Copyright held by the Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop
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Written & performed by Brett Baugh, Jeremy Gibson, Brad Hodge, & Rachel Waterhouse
Directed by Blake Bolan & Chris Gregory
Under the influence of Heiner Müller
broken driftwood
The city towers screeching with the pain of wounds. Gum wrapper beer cans pigs crawl over spilling blood of disappointment the death of dreams. Lynching the quiet throats. Streets filming with jagged pebbles and an odor that is far less than Proud. A labyrinth of maggot tendons legless vets dragging their war scrapmetal like shrapnel. A lamp post flickers. Fire escapes bleeding stale rain with the swinging of a switchblade dirt piled high as children play. Rotting noise little wooden feet clap against the black asphalt.
A splintered hunk of scrapwood is dragged along the gutters to the sea. Hags sitting in the ashes of less flavored limbs scratch their eyes with aluminum can halves. It is white glistening. Death brings relief lost boy the shore seeps broken driftwood forgets the blue fairy wept into existence. The death hangs thick eaten imagination. BLOOD DYES THE SEA and the sea dies with it. Empty cavern of forgotten sandpaper tongue spines wooden table made of puppets meant to burn. Breathing is hard when housing garbage. Water oily with love.
Massive jaws part cathedral of entrails row of rusty teeth condoms shagged between them. Decomposing fish death chamber of a belly soda cans filled with blood of thousands. Only colgate can whiten your smile THEY SCREAM THEIR SILENCE SO DAMN LOUD. Sheet iron each hole a bear trap lined with broken glass and far rusted nails. A small candle glows dimly in the distance. I can feel the push.
her dress pink
Pinocchio: Do you not fear death
Fairy: Fear is an illusion. I the goat the snail the old woman the dead. I am fear.
Pinocchio: Let me in
Fairy: No one lives in this house. Everyone is dead.
Pinocchio: Lady let me in Mother save me Sister hide me Hold me woman.
Fairy: Only you can give it. Killing touch Touch me and make me bleed.
Pinocchio: Lady protect me
Fairy: Die then
Pinocchio: I killed them ruined and spoiled
Fairy: Hung corpses with slashed gullets. Touch me.
Pinocchio: Death imbued into my frame. Born of rasps and blades. Will you extract what is foul. Beloved devil why do you molest me. I wish to burn with you, make a torch of my body. Cinders and ash for mourners. Turn this wood to tender flesh. Your embrace your hair my funeral shroud your nails growing deeper twisting my skeleton ribs. Burning brief salvation. Why are you smoltering mother? I will wrap my body in this hide of human. I’ve lost it. No one lives in this house everyone is dead. My face has grown rotten made of wood but still not dead. Fairy you must save me from this death protect me never leave me I will not suffer your passing I wish not to die I will cling to you sister.
Fairy: Grasp my azure hair tear at it in hunks let me mount your face we are family now. Do you want to drink of my blood I come only at your call where is my serated edge? I AM NOT YOURS you poison me brother. I nursed you to health ugly wooden eyes why do you stare so. You want to be real I supposed to love you every time should have been burned. Dark cloud sink into my every pore let death nibble at my lips let it taste my warmth become my second skin. Death penetrate my core burrow and grow I the living and I the dead would burn in your crematorium to become your ashes to cast to the bitter end. BURN AND BURN AND BURN. You clutch me tightly, sink your teeth into my flesh my veins run dry. Taste my blood on your tongue swallow it eat my heart cut it out take my eyes. Death in her white dress blood splattered across her breast. She will raise her bloodied axe dye her dress pink. None will mourn for us the fairy and her beloved puppet. Pinocchio love kill us now. You will find me strung from a tree my limbs hacked off burn my feet I will not beg I infested with worms embedded into my flesh burning.
Pinocchio: Lady you cannot be dead.
war torn dumpster
Marionette lynched by his own strings chew stained teeth pledging unconditional allegiance to god head Sam Walton and the corporation for which he stands. Millions of hollow smiles a sticker a mandatory handshake. A child in his clever paper packaging born of furniture sweatshops ever seeking the tree of gold the global death train. Sell my life in eight hour shifts useless shit to clutter. Pick on the elderly they already have pensions. Place wingnut B on bolt C and begin again. The vast highway system same burger same fries same underpaid wage slaves burning themselves with boiling tallow.
And King George the Second proclaimed these rogues a threat on the second day he slayeth on the fifth day he created hysteria on the fifth day he reopened prisons breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on the detainees beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair threatening male detainees with rape sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick and using military working dogs to intimidate and actually bite a detainee. On the sixth day he got bored and rested till the election.
Hang us from bridges entrails leaking from our bellies. Sodomize and invade. Hail us. Thank you for picking this fight. Thank you for fucking up my nation. Midnight strikes terrorism Chile and Nicaragua force fed by the barrel of a gun. DIE VULTURES DIE. I saw you on tv today. You looked sincere while murdering the innocent. Let’s blame terrorism we’ll never have to pay for war leave that to our great grandchildren.
Ancient coffee cups with colonies of mold extensively explaining the faults of society shattered glass rusty nails and screws puddles of rusty water breading mosquitoes empty boxes which once held lost boys’ treasures. He used to wear his mother’s heels and make up and dance in the back yard painted up like a whore until his father beat him into a man. Screw me with sawdust bask in nails crawling shit fucking just because fouls stench of vomit is none other than glorious. A pole juts out as if drowning ripping their bedraggled flesh boxes stand by and laugh. The ants are collecting ready to march into battle or a more subtle war torn dumpster the hue screams the death of deception. When we return in the morning we hope you’ll be polite enough to let us find you dead and gone with your mouth wide open.
