watching the birds circle overhead. There was no traffic in front of the house since the new highway had been built on the other side of the lake. The rat problem had been solved.

Switch to Young Man.

I put a six-pack in her arms and made her follow me down to the lake. She was so scared of swimming it was funny. I jumped in with all my clothes on and swam to the other side of the lake. I could barely see her standing there on the other shore, crying and screaming at me. I took my wet clothes off and left them there while I swam back to her.

Switch to Old Man.

The deer in the woods nervously sniffed at the first sign of winter. The priest looked out over his flock and said God gave teeth, God will give bread. An unusually high autumn sun averted most shadows.

Switch to Young Man.

I had to beat the dogs off her with a hammer.

Switch to Old Man.

A red car skidded off the highway and exploded when its driver fell asleep.

Switch to Young Man.

I got another can of beer from the ‘fridge and sat down to watch the fire I had set.

Switch to Old Man.

Old Man unwraps a bandage from his left arm. At first the bandage is white but as more is unwrapped, the dark stains of a wound become visible, become larger and bloodier as he continues unwrapping. Lights out just before the wound is finally exposed.

This was performed at Media on March 18, 1987 but I don't recall who was in it or recall much about the performance at all. This was one of four plays in an online chapbook "Twentieth-Century Plays" published as "108:94" in 3rdness Press' series. They're out of Hermance GA.

INTO THE WILD BLUE YONDER


Four simple chairs facing the audience represent a car. DAD is driving, MOM is riding shotgun, JUNIOR sits behind DAD, and MAMA-SAN sits behind MOM. Everyone is facing forward towards the audience except MOM, who is staring out her side window. The NARRATOR enters and holds up a large ornate picture frame in front of the car.

NARRATOR:
A man drives a car across a lonely stretch of desert highway. His name is Dad, and he has packed up his family: Mom, Junior and Mama-San, and headed west in search of what we are all looking for. But a lot can happen on an empty road. He slowly exits.

MOM:
Look at all the calamities piling up!

DAD:
Marginal interest in events that do not repeat.

MOM:
Turning to DAD. Ducking the issue.

DAD:
Pressing the pedals. Putting my best foot forward.

MOM:
Some below-ground orbit pulls us.

DAD:
Destination is a roulette of the invalid.

MAMA-SAN:
Pass me a tomato!

DAD:
There’s a dent in the fender of things.

MAMA-SAN:
Ransack the abbreviations for one that will fit.

DAD:
My hands on the steering wheel, her neck in the mirror.

MOM:
The grain in the field turns to dust.

DAD:
The riverboat navigates the river, propelled more by the laws of history than by the laws of physics.

MOM:
The ocean behind us turns to sky, loses itself.

DAD:
We breeze through towns littered with golf clubs.

MOM:
We hear rumors and evaluate them.

DAD:
We skip like a stone across a swimming-pool nation, sneak like an analyst through the backyards of emotional suburbia.

MOM:
We are more than prepared for the more than perfect excitement.

DAD:
Returning to sensation like a deli-case on wheels.

MOM:
Reduced to coconut, the macaroon perjures itself.

DAD:
Hundreds of deer are killed by cars every winter on the Evanston grade. Tell me, how many people know that well enough to say it?

MOTORCYCLIST roars up alongside driver’s side of car.

MOTORCYCLIST:
Leans into window to yell at DAD. Hey weirdo beardo! Laughs. When you smell it, you’ll want to eat it!

MOTORCYCLIST roars away. Pause as the family stares after him.

MOM:
Some variables make this trip interesting.

MAMA-SAN:
Sure.

JUNIOR:
We pull into Omaha! Shit hits the fan! Duck!

MAMA-SAN:
Pass me an orange!

JUNIOR:
We meet rodeo barbers and trombone switch-hitters!

MAMA-SAN:
Pass me a napkin!

DAD:
The tension builds as the traffic begins to converge.

JUNIOR:
I adore and emulate a - a marzipan of conflicting - um - conflicting - uh -

MAMA-SAN:
Pass me a small-town parade and brand-new passport!

JUNIOR:
Ever louder and more animated. Pass me a paroxysm of paralyzed peanut butter!

MAMA-SAN:
Ever louder and more animated. Drowning tourists are elated by postcards depicting their tragedy!

JUNIOR:
Louder etc. The intellect confesses to the torture and degredation of the mind!

MAMA-SAN:
Leaning forward and pointing over DAD’s shoulder, screaming in his ear. South!

DAD:
North!

JUNIOR:
Standing up. I’m looking for a good place to be arrested from!

MAMA-SAN:
As previous. South! South! South!

DAD:
North! North! North!

MOM:
I think it’s sweet when families die together. She screams loudly and throws her arms up and forward, as if expecting a crash.

DAD hits the brakes and everyone leans slightly forward and freezes, as if they are about to crash into something. They hold their frozen positions through the final fade-out. The NARRATOR re-enters and again holds up the picture frame in front of the tableau vivant.

NARRATOR:
If a man steps out of an airplane flying southwest at 750 miles an hour while passing directly above Boston at an altitude of 30,000 feet, he will land in Manhattan. Thank you and good night.

Martin Cox (photo: Steve Finerty)

She Was A Really Big Woman was written for & performed by Martin Cox & Caitlin Morgan at Intersection for the Arts on March 22nd & 23rd, 1986, on the same bill as In The Liberated Zone, script of which follows this.

SHE WAS A REALLY BIG WOMAN

Foghorn. Lighthouse light sweeping in circles through fog. A figure, seen dimly backstage left. Clothed or wrapped in white: bandages or cloth or gauze. Somewhat mummy-like, in a polar way. Feet strapped into snowshoes. Ski-poles dangle uselessly from outstretched arms. Figure struggles to move feet forward slowly through deep, invisible snow. Amplified voice of Woman, middle-aged, pleasant Scots accent, heard, as if from high above upstage right:

She was a big woman, a really big woman. She was forced to purchase big dresses because she was so big. Really big dresses. She couldn’t simply walk into a store, say a haberdasher’s or one of those really big department stores, and order a small dress or a medium-size dress or even a slightly-larger-than-average-size dress, because, you see, it would not go all the way round her very big body. A small or medium or slightly-larger-than-average-size one wouldn’t, that is. She she was forced to purchase a big dress, a really big dress. One that was big enough, so to speak. A big enough dress, that is. If she wished to be clothed, that is. And she certainly did wish to be clothed, as who wouldn’t, I suppose. I mean that I suppose that anyone, even someone without such a big body, would wish to be clothed. And I would suppose that especially someone with such a big body would wish to be clothed.

Her body was really quite big. I mean that everyone had noticed this, not just me. I mean I am not simply making making this up, out of whole cloth, so to speak, but it really is true, she was really quite big, in a bodily sort of way, and it’s not just spite and meanness that’s making me say this. I mean it’s not spite and meanness at all that’s making me say this. That she was so big I mean. Because I’m simply not a spiteful or mean person at all. Not at all, and I’m quite sure that others will agree that I’m not spiteful or mean, just as they will agree, having seen her in the window, that she was a really big woman. Really big. Ever since. And all day in the window sitting and staring out. Sitting in her big black dress and staring out and being stared at. And why not. I mean, every day in the window, staring out. And even seeing just her face. She was so big. And that same big dress every day, all covering her big body. Buried as it were below the frame of the window, below the sill. And her head, her big head, just her big head sticking up above the sill.

It was quite widely and generally known that she was big. Even seeing just her face, it was known she was very big. And in the winter the glass frosted and she seemed to be nothing more than a face, a big face, below the ice. Below the ice on the window, really. Like a face one sees in a mirror, a face not one’s own, seen at an angle. So one’s own face not seen, though it was a mirror one was looking in. Staring out as if she could not see herself in the glass, but staring out perhaps at the village and the grey beach and the boats. But yet staring out as if she could not really see the village or the rest. Staring through the surface of the ice, not seeing herself or the rest.

Man:
Big.

Lighthouse searchlight beam stops sweeping, focusses on Man. Sounds of icebergs creaking. Snow lights.

Woman’s voice:
Yes, she was a big woman, a really big big woman. She was persuaded by the shape of her body to enter a haberdasher’s and order a very big dress, a dress of very large dimensions, in other words. Perhaps black, the color black, black being the color of the dress. Perhaps the black color of the dress was an attempt she made to diminish the size of her body. For if the dress, black, appeared diminished, shrunken like a black shadow into the corners of itself, so too might the size of the body it contained appear diminished as well. So that looking into the wirror at the haberdasher’s she might seem to be of a smaller size than she knew herself to be. Or even while sitting in her chair seeing herself reflected in the glass of the window she stared through. Or not seeing herself. Smaller still. Or the village diminished by the storm, the boats dimished by the weight of the grey.

Man speaks haltingly throughout.

Man:
She was a big woman. A very big woman.

Woman:
Ah, yes, what a big woman she was. Sitting there in the window. Such a big head. Such a big head staring down. Staring at her staring down at the village, such a small village all shrunken under the stare from the window. Though not the village nor the boats nor even the cold beach.

The sound of feet running over stone or loose gravel.

Man:
She was a big woman and she was purchased by a big dress. She was forced. A big dress.

Woman:
A big black dress, black as a night in the arctic-

Man:
I suppose, I mean to say, mean to suppose, a big. A big. She was a big woman.

Woman:
A night with no light of its own at all. But the light beckoning or staring from her window. Her big head then a shadow in the square of lighted window, light like flames behind her head, so dark the house not seen, just the window blazing and the black shadow of her big head, so heavy and big the window seemed about to break.

Man:
Yes, she was a big woman, a really big woman. A big enough woman, so to speak. Her body was big enough, so to speak. In the haberdasher’s. In the mirror. Not the mirror but the dress I mean. Containing her.

Woman:
Yes, yes, now she remembered being told that the surface of the mirror, that is, what made the mirror a mirror was behind the surface of the glass, under the glass, so to speak. But she could never remember this when she was at the haberdasher’s or in the department store. She never remembered to look into the dressing-room mirror while putting on her new black dress. So she could never be sure.

Man:
Not in the mirror, but in the dress, I mean. Her size and the way she contained it.

Woman:
Yes, her large body insulated her. The many layers of herself. The layers between herself and . . . and the rest, I suppose. Between herself and what was big enough to contain her, so to speak. Even in the coldest weather, the dress only. Black only. So carefully chosen to fit. So contained. Everything otherwise out there, recklessly uncovered. She could nearly reach the window from where she sat.

Man:
Big enough, so to speak, big enough.

Woman:
A simple forward lean would do for her hand to touch the window, mere inches, so to speak. Not an effort, really, but a repositioning. A different relationship between her big body and the gravity which clothed it.

Man:
Close enough, so to speak. No, big enough.

Woman:
Sitting close by the impenetrable window. The eyes rooted to the darkness-

Man:
Her black dress-

Woman:
Silence growing like a forest over the ocean-

Man:
She was not like those other foolish women in the haberda-

Woman:
Sitting close. The window. A small piece of the dark forest burning warm behind her, her head a shadow in the window, a shadow rising in front of the flames, shadowed by flames, she thought.
Lights begin to grow imperceptibly darker till full out and dark at end of play.


Man:
She remembered seeing a face in the mirror which was not her own face but a face at an angle, so to speak.

Woman:
The surface of the window like the surface of the frozen sea, her face reflecting oddly, as if on the other side, as if beneath the surface so to speak. But she never remembered.

Man:
She had been told once that the surface lay below, on the other side so to speak, but she could never be sure. Sure enough, so to speak.

Woman:
The fire light and the candle light. And if the ships could be seen through the window they would seem to burn with flame on the surface of the ice. Though at an angle. Seeing the mirror yet not seeing the mirror.

Man:
She was a woman. A big woman. Big enough though she could never be sure.

Woman:
The surface of the mirror like the surface of the frozen ocean, her face reflected in ice but she could swear it was not her face in the ice, in the flames.

Man has by now struggled almost all the way across and down the stage. Here his energy is depleted. He still stands, but there is the sense that he has crumpled or deflated.

Man:
No, she was a big, big, big, big woman.

Woman:
Yes, she was so large sitting there in her window, the light behind her head as if the window aflame and her but a shadow.

Man:
Big. Big.

Lights are now full out, stage is dark.

Woman:
Her body was so large she couldn’t fit all of it through the small window she sat staring through each day. Staring at the empty ocean and the quiet village. The frozen beach without boats.

And in a real fire? She was so big one wondered how she might be carried out, away from the flames.

In the window a tall shadow rising from the reflected flames, seen as if from below the ice. A tall fireman perhaps? Alert, eager for the action, for the rescue? To lift her easily off her feet?

A tall shadow reaching in through ice and flame, defying gravity, lifting her out of her black dress, lifting her up.

In The Liberated Zone is a kind of prequel to Home On The Range, or maybe it's better to say that it's an urban version of it. Jeanne Gallo & I developed it & performed it at Intersection for the Arts (the old Valencia Street mortuary version of Intersection) on March 22nd & 23rd, 1986. Note: this photo above is of Home on the Range, not Liberated Zone. This was one of four plays in an online chapbook "Twentieth-Century Plays" published as "108:94" in 3rdness Press' series. They're out of Hermance GA.


IN THE LIBERATED ZONE


Stage lighting very dim. Woman sits in chair at table facing stage right. Across the table another chair, empty. Man stands at window peering out with flashlight. Uses it to tap on window glass. Woman flinches at the sound. Pause. Tap and flinch. Pause. Again. Pause.

Man:
It all started slowly enough. We started sleeping later each morning, the sun rising higher and higher by the time we finally saw it. What we had missed. The harvest already cut, the field already quiet, not a ghost there, not a soul out there.
He begins searching the theater with the flashlight beam.

Woman:
This is what you’ve always hungered for. Just such an impulse. Bright headlights seeping through the imagined surface of the city. A million windows out there.

Man searches stage, finds Woman with flashlight beam. It remains focussed on her face as he walks to table and sits facing her. Flashlight off as lights up full.

Woman:
Conversations in cafes turned to themselves, shook their heads and whispered or flirted.

Man:
Sex happened without warning and usually only once.

Woman:
A ritual of movements between barbed wire and speakeasies.

Man:
Barbers kept cutting, money changed hands.

Woman:
Diesel engines attached to the biomass. Night falling and the rain.

Man:
An amazing versimilitude.

Woman:
The shape of clothing was not the shape of the body.

Man:
The rain fell without washing.

Woman:
She called out his name.

Man:
Nocturnal permission revoked.

Woman:
All dead, all dead.

Man:
The establishment of private zones. Posthumous sex.

Woman:
Boxcars tangling. Think of the sky dark.

Man:
Some forgotten lust knocking on the door after midnight.

Woman:
Taking them away.

Man:
Returning them to the same place the next morning.

Woman:
Every day at a different hour.

Woman moves to window. Silently pounds fists against wall, slowly then increasing in audibility though not rate during Man’s speech.

Man:
Once in a lifetime. Pause. He imagined he could feel the bricks wearing silently away under the rains. Imagined all the bricks dissolving into a reddish sludge filling the gutters, the drains, the river. Imagined himself sitting there in the rain, water rushing down his body, the whole city a rusted river rushing over his ankles, his feet. It would never happen, he knew. Pause. She imagined she heard him asking “would you like some breakfast?”

Woman whirls around.

Woman:
Imagined!

Man:
Please pass the bacon.

Woman throws the bacon at him, hard.

Man:
Please pass the bread.

Woman throws the bread.

Man:
Please pass the pancakes.
Woman throws the pancakes.

Man:
Please pass the eggs.

Woman makes as if to throw eggs, hesitates, suddenly a siren is heard offstage, loud. Stage lights out as a flashing red light shines brightly through window. Man and Woman turn table on side, top towards audience, hide behind it. After a while a spot comes up on top edge of table. Man appears in spot, just head and hands. Next section played as if puppet show.

Man:
The bastards have got the girl!
Woman pops up, whacks man with soft bat, as in Punch and Judy show, pops down again after speech each time. Man visible always.

Woman:
Permission revoked!

Man:
She called out his name in the voice of-

Woman:
Identification cancelled!

Man:
Money changed hands.

Woman:
Procedure interrupted!

Man:
I want to be a real boy!

Woman:
Position terminated!

Woman whacks Man repeatedly until he sinks behind table. A woman’s loud piercing scream is heard from backstage left. Man pops up, Man and Woman look at each other in terror. Spotlight out. They flip table to original position, sit in facing chairs. Man turns flashlight onto Woman’s face.

Man:
Where do you live?

Woman remains silent throughout questioning.

Man:
How long have you lived there?
What are your rooms like?
What is the view from your window?
When were you first aware of all this?

Woman takes flashlight from Man, shines it in his face.

Woman:
When did you first feel the need to know?

Flashlight off. Lights up on Man and Woman at table. Man grips Woman’s wrist.

Man:
I came home today and the door was wide open. You must not have closed it correctly and the wind must have blown it open. Why can’t you learn to shut the door correctly? That’s why we have a door in the first place, so we can shut it tightly.
Woman pulls arm away from Man’s grasp. Lights out. Lights up on Man and Woman at table. As Man speaks he climbs up on table to act out his story.

Man:
I bumped my head on the kitchen door and the handle keeps coming off.

Woman:
You don’t have a kitchen door.

Man:
The pancakes are trapped in the oven. They’re screaming. It sounds like someone’s smothering them. Oh, they’re so young. This is a tragedy.

Woman:
You don’t like pancakes.

Man:
I’m off to the rescue. I’m trying to force the kitchen door open with my slippers. The pancakes are screaming, I’m trying to call the police. I’m trying to lower myself in through the kitchen window by the belt from my bathrobe.

Woman:
You don’t wear slippers. You don’t own a telephone or a bathrobe. You don’t even have a kitchen of your own. You’re standing on my back porch, pounding on my back door, and you’re naked and hungover.

Pause as Man climbs down, sits in chair, slumps over table, head on folded arms.

Woman:
She imagined she could feel the bricks wearing silently away under the rains. Imagined all the bricks dissolving into a reddish sludge filling the gutters, the drains, the river. Imagined herself sitting there in the rain, water rushing down her body, the whole city a rusted river rushing over her ankles, her feet. Pause. It would never happen, she knew.

Woman slumps over table same as Man. After some moments, Man raises his head to look at her. Lowers it again. Woman raises her head to look at him. Lowers it again. Man raises, lowers again. Woman raises, lowers again. Man again. Woman again. Then both raise heads at the same moment and, seeing each other, leap out of their chairs and run to opposite sides of stage, facing away from each other. Long pause. Man begins very slowly to play pattycake by himself: clap, clap, extends one hand. No response from Woman. Clap, clap, extends the other hand. No response. Again. Again. Finally Woman begins to mirror his actions. Clap, clap, extend. They thus begin to play pattycake together though they are separated. The game speeds up. Lights begin to flicker as during imminent power failure. They lose the rythmn, look around frantically as lights flicker wildly. They turn and run towards each other. Lights go out before they meet.

Man turns flashlight close up on Woman’s face. They are seated at the table.

Man:
How is the space described? How many rooms are there and what do they contain? How many windows are there? And how many doors in how many walls?

Woman:
There are some doors that open in and some doors that open out. What more do you need to know?

Flashlight out. Lights up on Man standing down left away from window facing away from stage. Woman standing at window looking out.

Man:
Don’t ever let go of the way you hold yourself.

Woman:
It’s your ego. Do what you want with it.

Man:
Boxcars tangling. Think of the sky dark.

Woman:
Every day at a different hour.

Man:
Once in a lifetime. Pause. All the pieces of it spread out in his hands like glass. He whispered in a voice of travelling fragments. The sound of suitcases clicking shut around the undertow. Put my life in a box for me. Loosen up the bolts holding the guardrails around the observation deck - let me see the ground as it races by.

Woman begins to place a tablecloth over the table.

Woman:
I’m putting a wind around the surface of it. And I’m going to put some houses on the surface so you can get away from the wind. Maybe some clouds in the sky so you’ll be able to tell when the wind’s coming. I mean otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see it coming, would you? And I think I shoul fill the clouds with water so that when the wind comes, it’ll rain. So you’ll have to cover up and get inside the house even if you’ve forgotten to watch the sky for the coming of clouds. So the wind will pass over harmlessly. What do you think?

Lights out, stage dark.

Drunken Jungle was performed at Eye Gallery on Valencia Street on June 10th, 1984. I'd rehearsed the play with two actors (I was The Man) for a couple weeks, but both of them bailed out at the last minute, literally they just didn't show up that night. So I had to get some volunteers from the audience to wing it with me. I think Steve Perkins was one of those volunteers, & maybe Amy Elliott was the other? In 1988, John Rieger secured a production grant from New American Radio & produced Drunken Jungle as a radio play, starring Leo Downy (Man), Abigail Van Alyn (Woman) & Julian Lopez-Morillas (Doctor). I guess it aired nationally for awhile. The script was published in July 1990 in Prism International, a publication of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. An audiocassette compilation accompanied this print journal & featured an excerpt from the New American Radio piece.


THE DRUNKEN JUNGLE

the doctor
the man
the woman

darling,
the river discovers itself through the trees like a predator. we are glued to its back and ride along with it, listening to the beast sing, it is perhaps a fault of mine that I am here and you are there, that we are alone when we could be together, but here, in the sweat and oil of van noort’s boat, beneath the flat yellow sky, it seems that things could not be otherwise. for- give me or forgive the world.
van noort’s little steamboat. such a toy anywhere else, here, such a density to it. the sound it makes. after four days I can remember no other sound. a million strange birds sail overhead silently. the jungle is a picture without words. the indians, the plague. ideas. you, darling. you. you.

so van noort has brought a doctor.

so van noort has brought a doctor.

from the cities to the land, a european. weak-kneed and syphilitic.

young, handsome and european. another moist drop of civilization. what a sponge this jungle is. well, he may cure them of the plague.

cure them of the plague. just what we need. weak-kneed and syphilitic indians.

sometimes I think of them as children. innocent and playful. but sometimes their dark faces, dark eyes.

I wonder if this doctor is a christian. now they fear the jungle. he would make them fear God. better for them if they feared man.

I must remain inside the house. to prevent my skin from drying out.

I am satisfied that they fear me.

I am becoming afraid of the smallest things. a soft sound my husband makes in his sleep. deep in his throat. the sound van noort’s boat makes when I can no longer hear it. the shadow of trees on the living room floor.

will the doctor drink whiskey, I wonder, will he seduce my wife. will he dry up with fever and blow away towards the mountains.

I am afraid of the absence of so many things.


my dear,
jungle grows thick beneath the wooden floor. vines gripping supporting timbers. such a drooping weight above the tin roof. my body is host to a thousand spores. soon my skin will bloom into scales of white fungus. a thin white fur of spider’s web. my neck begins to harden into a brown bark. my eyelashes have become ferns and I am forced to push them aside in order to see the jungle and the indian village around me.

I must stay inside. my skin drowns in a pungent liquid which congeals from the sullen air around me. my breath weakens under such an effort.

doctors are a habit that cities have.

I dream of cooler air. and cities of beaten silver high in the mountains.

the indians will no longer work. claiming exhaustion and illness.

the indians sneak into our house at night. stealing our rice and our coffee. I believe they do this.

the indians conspire to steal my house. the doctor conspires with my wife. I have begun to carry a rifle at all times.

I am afraid of dying in my sleep. in the darkness. I burn candles in my room to keep the darkness away.


my beloved,
there is such a heat here. like the first time I made love to you. in the pantry of my father’s house in london. in my best woolen suit. under the weight of your satins and crinolines. this place is as hot as your petticoats, as dark as that panty. the only other europeans here. across the river from the village. a man and a woman in a large wooden house. filled with antique furniture. the man is mad. I pity the woman. my work with the indians has only barely begun. conditions here are very bad. I have only a little penicillin left. for the fevers and sores. captain van noort is bringing more. if he manages to steam his way up the river before the floods start. these letters will have to wait. and leave with the captain.

thunder is the house we live in. lightning is the way we feel about it. I watch my rifle like a pet.

you’ve never understood rain.

the doctor thinks I’m already dead. refuses to visit. I chart my own blood pressure. insert my own catheter. the temperature is rising.

a diagnosis is a perishable grocery. sometimes I wish the doctor was right.

I sleep on the living room couch. a fifth of cuban whiskey a day. I have lived a tree-lined life.

sweeping is one activity. you won’t eat what I cook. you know how fond I am of poisons.

my wife is a sharpened pencil. I forgave her a long time ago.

there is a fine white dust on the dark floors. there are poisons which can be absorbed through the soles of the feet.

substance is bliss. I have emptied my head till it sounds with the flat tone of a tin bell.

I used to wash the blood from your sheets. now I simply hand them from the porch rail. a signal to travellers. stay away.

we eat separate food in separate rooms. we sleep in separate rooms. we never speak. this is love.

yesterday I killed the last pig. a young skinny one. just for the thrill of it.

only music makes me happy now. I dance for hours at night, without lights.

we have no phonograph here. we are running low on groceries.

I pretend I’m dancing with the doctor.

when I want to make love with someone, I send for the doctor, complaining of fever. I lie in the bed I used to share with my husband and arouse myself. when the doctor comes, I think, I will pull him into bed with me. the doctor never arrives. he reads the bloody sheets and runs back to town. gripping himself.

the doctor has taken to hiding in the bushes. where he can see into the house. I know he wants to fuck my wife. I stagger out onto the porch. whiskey bottle in one hand and penis in the other. I KNOW YOU WANT TO FUCK MY WIFE, I yell. I shake my penis at him and laugh. I LOVE MY WIFE. YOU SEE: SHE IRONS THESE SHEETS BEFORE SHE HANGS THEM OUT.

the drapes in my bedroom hang perfectly straight. one inch above the dusty floor. I have many photographs in unique frames of ivory and brass. I have bamboo flutes from indonesia, lacquerware from china, jade from thailand. I have colonial american antiques. I tell myself: this is enough. this is enough.

I have always understood rain.


my sweetest love,
they truly are mad, those two. their servants left them long ago. they tell tales of hideous warfare between the man and the woman. the servants could not sleep at night because of the noise. I myself have seen evidence of these things. from the bushes outside their house. at night when the heat and mosquitoes keep me from sleep. I will not visit them anymore. though they feign illness and continually ask for my aid. the woman lies in bed constantly. she is an hysteric. it is no wonder, living with him. we all just sit here in the village listening to their savage songs. there is no morphine left. no penicillin. only a few are strong enough to fish and gather food.

though they are basically a healthy people. and this may save them. if we can get the penicillin in time. the river will begin to rise soon and still no sign of van noort, my one real fear is that their hypochondria will spread to the indians. one plague is enough.

until I breath the clear air from your skin I am yours.

I am capable of so much. my hands are small keys to the fetters of a gigantic dungeon. I am a wizard and whiskey is a savage elixir. I no longer drink the stuff. instead it rises out of my gorge. pure and clear like the most beautiful amber. it flows from my mouth back into the bottles from whence it came. and I cork it and place it upon my shelf. I have distilled it and purified it. it has passed through feverish heat. the furnace I am. I have taken its secret from it and it wells up from my throat in gratitude. I have over a hundred full bottles on the shells now. with still a huge mound of empty ones on the ground next to the house. I will fill them all before I die. I will bequeath them to humanity to spread comfort over all the world. I will be loved by mankind for my generosity.

the doctor came to me last night in his passionate need. he tore at my flesh with his teeth. burned me up with his tongue. small teeth. like a boy or a european. but a tongue like one of those immense black snakes that droop from trees. swallowing young pigs at a gulp. I strangled him and tore out his entrails. I gorged myself on him and raided him from the dead. I have feasted on his marrow and so he belongs to me. he cannot speak but with the words I give him. I force him to say my name over and over and over. this is a power I have over him and he will come to me again tonight to drink my blood.

I am a giant. I have smashed my rifle like a matchstick and this makes me laugh. I am so tall I can see out over the jungle to the cities on the edge. I only fit inside this house because I am a wizard and I have that kind of magic. I see van noort the dutchman down the river. his engine broken and useless. I could light the fire inside its furnace if I desired, and this makes me laugh. my lips spew golden elixir hilariously onto the trees. every green leaf shines. amber liquid blends with mud and the river swells like the veins swell in my arms. I vomit profusely into another clear glass bottle.

my husband smashes the furniture in his part of the house. vomits blood constantly. this morning he caught me sneaking into the kitchen. his hands circled my wrists like manacles. it is only because I have sharp teeth that I escaped. I will leave here with the doctor. on captain van noort’s boat. we will sail to europe where we will have a large home with many closets and a kitchen with a huge pantry full of groceries. I will wear satin and lace and we will make love everywhere.


my only darling,
the river rises perceptibly every succeeding day. despite my distrust of the lack of regard for missionaries, I have taught the indians how to pray. we pray for van noort and his safe and imminent arrival. the tribe’s dead will soon outnumber its living, at this rate. if only we had penicillin. if only we were somehow out of this fetid jungle. perhaps in the mountains. at the top of cool tall mountains. if only. but the mountains are an arduous journey. none of us have the strength to leave this place. I think of your white breasts constantly. the large house caught on fire last night. we saw the flames through the dense trees. a sudden rain eventually put out the blaze. I hope they are both dead.

I have killed the doctor. he came to me urgently. forcefully. he put his mouth on me. and it burned like fire. so much pain that I couldn’t stand it and had to strangle him. I had to drain his blood and drink it so the secret would stay hidden within me. if van noort found out he would leave me. leave me here forever.

I am a mountain. I am the tallest mountain and all the mountains. I am growing larger each second and my vision is swallowing everything.

my lover, van noort, came to me last night. such a cool touch. his body was almost solid against my skin. so I know he is near. I could feel the river in the way his body moved me. maybe tomorrow he will finally arrive. I will dress at dawn tomorrow in my white dress and float down the river to meet him.


love,
barely the strength to write. but writing makes me think of you and this gives me strength. we are together in the mountains. there is a breeze. the indians have taught us how to pray

I send fire down my slopes. I am avalanches of stone and rain. ice and fire. I am not afraid. I am pure amber mountain and the clouds are barely visible below me.

a great shadow has swallowed the sun. the swollen river brushes the lower leaves of the tallest trees. the water is quickly cooling around my body while I swim towards van noort’s boat. when I reach him I will never leave his arms. I swim towards him with joy in me.

Home On The Range was developed with Jeanne Gallo and performed with her during the Polyphonix 8 festival at the San Francisco Art Institute on November 19, 1984. And again at the New Performance Gallery on May 12, 1985. This was one of four plays in an online chapbook "Twentieth-Century Plays" published as "108:94" in 3rdness Press' series. They're out of Hermance GA.

Home On The Range
with Jeanne Gallo

Stage dark, then soft blue light up stage right as if sunrise. Man seated down left reading newspaper which hides his face and torso. Wearing dark pants, white shirt, work shoes. Woman seen behind him, wearing floral print summer dress, bending over straw laundry basket. As light slowly brightens she picks up basket and meanders, pulling foot-high jersey cows from basket and placing them upright around upstage area. When basket is empty, she places it by the other empty chair, about seven feet from Man’s and at the same level. As she sits in this chair blue light fades slowly as yellow light, nearer to overhead, fades slowly up as if late morning.

Man:
There hadn’t been any reason to go on living since the year the cows died, but the people went on living anyway. They walked out in the chillblain-blue mornings season after season, staring at the smooth green hills and kicking at the brown soil as if there were anything they could do about the way things were. They stared at the ghosts of the cows and the ghosts of the cows stared back, patient and dull. The cows were out there, already staring and chewing, when the first blue light began to make a hollow out of the darkness. They were there when the gaunt farmers pushed open the rusty screen doors and spat wicked curves into the dew. They stared at the farmers and the farmers stared back. They were there in the afternoons when the farmers and their boys came trudging sidelong back from the fields. And they were out there, staring and chewing, long past the time when the last farmer’s wife hurried out to pull down forgotten washing from the wire line.

Man places newspaper down on stage. Light is now all yellow, and bright. Woman pulls vapor respirator from basket, places it over face and begins to breathe. After a while the Man, still seated, leans and stretches his arm out toward her, palm up. She hesitates but eventually leans and stretches, still seated, to pass the respirator to him. Only by concerted stretching can they make the exchange. When he finally has it in his grasp, they both return to upright seated position. He breathes through respirator for a few moments until Woman stretches out her arm towards him. Again reluctance but eventually he stretches it out to her. Upright, she breathes, soon he stretches, she passes. He breathes, she stretches, he passes. And again. And again. And again. Finally during one of their transfers the respirator falls to the ground accidentally, causing them both to jump up in shock and make abstract gestural and vocal maneuvers which derive from codes for disaster. At least two series of four distinct maneuvers for each. Finally she pulls scissors from the basket, runs to him, pushes him into his chair and begins to wildly cut his hair.

Man:
I’ve lost my sense of direction and I’ve ended up on top of a steep slippery cliff.

Woman:
Good intentions.

Man:
There are people, people that I know, lying scattered on the ground at the base of the cliff.

Woman:
Bad weather.

Man:
I’m worried because they’re not moving.

Woman:
Mistaken motives.

Man:
I’m worried because I’m up here and I’m all alone, and I’m not moving.

Woman:
High expectations.

Man:
And I’m worried because they’re all down there, and they’re all alone, and they’re not moving.

Woman:
Low energy.

Man:
I’m sure there’s been a disaster.

The scissors begin to take control of the Woman’s hands. They clip away furiously as they lead her downstage center, away from the Man.

Woman:
Lying in someone else’s bed.

Man:
It feels like there’s been a disaster.

Woman:
Lying in your own bed.

Man:
I feel like a disaster.

Woman:
Lying in any bed you’ve made.

Woman has succeeded in throwing scissors to the stage. The sound of their impact shocks both actors. Man jumps to his feet. They both stare at the scissors, stunned.

Man:
Somewhere between here and there is a disastrous event. Where did all the cows go? Why don’t those people get up?

As she speaks, Woman slowly walks back upstage to a spot against the rear wall directly behind her chair.

Woman:
Listening when you don’t want to. Talking when you really want to listen. Wishing someone else would say something for a change. Hearing things at night that aren’t really there. Worrying about something that’s already happened.

Man slowly backs away to a corresponding spot behind his chair as he speaks.

Man:
I just want to pick up where I left off. I just want to find out where I was before I started walking. I just want to go back to where I was before I started walking, and start walking.

They both begin to walk slowly back downstage, each with an arm stretched out towards the other.

Woman:
Sensations of loss can be handed down genetically.

Man:
Waking up in a strange room.

Woman:
Coming back only to find things have changed.

Man:
Waking up to a familiar face for the very first time.

Woman:
Coming back only to find things haven’t changed.

Lighting has changed as the daylight changes: high overhead and white, and now deepens into yellow as it begins to descend stage left. Man and Woman have arrived downstage, stand in front of their chairs. The respirator lies on the stage between them.

Man:
Walking out into a frost-covered garden. I can feel the turnips burrowing down.


Woman:
I can smell winter in the air.

Man:
There are rumors of floods in the valley. There are rumors of tornadoes. Cows keep the field from rising.

The Woman lunges for the respirator but the Man is quick and also manages to grab it. A brief tug-of-war, then a pause. They each have a hand on the respirator as it rests on the floor. They glare at each other, faces inches apart. They speak loudly and very rapidly:

Woman:
I’m on the other line, can I call you back?

Man:
Hello?

Woman:
The fact that you know my phone number doesn’t give you the right to call.

Man:
Hello?

Woman:
Can I call you back? I’m defrosting the freezer.

Another struggle, same result. Speaking yet more rapidly:

Man:
You wash and I’ll dry.

Woman:
You clean ‘em and I’ll cook ‘em.

Man:
You make the bed and I’ll sweep the floor.

Woman:
You find a job and I’ll find an apartment.

Man:
You work days and I’ll work nights.

Woman:
You pay for dinner and I’ll pay for drinks.

Man:
You pay for the movie and I’ll pay for the babysitter.

Woman:
You slop the hogs and I’ll water the garden.

Man:
You hitch the saddle and I’ll plow the field.

Woman:
You feed the cows and I’ll feed the chickens.

Man:
The cows are dead!

The yellow lighting has faded away and there is only bright blue from stage left, as in beginning but from opposite. This slowly dims, goes out by the end of next two speeches. The Man snatches the respirator from the Woman with one violent motion, turns away from her and starts to breathe through it, still on his knees. She leaps onto his back trying to reach for the respirator. He rears up and shoves her away. She falls to the stage then rises to hands and knees, facing away from him. He remains bent over, breathing.

Woman:
The cow is hit by the train. The train starts to slide off the bridge. The bridge starts to slide into the river. The river starts to slide into the ocean. The ocean starts to swell up into the air. The tears begin to fall like rain.

The Man turns to look at her. He holds out the respirator, which she takes, sitting to breathe through it. He sits slowly so that they are back-to-back.

Man:
The act of undressing. The pursuit of disaster. We offer prayers for this sort of delirium but cannot live long in such a state. This dome is a permeable one. Light slides through it and away. With relentless regularity. I can feel its damp tunnel-breathing. We are each a lung of it.

Lights completely out, stage dark.

This version of Necromancy was performed by me & Dede Puma at The Lab, San Francisco, May 19-21, 1988. An earlier version was performed by me & Michelle Soleau at SF State on October 7, 1982. And the very first version was performed by me & Amy Elliott at Tattoo Rose on April 27, 1983. Excerpts were published in Channel vol. 1 No. 6, San Francisco, by editor/publisher Sue Carlson in 1983.

NECROMANCY

Dark stage. Someone carrying a flashlight enters and shines its beam cautiously across all the surfaces of the stage and across the audience. Finally the beam stops to illuminate and examine hieiroglyphs (both Egyptian and fake) painted in white on the black back wall of the stage.

(Female voice - over):

Part of her floated in the Sargasso Sea. And another part lay at the bottom of the Red Sea where it narrowed and began to slope up into the Gulf of Suez. Bridges were built with iron from exotic lands. Heavy iron ships sailed from port to port, carrying cargoes of spice, rubies and optic fibers. A restless wind dominated the entire landscape. And in the silence imposed by the sight of stars rising from a vast field of grain, she began to stir. Powder-dry ruins of ancient walls crumbled and mixed with salt water to form a thick mud that clung to her skin. She swam awkwardly upwards, seeking the light.

There is an audible commotion. Lights come up full, revealing a Woman wearing pith helmet and carrying a flashlight. Also a Man wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase and a dripping-wet wind-whipped umbrella. It is obviously his entrance which has caused the commotion.

Man/Psychiatrist: What a mess! Oh! You surprised me. You’re here early. Just a second. I’ll be right with you.

It’s miserable out there, don’t you think? How did you get here so fast?

I was stuck in traffic, it was raining and the streetlights were all screwed up. How are you today?

He waits for an answer but there’s no response.

Okay….

We’ll I’m glad to see you’re doing so well. Lets start off where we ended last session, shall we? When did you first become interested in ancient Egypt? And in Hatshepsut in particular?

Woman/Patient: My mother used kohl on her eyes.

Psychiatrist: I assume you’re interested in Hatshepsut because she was the only woman pharoah.

Patient: I don’t know much about her.

Psychiatrist: Well, none of us do: the inscriptions which were erased, the - uh - awkwardness of her situation.

Patient: Do you feel awkward? Are you uncomfortable

Psychiatrist: I’m being paid to make you feel uncomfortable

Patient: I’m not.

Psychiatrist: Oh yes you are - you just won’t admit it.

Patient: What has this got to do with Hatshepsut?

Psychiatrist: Back to her again! Your interest borders on the obsessive.

Patient: Obsessions don’t have borders.

Psychiatrist: Do you identify with Hatshepsut?

Patient: I don’t even know who she is or what you’re talking about.

Psychiatrist: You mean you’re ignorant of the actual facts.

Patient: I know more about her than you do.

Psychiatrist: I’d like to play a little game with you now.

Patient: To help me.

Psychiatrist: You can be Hatshepsut and I’ll be your brother, Thotmes III.

Patient: I am Hatshepsut. And you are Egypt.

Psychiatrist: What do you mean?

Patient: Don’t depress me with your ignorance. And take your hands out of your pockets.

Psychiatrist: Let’s get on with the game, shall we?

Patient: I suppose we start with my parents.

Psychiatrist: Your parents? Your parents are dead, aren’t they?

Patient: That’s one point for you.

Psychiatrist: One point?

Patient: You said we were playing a game.

Psychiatrist: You can’t- You can’t start keeping score - I haven’t told you what the rules are yet.

Patient (laughs): Well then, go ahead, explain yourself, give me some....background...information. (Woman places a pith helmet on Man’s head.)

Explorer: Thank you, thank you. Thank you for the generous introduction.

Good evening ladies. Ladies, I must say, it gives me great pleasure to be here tonight speaking to such a beautiful bouquet of feminine flowers- (Woman blows her nose.)

My adventure began when I set out for Egypt on the 14th of February. (Man unrolls large dropcloth on which is drawn a map of Egypt.) The ocean voyage was of no special importance, merely a price I had to pay in order to reach Cairo. Cairo is indispensible now, for facilitating adventure and discovery and the placement of history within a proper perspective. Within the economics of Egypt, Cairo is the capitol. With capital, within Cairo, I purchased the supplies I would need for my expedition. Many of the supplies were expensive and hard to find, Egypt being a backwards nation. Luckily for my ambition, labor was cheap.

(Explorer bends Woman over, piles pith helmet etc. on her back, starts shoving her around.)

We shouldered our burdens and set off across the desert. The journey was a difficult one: the winds swept round and round, the sky burned like fire. Many of my bearers died of thirst. (Man pushes Woman down onto map of Egypt. He stands straddling her as she assumes Sphinx pose.) But that long march was of no special importance, merely a price I had to pay in order to reach Karnak and the valley of the tombs of the pharoahs.

From my tent I stared across the Nile at the desolate necropolis. The satisfaction I felt was a triumphant and sexual one. The temples and tombs rose from the feminine body of the desert like the nipples, lips and ridges of a woman. Egypt was in my pocket, and desire filled my grasping hand.

(Man wraps Woman up in dropcloth/map as he speaks, drags her across stage and leaves her there.) Hatshepsut’s tomb was deceptive, in that she had been removed to another tomb, another crypt, a guarded and secretive one. Generations of petty thieves and graverobbers had been fooled by the deception. Thus she was saved for me. I found her, in a hill of bodies in a cave in the cliffs.

I built hills of accomplishments in my pockets.

Hatshepsut herself is of no special importance. What is important is my having found the faint red trace of her lipstick on the mirror of history. I really don’t know much about her. She was a woman, traveling alone, without servants or ornaments, down the dark waters of the river of the dead. She was seeking ... Osiris, and the eternal light, but she has found ... me. She fills my pocket like a stone, like an unfulfilled lust.

[Phone rings]

(Woman crawls out of shroud, sees Man ignoring ringing phone, goes to answer it herself.)

Woman/Secretary: Yeah. Uh, well, I’ll see if he’s free. (Sotto voce to Man:) It’s Senmut.

Man/Thotmes III: Oh god. Do you know what he wants? Oh never mind, I’ll take it. (Takes phone from Woman.) Senmut. What can I do for you? (Listens.) Mmm. Mm-hm. Mm-hmmmm. Senmut, uh- listen, I picked you for this project because I didn’t think you had any scruples. (Listens.) Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes I know her inscriptions are beautiful…“a certain elegant style, a certain high quality of craftsmanship...” Yeah, all right, I know what the fucking carvings in her temple look like, I see them every fucking day. (Listens.) “Each heiroglyph is expressive of far more than mere biographical information...” (Sotto voce to Woman:) - I need a martini-

Secretary: We’re out of olives.

Thotmes III: Can you go get some? (Listens.) Uh-huh, culture, uh-huh, worldview, uh-huh, para- paradigm!? Now just wait a minute Senmut that’s going a bit too far! What you call paradigm I call the raging ego of my lunatic bitch sister. Don’t tell me to calm down, I’m the Pharaoh! I understand the point you’re trying to make, Senmut, but you’ve got to understand my predicament, I just can’t stand seeing her name all over the fucking place, it bugs me. Listen, this conversation is really depressing me. Thinking about her ties me up in knots, you know that. (Listens.) Your attitude really depresses me, this whole mess really depresses me. (Listens.) Uh, yeah, I’m sorry it’s depressed you too Senmut. Listen, let’s not talk about this any more. Tell you what, why don’t you come over to the palace & we’ll have a barbeque. Sure you do, we’ll get a coupla six-packs of Nubian beer and a coupla skinny courtesans and we’ll have a great time. Consider it a direct order, Senmut. That’s more like it. See you in awhile.

Spotlight up on Woman hanging up a clothesline, singing “My Blue Heaven.” Man walks over, puts his hand on the clothesline, tugging on some as he follows it towards woman, eventually cornering her as she hooks her end of the clothesline on the opposite wall.

Woman/Wife (slightly nervous): I just came down here to find out if you wanted anything from the store.

Man/Husband: Let’s play a game. You be a city and I’ll be your suburbs.

Wife: I don’t want to be a city.

Husband: We’ll communicate by subway.

Wife: I don’t want to play a game.

Husband: Your bed can be the suburbs, you can be a mall, and I’ll be a consumer.

Wife: I just came down here to ask you if you needed anything from the store.

Husband: You can be a station wagon, and I’ll be cub scouts.

Wife: I’ve got a bladder infection and I don’t want to play any stupid game.

Husband: I’ll be a library, a family reunion and a hall closet, and you can be an old photograph album.

Wife: I’m going to pick up some cranberry juice, do you want anything, some vienna sausages or anything?

Husband: I’ll be Cairo, and you can be a tourist, looking for...tampons...and airplane glue! (Woman leaves.) I’ll a commuter, and you’re the train! Pulling away! From the station…!

Man exits just after her, then immediately re-enters in the act of putting on a surgical gown. Woman follows closely at his heels, trying to help him tie the back of the gown, but he is agitated and elusive.

Man/Doctor: These damn student nurses. I fly halfway around the world to perform dissections like this, I get paid a sum of money which borders on the obscene even for such a surgical genius as myself, but I can’t even find a nurse to help me tie up.

Woman/Nurse: Here, let me help you with that.

Doctor: Is everything ready out there?

Nurse: The audience seems to have settled down, the television crew is all set up.

Doctor: It’s about time, let’s get to it.

Nurse (Turning so Man can tie her gown up:) Doctor, could you-?

Man ignores her & exits. Woman also exits, then immediately reenters, stands behind the mummy. Man enters, scrubbed hands raised, stands behind mummy. She claps.

Doctor: Thank you for the generous applause. Ladies & gentlemen, for centuries this mummy has hidden its secrets from us. But tonight, these hands…will reach into this pocket of mystery and extract the information that is rightfully ours. (Aside to nurse:) Pretty good size audience tonight.

Nurse: Mystery stories are very popular.

Doctor: Let’s start with the scalpel.

Woman revs up a sabre-saw or circular saw.

Nurse: Mystery stories can be very fun to unravel.

Woman hands Man the saw.

Doctor: Note the thick outer layer which protects the body from harm. (Man saws into the Mummy.)

Nurse: History can be thought of as a giant nut, and science can be thought of as a giant nutcracker. In the future, x-ray technology will save us the trouble of cutting them up.

Doctor: Blackened muslin and sticky natron have replaced the skin. The aromatic fluids that replaced the drained-away blood are now gone. Forceps.

Woman hands Man a drill. He drills into the mummy.

Doctor: Spreader. (Woman hands Man a crowbar.) This embalming was poorly performed.

Nurse: The quality of burial preparations was directly related to a person’s station in life. Such factors as class, wealth-

Doctor: Ladies & gentlemen! ...Mummy number 417 is ... female.

Nurse: Many myths and legends have grown up around this ancient practice.

Doctor: This mummy won’t come back to haunt you. My knife has seen to that.

Nurse: Victim of an undying curse.

Doctor: Nurse, clean up this mess.

Doctor exits quickly. Woman cleans up a little, walking slowly around the mummy as she speaks.

Woman/Maidservant: Hatshepsut, brilliant daughter of the sun god, it is I, your servant, bearing gifts. Warm clothing for the voyage, oil for lamps against the darkness, and this leather pouch for relief from pain. Do you remember when you bled for the first time? Your mother made a charm bag for you, out of the efet herb, which causes pain in demons. Out of honey, which is sweet to living men but bitter to those who are yonder and come in from the dead. Out of the evil parts of the ebdu fish, out of the jaw of the meret, out of the backbone of the perch. I have brought you such a bag today. No honey this time, though. I hope you understand.

My, you certainly have a nice tomb here. These inscriptions are beautiful. Ah but they are only the memory of a single rose when compared to the full bouquet of your beauty. One who knows you not, upon reading these, will only catch a fleeting blur of you. These words are a deception.

Deceptions multiply in our age. Your brothers told you that a giant eagle had dropped you from the sky and that your mother had caught you, saving you but breaking her own back. They told you that that was how you were born and how your mother died. I told you the truth. Some nights you would dream you were falling from your mother’s bright white belly. As bright and white as the sun in an eagle’s eye.

I pity your mother, who birthed a daughter such as you and never knew it. You were the daughter of the sun and you burned, so quickly. In life you were like a whippet, nervous and fast. Your death came quickly too. I must go now. I pray that you travel quickly down the dark waters till the river returns to the sunlit lands.

Lights up to show Woman poking mummy with a pitchfork.

Woman/Wife: I think it’s done.

Man/Husband: Well, carve it up!

Wife: I wouldn’t even know where to start.

Husband: Just take a knife and start cutting.

Wife: This barbeque was you idea. You do it.

Husband: I’ll be there in a minute.

Wife: I don’t even think I want to eat any of this anyway.

Husband: Just a second, honey, the movie’s almost over.

Wife: I’m so glad your parents are dead. Otherwise we’d have to invite them over on holidays.

Husband: This has got Boris Karloff as the Mummy. Did you ever see this one?

Wife: Everyone else has a flag out on their porch today. But we don’t.

Husband: You know, I remember, when I was a kid, I had a plastic model of a mummy, and I painted it so it looked like blood was coming out of its mouth.

Wife: I’m glad our parents were too old to fight in the war. And I’m glad you were too young.

Husband: Let’s have dinner out at the picnic table and watch the sky turn red. Then let’s go into the den and watch slides of our trip to Egypt, and hey - let’s call some friends and play tripoli and drink banana daquiris and then we’ll go to bed but I won’t be able to sleep, so I’ll go downstairs and start building an airplane model and - and you’ll come downstairs in the morning and you’ll find me and the top will be off the airplane glue and my head’ll be on the table asleep and-

Wife: That thing is burning back there. I’m going to go get the salad.

Man lights a cigarette. Film noir music plays.

Husband: She picked up the phone and dialed her friend Evelyn. Evelyn’s father had a brain tumor when he was in college. He was on the crew team. He showed me the pictures. It got so bad people were afraid to make jokes about him. He couldn’t see out of his left eye, he couldn’t hear out of his left ear, his face was numb, and he had to take incompletes in Botany and Ancient History. He had an operation and it helped a lot. I mean, it went away. He eventually moved to another city, where he drank a lot and met Evelyn’s mother. It finally killed him.

Woman is modeling a skirt in the mirror, unwittingly drawing the Man’s interest.

I’ll be a door-to-door salesman, and you try to guess what product I’m selling.

Wife: I’m not in the mood to buy.

Husband: You be the housewife and I’ll be the milkman.

Wife: Is that a frozen perch in your pocket or have you been reading National Geographic again?

Husband: I’ll be the husband, and you shut up.

Wife: I’ll be a blackboard and you can spend all your time erasing me.

Husband: Oh, I’ll be the villain and you can be the martyr.

Wife: I’ll be damned and you can go to hell!

Husband: I’ll be in the basement and you can work on your attitude.

Man exits. Woman wraps skirt around shoulders as if it is a shawl.

Woman/Little Girl: Dear Granma, thank you very much for the toiletries set you sent me for Christmas. Mom is making me write my thank you notes on Christmas Day so I haven’t had much time to play with it, I haven’t had time to play with the comb and the brush and the makeup. I will also like the mirror, which came with the toiletries set. I have, however, had time to play with the lipstick and the mascara, and now it’s all gone. My dolls all look beautiful, because they have red cheeks, and black circles under their eyes. Also for Christmas I got colored pencils, a perfume, and a diary and a photograph album of my very own. Some new dresses and a subscription to National Geographic. And my first bra. I gotta go now, cause I got a lot more thank-you notes to write. Thank you again very, very much, and I hope you’re feeling better. I love you very, very much.

Man enters with rifle, sneaks up on woman, presses rifle to her temple.

Man/Psychiatrist: Can we get back to your mother?

Woman/Patient: She was fond of appliqués, and stitchery.

Psychiatrist: Some motives are hidden, buried; there are deceptions.

Patient: She was Caucasian, and very feminine.

Psychiatrist: Her daughter was like a sharpened pencil.

Patient: Her daughter had a strange skin condition, make no mistake about that.

Psychiatrist: There is evidence to the contrary.

Patient: Records can be altered, evidence destroyed. Letters burned.

Psychiatrist: What about your mother?

Patient: She was around for a long time, and then she wasn’t around for a longer time.

Psychiatrist: Did she have any brothers? For corroboration of her story?

Patient: She had 7000 brothers, but they all died at birth.

Psychiatrist: What about the daughter you mentioned?

Patient: She was like a whippet. She was nervous and fast and even elbow macaroni glued to her shoes couldn’t slow her down. She was a blur even when she stood still.

Psychiatrist: I love you because you’re full of details.

Patient: (nervously): I have to go, can I go now?

Psychiatrist: Are you afraid of violence? Are you afraid of dislocation? Are you afraid of leukemia, or sterility? Are you afraid of penicillin, or any other antibiotics? Are you afraid of tumors? Are you afraid of catheterization? (During this speech Man has been wrapping Woman’s head with gauze. When her head is completely wrapped, Man drifts off stage.) Are you afraid of surgery? Are you afraid of blood?

Woman sits in chair while her voice is heard, over.

Comb. Toothpaste. Razor. I hope they have bathtubs in hospitals; I hate to shave dry.

Mirror, lipstick. A basic red. Chewing gum. I better have my name taken off the emergency list at school, and off the carpool list, at least for awhile. Perfume, slippers - and tampax! I can’t believe I’m bleeding again. I thought all that was over years ago. They say it’s the medicine.

Let’s see...travel clock –picture album? No, that’s being silly. It was funny, so embarrassing, like the first time. More embarrassing, at my age. Where are my pantyhose?

I’ll miss the fireworks this year. First time in a long time. But then at least I’ll miss the July heat. Lying there in a nice air-conditioned room. A roll of life-savers. Dental floss. It hurt so much the first time. I had cramps for days. I laid in bed, I threw up.

Bobby pins. Midol. Eye shadow. I hope I don’t have to have an IV bottle. I hate needles. Mascara, rouge, I’ll have to write everything down for them so they don’t forget. Take out the garbage Tuesday night, change the sheets once a week. There’s frozen perch in the freezer for dinner tomorrow. Evelyn said she’d take the kids to cub scouts.

Crossword puzzles, find-a-word. Nail file. I’ll bring that book about the King Tut exhibit. It cost me $30 and I’ve barely just skimmed it once, just looking at the pictures. But I will bring pictures of my grandchildren. Since I won’t be able to see them this summer,.

Needle & thread. Thmnble, hairbrush, tweezers. And something for a little color. Hospitals are so white. It’s supposed to make you feel safe, I think, but it just makes me feels nervous.

Something to brighten up the room. Hmm, maybe I’ll just bleed on the sheeets- oh stop that! I don’t know, some ribbons or flowers, I don’t care. Damn, I wish dresses had pockets. Men have pockets, why can’t women? Reading glasses, TV Guide - I better hurry up, I have to go now.

Man/Psychiatrist: I think we’re beginning to get somewhere

Patient: I didn’t know we were traveling together.

Psychiatrist: Good, good - hostility is a positive sign.

Patient: Just a sign, not a symbol?

Psychiatrist: What do you think hostility symbolizes?

Patient: Anger.

Psychiatrist: Whom do you feel anger towards?

Patient: No one.

Psychiatrist: But you just said hostility symbolizes anger.

Patient: I never said I was hostile.

Psychiatrist: But it’s pretty obvious that you are.

Patient: That’s just your interpretation.

Psychiatrist: Are you angry with me?

Patient: Are you angry with me?

Psychiatrist: I asked you first.

Patient: I asked you first.

Psychiatrist: What kind of game are you playing?

Patient: What kind of game are you playing?

Psychiatrist: Stop it.

Patient: Stop it.

Psychiatrist: Stop it!

Patient: Stop it!

Psychiatrist: Stop it!!!

Patient: Stop it!!!

Psychiatrist: I’M IN CHARGE HERE!!!

(The Man smashes something he’s been building. There is a long pause.)

Patient: Have you ever had a patient with red skin?

Psychiatrist: Red skin?

Patient: I knew a girl with red skin.

Psychiatrist: I’m a psychologist not a dermatologist. Things would be so much easier if my patients could understand my predicament.

Patient: Maybe I should go see a dermatologist.

Psychiatrist: Maybe you should. All right, listen, the session’s almost over, let’s not waste anymore time. Do you identify with this red-skinned girl?

Patient: I identify with the redness of her skin and with the fact that her parents died before she was born.

Psychiatrist: What else do you know about this girl?

Patient: The darkness is calibrated by her movement through it. Her motion through the darkness has a calculated effect. She has the motives of a light source. But don’t feel sorry for her, just listen for the hesitant sound of her approach.

She is measured by her movement through darkness. Darkness enfolds hers, it arouses her, it expels her. She is a devastatingly brilliant point of light that cannot be seen. She feels sorry for herself; she makes noise. She charts her path through darkness by following her own shadow. Her methodology is devastatingly brilliant. This fact arouses her. The noise her shadow makes in the darkness is erotic. She is afraid of bright light. Expulsion creates meaning, she thinks. She is fooling herself. There is darkness outside and her map is black. She measures herself to a new position in space. This is how she moves. She waits for the sound of her own approach to catch up with her.

Psychiatrist: That’s enough, that’s quite enough. I think I have enough information to make a diagnosis.

Patient: You be the doctor and I’ll be very patient with you.

Psychiatrist: Her thin crimson arms hung limp from her sleeveless plain black dress. She hovered in the mist near her parents’ grave like a black and red bead from a broken necklace. She stood signaling.

Her mother had been a den mother. Sitting there surrounded by boy scouts, she had learned semaphore from her own mother. She was remarkably pretty in spite of her red skin. For years, ashamed, her father had forced her to wear turtlenecks and heavy makeup. She appealed to her mother. All her mother could do was to glue elbow macaroni to her shoes. For many years thereafter she wore black turtlenecks, pancake makeup and silver shoes.

After they had lowered her parents into the ground and filled the hole with dirt, she brought out from under her dress the model of a city. She placed it on the common mound and laid out railway tracks in a circle around the city and the grave. For many years thereafter a tiny subway train ran around and around and around....

Woman/Wife: Sorry for being cranky before; this bladder infection’s really bugging me. You could be Burton or Speke. I’ll be the source of the Nile; you can discover me. You’ll have to pretend you’re British.

Man/Husband: I’m not British.

Wife: You could pretend!

Husband: I’m not British.

Wife: Well, okay, I’ll be Christ and you can be Christianity.

Husband: I wanna be Christ.

Wife: Well....

Husband: I’m not in the mood to play anyway.

Wife: Oh all right, you can be Christ.

Husband: Great! Now: how about if you’re St Peter and I’m Nathan Hale and you’re also Capt Bligh and I’m Mr. Christian and you’re Capt. Ahab and I’m um...I’m uh....

Wife: Is something bothering you?

Husband: It’s against the rules to ask questions.

Wife: I’m sick of playing this game, it’s too full of details. I’m not going to play any more.

Husband (addressing audience): She’s right. Let’s just try to erase everything that just happened.

Wife: You know, if you had wanted to play colors, I would have been yellow & you could’ve been blue.

Husband: Can you pick up some olives at the store?

(Woman exits.)

My red daughter sits upstairs in her room for days at a time, building models. Models of cities. Or models of relationships. She build models of cities and models of relationships, and they’re the same. I guess I can’t really explain what it is she does, up there in her room. Her models are beautiful but I don’t understand them.

Buildings in her cities have names. Melissa. Bonnie. Carla. Roads have names too. Gail. Katherine. Mary Lou. There’s no John F. Kennedy Freeway in her city. She knows better. She knows nothing is free. There are always tradeoffs. In my day I traded possibility for certainty. And traded it back again. I traded rhyme for reason, courage for security, blood for iron.

Now, just because my red daughter builds models of cities, do not make the mistake of supposing that she has no soft edges. Oh, she can be hard as iron, she can be as much like iron as blood is like blood. But she is, after all, my daughter. And so she possesses a certain amount of my...instinct for business. She is as accomplished a trader as I am, in her own way. I can’t fathom her motives, but I know she has them.

When I died I imagined of course that she would remove my body. My corpse is an obstruction, spilled as it is here in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. She could have easily called the authorities and had this obstruction removed from this model house. Being dead, I am in no position to complain or to offer resistance. And yet she leaves me here to mummify on the carpet.

Perhaps I’m a challenge. Perhaps she enjoys the technical difficulty of trying to build her models around me. For her cities have spread to all corners of the room. Or perhaps I add weight to one of her suburban areas. Weight is one way to measure the value of goods. Without an accurate form of measurement, trade would be impossible. My red daughter sits upstairs in her room building scale models of cities of relationships.

(Woman enters.)

What took you so long?

Woman/Wife: The traffic signals are broken. There are red lights all over town.

Husband: You should’ve taken the freeway.

Wife: The supermarket was out of olives, out of charcoal, out of cranberry juice, out of its mind and it’s raining.

Husband: I couldn’t go to work today because of the rain so I was sitting here watching TV – there was a special on about King Tut.

Wife: The electricity is off, gas lines are broken, the roadways are darkened and the rain is falling.

Husband: I’ll be audio engineering, hospital insurance and medieval German history. Honey, you’ve gotta understand my predicament.

Wife: I want to move to a better city. One with more theaters, more churches and a better transit system.

Husband: Let’s play a game; I’ll be dominos and you can be a theory.

Wife: Look: I have to pick up the kids at cub scouts; do you want anything from the store?

Husband: I’ll be last winter and you can be lost mittens.

Wife: I’ll get some olives. (Woman exits.)

Husband: I’ll make the martinis.

I am terrified. What if my wife dies? I will be alone with my red daughter.

There was a death in the house yesterday. A sound like a blossom erupted from the upturned rose of my wife’s lips and that was all there was to it.

My red daughter never comes down from her room anymore, except to cook herself a scurrilous meal, or to find a bit of thread, or felt, or a page from a book. I am always stunned when I enter my library and she is unexpectedly there: a bold stroke of insubordination cradling a large volume in her thin arms. Her crimson skin cannot be ignored.

I sleep on a cot on the back porch, behind the kitchen. The house is usually very quiet, an autistic house. But sometimes, at night, I can hear her rat-like motions through the locked porch door. Sometimes I lie on my cot and I try to imagine what she’s doing with her hands. And how her redness fares in the dark.

I have a vision of my red daughter, after my death, slowly spreading through the house like permanganate in water. I wonder: are the things in her room red also?

(Woman enters & starts wrapping Man’s eyes with bandages.)

Woman/Patient: Your mother can be the second dimension and your father can be the third.

Psychiatrist: Where does that leave me?

Patient: You’re just a model that your parents built with glue.

Psychiatrist: Tell me about your parents.

Patient: My father died when I was very small. He just fell down in the hallway one day. He said he was going to the kitchen to fix a martini before dinner but he lied. He was a very handsome man.

Psychiatrist: What about your mother?

Patient: Oh, she died at the very same instant.

Psychiatrist: What did she look like?

Patient: She was very quiet.

Psychiatrist: In fact the whole house was quiet, wasn’t it? It was always quiet, wasn’t it? Why won’t you admit it?

Patient: Their daughter was autistic and the house was always very quiet.

Psychiatrist: That’s it! The house was always too noisy at night wasn’t it. Your parents forced you to listen to them fucking in the next room didn’t they? You had to listen to their groaning all night long didn’t you?

Patient: No, I’m wrong. Their daughter was a brilliant child, very quick to learn.

Psychiatrist: Why didn’t you tell anyone?

Patient: It’s none of your business – and why do you ask so many questions?

Psychiatrist: It’s my business to make your business my business.

Patient: Can I ask you something?

Psychiatrist: I’d rather you didn’t.

Patient: Why do you insist on making things up?

Psychiatrist: Their daughter built models because it was the only way she could bring the world down into her hands, bring things to a manageable scale. It was not a relationship she was proud of.

Patient: I’m getting confused. I thought red was the color of blood.

Man: I’m going to leave now. I don’t like violence. (Man exits.)

Woman (calling after him): I’ll be motion. And you can be a destination. I’ll be possibility, and you can be certainty. I’ll be hurt and you can beg forgiveness. I’ll be dead, and you can be me. I’ll be anything, and you can be everything else. I’ll be a paragraph describing an urn, and you can draw a charcoal circle around anything you want to. I’ll be a pocket, and you can be my hand.

(Lights out. Circus music up.)