Scott MacLeod
    Theater & Performance Texts

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.