Copyright held by the Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop
View Permission for Production Policy
Written & performed by Emily Atchison, Ashley Flinn , Cherry Sharpe & Peter Oviatt
Directed by Stephine Bowman
Under the influence of Adrienne Kennedy
R-A goat on a high rock, a shade falls all over the cottage appears at night paying sacrifice is locked and everyone dead wax and the commander Eisenhower muses next to Mussolini’s dripping face dead wax puddles on the floor soaks into the conscience like the museum has visitors who smell Benito pulls the hair and feels no ears a tugging.
P- I see my blue lady of golden light covered in black snails.
R- She is dead.
F- You abandoned me. You are heartless and brainless. Puppets never grow, they are born puppets, they live puppets and they die puppets.
P- No heart and no brains, and so all is absolved, all is forgiven, all is accepted. It is thus that my nature relieves my guilt.- pause- I wept when I read: HERE LIES..
F- Lies! Always lies!
P- How I suffered and how I wept when I read: HERE LIES-
F- You lie!
R- All of them their strings are dust suspended in light and snail slimed cloth.
P- Drumming of merrymaking my rotted body for merrymaking leather clad feet dancing my donkey death rejoicing.
R- Wax wood would smash better into shapes that see the image of stagnant life, Don’t believe the narration if scratching and bent it writes like a filling bucket smaller tighter air pockets screaming hatching and ponds drown the eels pigeons puppets run the show like running away from fire…Black rabbits poured through the door, four rabbits, one to each corner, each corner of the coffin. Small black coffin.
F- drink it!
P- I can smell it. It’s bitter, much too bitter. I’d rather-MORE SUGAR!
R- Four rabbits to each corner, each corner of the coffin.
F- Aren’t you afraid?
P- More sugar! You told me to drink it, more sugar! You were dead before I came.
R- What can you smell good puppet?
P- Don’t answer for me
F- Danger, gore, health, bitter medicine.
P-I am laughing at my lies, I a, laughing at my nose, I am laughing at my noise, drifts across nasal and hell and it is gross a long snake nose cannot even leave the room. The shadow sacks wrapped in black leapt on me and tore the gold out of my mouth pulled from side to side they ripped it out.
R- (jovially) Let us go!
P- To bury it deep in the lonely field.
F- Like a body. Like wax under a rock like gold under dirt.
P- My death rope my hanging I am Mussolini and the peasants steal my gold spit on my corpse leave me for dead my donkey carcass eaten by fish eels swim in my cat’s eyes ABC books.
(pause)
R- We’ll slip our white powder into the ground.
P- Wait, a tree did grow from my coins in the sow a tree with a bird who must have hid coins beneath his tongue while he laughed at me and inside a gorilla can almost agree on terms wrong and right.
F- Fades like suds on a bathtub edge and the white powder inside the brain can’t breathe it farther.
P- Inside every room is a problem like me and the solution is applied like medicine. Black slab of marble shadowed the ground in every direction. Wax setting in, it ate heat and melted your face. My wooden frame clung to the black ground. I clawed to tear my hair but it was only painted.
P and F- (F replacing I with you) WHY DID I NOT DIE?
P- The sun beat me into the dark ground spreading.
F- When I was abandoned, black marble grew out of me. It split my wax face and burnt it away.
R- Puppets never grow. They are born puppets, live puppets, and die puppets.
P- Dead also, she whispered.
F- DIED OF GRIEF! A black slab of marble shadowed.
P- (franticly) I left but I came back!
R- Do you think she uses dyes, like so do we, scrub our coats with dark night to be little coffins that break dark corners shuffling smaller.
P- The white walls, I fault at first I feel are needing sugar and thrifting wind grows like a storm inside my stomach.
R-While father sat inside a chamber food eaten fell on the floor in heaps. Struggle Adolfo is grappling back for two powerful hands grasping him by the neck and the same two horrible voices growled: “Now we have you.” Well, little brother, cried for hours over the length of his nose.
F- I have the medicine.
R- Its white powder.
F- I am laughing at your lies.
P- Its white powder I do not want it.
R- We will drink it.
F- Please, or the trip will have been for nothing. The wood is born a blank plank of thoughtless heartless splinters.
P- Stab at your eyes.
F- Learn this!
P- I could not escape the room or my shame.
F- Learn this well!
P- I stabbed your eyes. The azure candle stick has many magical lives each a slightly different shape I met murderers on the road, and for it all a starving vagabond in jail away my mothersister dies of grief.
R- Long nose knows not where to burn.
P-I saw the cricket bleed and he scram when I struck him. I looked into his dying grey eyes and he told me I was damned and then he scram and bled.
F-You saw the cricket bleed?
P- I saw the cricket bleed but I did not care. I threw the hammer that made him scream a song.
F- Was it Holy Music to rid of donkeys that have fits like Caesars’? Why must you cry pennies? What did the cricket sing?
P- I am a real boy. But I wasn’t last week when Hitler needed to cook his Lamb. For Hitler’s Army has cried and begged to sacrifice their own lives for me. I cry pennies because I was dishonest wood. I threw the Nazi hammer that made the cricket scream a song and die. But I didn’t care until his ghost found me.
R and F- Cri- cri-cri. You saw me bleed. He saw me bleed and ooze. But he didn’t care. You didn’t care. You didn’t even when I scram a song. Cri-cri-cri.
P- Careful, ugly cricket! If you make me angry, you’ll be sorry!
R and F- Poor Pinocchio, I am sorry for you because you are a puppet and what is much worse, you have a wooden head. Cri-cri-cri.
F- (laughing) A wooden head.
P- ashamed thoughtless clown (fairy still laughing)
R and F- Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you would grow into a perfect donkey. Cri-cri-cri. And when I came back you, you did not listen.
P- I cry pennies to buy your forgiveness please except them. Of black rabbits and medicine bitter black rabbits in the dark of night with rope and coffins black shiny pelt gleam in their death shrouds, their demands my death my coffin, bitter in my mouth my death my coffin, the rabbits gleaming black wood and bleak rope.
R- Snail slimed trail covered in faerie dust sighs her wings broken minds snails and moths and covered bone bags.
P- My tears flow with no chance of blue wings and golden light his lady has left him.
F- In all my asylums there are no puppets there is nothing. Mussolini mocks me in his brown shirt covered rope shoot bullets. Blue hair fallen, moth wings like dusty dead petals follow my gaze it looks at the gold light and shiny black snail trails my dress coarse skin covered in shiny black death trails in all my asylums everything is dead nothing dances everything shines in gold dusty light.
R- We will bury in a belly of a shark three bodies coins a dump a view of simplicity.
