February 17, 2007

A Play A Day #310

Extraterrestrials


Cast:
Joan
Kate
Paya
Tani

Setting: Bare stage


(Lights up, bare stage, Joan enters, strolling slowly, she heads directly to down center, she looks around, looks up, a cord drops and hangs near her. She pulls the cord. Beach sand dumps in a thick stream in front of her. She watches, taking off an outer layer and standing in bathing suit with wrap. As it stops she feels the last strands of sand hit her hands, then she spreads the mound of sand quickly while speaking)

Joan: (beach sound effects start rising) See the sand? The waves? The sun heating the bare flesh? The flesh darkens, we lay in the rolling water, the sand tickles, pulled from under by the slipping current. We are in the waves, we are of the sand, we are sand in waves, we suspend our souls in the sea. Carried. Carried and dropped on other beaches, forever. (beach sounds fade out, she relaxes and plays with the sand)

(Kate enters, carrying a container of gardening implements and bags of seeds, she goes down left, a cord drops, she pulls it, a thick stream of black soil, Kate rmoves and outer layer, dressed now in t-shirt and overalls, puts on a sun hat, she gets down on her hands and knees and moves the mounding soil into a flat garden, and starts digging seed holes with a garden spade and planting seeds etc... as she speaks)

Kate: (nature sounds, pastoral music rising) Leave the work gloves at home! Feel the soil! Feel it! Sink warm fingers into the springtime loam, turn it with your bare, bare hands. You arose from the soil. You were dirt; you were dirt, now you're dirt and chemicals and shape and ideas and alive, but always, just one step away from dirt. We are of dirt and about dirt. Dirt carries us along the earth, and we carry it. The earth is dirt... we are fancy dirt. We tend the earth to tend ourselves. We believe we are something else, that we move dirt, but you can never trick dirt, never get it out of the way, because it is in you, forever. (sounds fade out, she continues tending to the dirt)

(Paya enters, down right, pulls cord, larges chunks of moss, then pinecones, small twigs, pine needles, some dirt, leaves, etc... falforest sounds, and l to the stage, she removes a layer and is seen now in outdoor hiking gear, then two trees descend and end up on wither side of her)

Paya: (forest sounds and slightly darker pastoral music rises) Get lost in the forest. It breathes for all of us. Our lungs. We smoke too much. We are addicted to the idea of the cigarette. The hit, the pleasure. We choke our own lungs. The trees breathe for us; the forest is our breath. It is our life. We kill the forest to kill ourselves. The forest only asks for space; we hold out against it in negotiations that last too, too long. Let the forest win. Invite it back. It will breathe for you. Get lost in the forest, and the forest will be your home, forever. (sounds fade out)

(We hear a door slam off stage, then Tani walks in, laden with grocery bags, looking haggard)

Tani: Wha...?

Paya: Hi, mom!

Joan: Mom!

Kate: Hey, mom! Look at us!

Tani: What are you...?

Kate: I'm earth, the magic of...

Joan: The beach, Mom, the ocean, the waves pulling...

Paya: Mom, I'm lost in the forest of our very survival!

Tani: Damn right you are! You don't clean this up, you won't survive much longer! All of you! This is my house! You better clean this shit up in about 15 minutes! I have twenty people coming over at 7 tonight! You girls knew this! I come home to some naturalist performance art piece!? In my own house!? Jesus! Get busy! NOW!!

(Joan, Kate and Paya hang their heads, start trying to clean up)

Tani: Frickin' trees in my living room! Damn theater classes.

(lights out)

(end)

No comments: