Copyright held by the Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop
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written & performed by Josh, Chris B., Sarah, and Hunter
directed by Jeremy
under the influence of Antonin Artaud
A Ka Du A Tuf Ur Biu Bia Che Fu Du Du Ner AF An Nu Te Ru
Death of mother-
[Laying on grave, solitude, high pitched pitched breathing touching her body gracefully. Eyes as if she had just seen something horrible lucid eyes.] I am cold freezing, frozen.(…) Dear Cinderella. You are just a child. A child of growth and modesty. I am rotting from the inside out. Dear child, if you are good and say your prayers faithfully, our dear Lord will always help you, and I shall look down from heaven and always be with you. My mother taught me to look to God. God and I hold a special relationship, one you, I hope will learn to posses. What he chooses to do with you is no business of mine because I’m just stitch flesh and liquid muscles. It has been four months since your father has lain with me, I am… I was in love with the smell of sweat and other women. I want you too release my shrills and thirsting of my stomach. You were conceived without feeling. Reacting in discomfort, a place that can’t explain abnormal bodily adjustment. Eat raw flesh it only makes you stronger.
Do as I did my loved one and eliminate the subconscious and replace it with a well martyred young lady and do as the world perceives you. You are so old and I stress as I dig my nails along the wood. You are higher than nothing.
Even if you don’t keep your head down like everyone else, and just scrub floors for the rest of your life, and never say a mean word, someone will be offended by the country you live in.
The mother is lying on a giant black bed, much too big for her. Black liquid empties from mother’s eyes and mouth. Cinderella weeping footprints in the bold colors.
Housework one-
[crawling heavy dense harsh breathing, direct movement, rubbing flour with her hands. Her head is always down. (choppy)]
“The little doves nodded their heads, and began to peck peck peck peck, and then the other began to peck peck peck peck, and put all the good lentils into the bowl.”
My prison is made of ashes and lentils. My prison is in constant consumption of itself. When I stopped eating, I became horrific. Nothing is beautiful on a diet of scraps. An emaciated princess. Frail, and in constant position of crying too many tears I have continued to pour blood into the ground
[Loud pounding and cries fill the room. Shrill laughter from the corner starts. Cinderella uses repetitive motion to show the labor endured. (rubbing flour)]
Care’s go by, where are they going? It’s eleven o’clock at night. They should be sleeping Cinderella: Mother, old mother, as I weep at a more and more shadowed valley having spend all this life under rule of one wicked man who grabs arms and pulls hair and is historically dominant and exceedingly disappoint me. Crooked sharp beaks flying, squawking a knife in their back, as she is an extension of her sisters.
My tree is mangled and it is stupendous and it overcomes all sense of vision and need when one looks inside. A tree of twists and sharp jagged bark that is like a knife digging into flesh hollowing out of holes in semblance of a pain I felt not too long before the first wedding at the castle. I should be sleeping. People used to sleep in the olden days sunset to sunrise. They stay on, on, on, beep, beep, beep, blink, blink, blink. So we do, and we get demon-eyed and adrenalized, take drugs and shut us off. But is that good? Maybe. Back then. Everyone sleep-deprived. Why do we spend so much of our lives in a daze from lack of sleep? Now it’s nearly midnight. Caught up in cycles. Time or energy or will to break. yo-yo dieting, work-home-work-home. We fight the same fights every day without bringing them to a resolution so we can fight new ones. I want to sleep and wake up deluded again, forgetting. Goodnight.
At grave with stick- [walk to stare erratic “who’s”. Walks jerky and precise, twitching, using her whole body, she digs a whole silently weeping kneels at grave and plants tree like a ceremony, chanting. As the tree grows and falls back and again lays like she did with death of her mother. ]
“The little girl bore all patiently, and dared not to tell her father, who would have rattled her off, for his wife governed him entirely.”
Father: I loved her so much when she was little. She was so sweet and happy. But now what? She spends all day crying for her dead mother, visiting the dead. God knows, I miss her too, but life goes on. My new wife seems a good woman. She prefers her own daughters, true, but she tries her best to teach my Cinderella all the household duties a woman needs to know.
I’m a busy man. I don’t have time too sort out domestic squabbles. Why should I trouble about Cinderella when she just cries like a child? It’s time she grew up like the rest of us. We’re happy.
She has her mother’s eyes . . . My poor dead wife. Do you hate me for this? Do you think I’ve abandoned your daughter? I just can’t sacrifice my new happiness for you. Maybe, if you would only try too be my loving little girl, I could intercede for you. I need love and comfort. You won’t give me any, with your self-indulgent mourning. I wish your stepmother luck with you!
Cinderella’s father enters, carrying presents. He gives one stepdaughter a dress, another a necklace their faces posed like demons as they leer. While Cinderella is scrubbing the floor, her father wields a giant thorny stick and hits her with it. She lies on the floor until she finishes and her family eats the stage. Her father throws at her feet the branch. She crawls, with branch in hand, to mother grave. She places branch on top of grave and weeps. Her tears pool around her and form a river, which waters and feeds the branch. [Two doves appear. They lead her in a chanting ritual.] The stick slowly grows into a tree with red blood covered leaves. The tree only sways in disbelief at its own beauty and horrendousness. Scatter.
[Body of mother grows into the tree from grave]
Taunting of the stepsistas-
[Two people on highest part of the stage and Cindy stands at the lower end with gaze. Two people on higher part are moving gracefully and each time shape when they feel needed.]
“In folk tales, step-sisters and step-mothers are almost always fair game for demonization, providing a safe cover for the animosity sometimes felt for biological parents and siblings.”
Stepmother: A kinship broken by the death of the caretaker. I have my two daughters, an extension of me. An extension of the love and lust between myself and their father. The lust, the passion. It has gone. My husband. He has a daughter, born by his late wife. The daughter, pretty and fair. She is too nice. I test her loyalty each day, waiting. Waiting for her to break. Waiting for her to give us a reason to throw her out onto the streets. She does not falter. She doesn’t deserve a real name. She suffers the wrath of my daughters and I, too willingly. I want to break her. I want her gone. I want her to give and give and give, with nothing given in turn. I want her to question the love of her father. I want her to question her dead mother. Question the God she believes will deliver her. Deliver her from us. The god that will never come. Find the lentils, Cinderella. Pick through the ash and cinders that provided your name. Dig deeper, girl. Deeper, deeper, dig. How can you go to a proper wedding when you’re constantly covered with dust and dirt? You’re not going to the wedding. Too dirty. No dancing. Fool. You’ll embarrass us. Fool.
Charlotte: Cinderella, it has been so long since I called you by your given name. Too long. Cinderella you’ll always be a drudge. Make my dinner, brush my hair, lick the bottom of my shoe. What else have you to live for? Nothing. You are nothing. You’re worthlessness, even when you’re pleasing me.
“The girl must suffer for many years before she is liberated.”
Cinderella crawls, inhalation of waste and excrement is a chore that is well deserved. So pleasing, I am untouched. The need to feel whole is a cowards way of feeling comfortable and mending existing wounds. In the distance there is a faint cracking. Cinderella is full, and dragging her flesh along the freshly grown pavement. She is light, whispering obscenities to her priest. Moving is the power, granted or not, I am place, symmetrically, and labeled green. Growing is someone’s nightmare and lies are easy to believe. Placed exquisitely, blood was in the shelter. I am less of who was meant to grow. A form of pathetic rituals and my teeth rot. Not a soul, but founder of love. Such a pity. Crushing my body only to stop breath. For being so small I cannot hope. Stretched like daybreaks. Cast a dim light and louden the silence, for the sound of death is more that one body can handle.
Dressing of Cinderella- [she looks up and repeats chants. Godmother sits and rocks grins approving of what’s happening. The birds pull at Cindy and kinda push her around. (let’s get physical) ]
The rest of the world enters into the stage leaving behind the stepfamily who are forcing themselves into tight and extravagant clothes that shimmer so brightly that their faces are forgotten. We are left with only one thing in a second, a beautiful dress the size and shape of Cinderella shakes free from the branches of the tree and is followed by Cinderella in her nude form, freshly scrubbed. She steps into the dress and is suddenly radiant. The time changes from day to night. Owls in the place of sparrow. A distraught Cinderella returns the dress to the tree and bathes herself in ashes and soot, adorning her body in rags and fleas.
The Birds: We are forces of lift and drag. We stole a pair of hollow bones and hoisted into vines, whispering secrets to one and cast the spells. The tree is a magic of rituals and we are creations of splayed toes and scaled legs with decorated needles puncturing into skin and letting bones get more hollow than dirt dug out to make room for bodies or explosives trying to find diamonds. We work for you now darling. We are here to serve you.
Expngno Lumen, Nillas Lux Vis levis; luciens Nux
Owls replace sparrows in the soundscape which becomes increasingly factory-like.
Cinderella comes back caked in sweat from a long night of painful dancing. The birds undress her and ravage her body while making sure not to break her hymen and make her un-pure. She strains herself to fit into perfection.
Ball-
[in very dim light prince and Cindy sit on opposite side of stand breath orgasmicly. Prince walks straight and well postured. Cindy dances gracefully. The two never come in contact with each other.]
“If Cinderella finds help by turning to nature, she wears a dress that is associated with the realm of artiface. The dress contributes powerfully to the radiant appearance she makes at the ball.”
Pressure, crushing all those not strong enough to withstand the invisible force. A beast with unbelievable power, brainwashing and abusive to its conformists, and even those who claim to be unaffected by it. Pressure. To be perfect. The desire becomes an addiction and addiction leads to a barren wasteland. Emptiness. Pressure. Slowly dissolving time and energy. Certainly, nothing is more of productive. Pressure. Weighing down our hearts and minds. Life support, pump, pump, pump, easily broken. Logic, think, think, think, lost and never to be found. What am I doing? What the hell am I doing? Can’t kill what doesn’t exist. Can’t find what can’t be seen. Setting the standards for a life that can’t be lived. Even after sacrifice, a height left unachievable. False hope and pseudo-reality.
“Cinderella slipped out of her beautiful dress, and put it on the grave.”
The Chase-
“Roo coo coo, roo coo coo
No blood at all in her shoe
The foot’s not long and not too wide
The true bride’s running at his side”
“Roo coo coo, roo coo coo
Blood is dripping from the shoe
The foot’s too long and far too wide
Go back and find the proper bride”
“There is no one left but puny little Cinderella.”
“The prince asked that she be sent for, but the mother said ‘’Oh no, she’s much too dirty to show her face!’”
The prince had planed a trick. Once he finds Cinderella and her elegantly tiny feet he begins to pant as he feels himself get an erection. The garden. The prince removes her slipper and plays with her feet. As he is about to kiss it blood spurts onto her hands, and she wipes it on her stockings. She slips her foot inside the slipper and screams. The prince and Cinderella become wed and consummate the act upon the wedding ceremony’s completion. The stepfamily, horribly mangled. [A scream of glee and thanks.] They are wed to the birds in a sexual wedlock of little-to-no actual love or attraction, put there is a great deal of mutual sympathy.
The birds peck out eyes of step-people and drag them off stage by lips and ears. Lights out.
Eyes as if she had just seen something horrible lucid eyes. Godmother sits and rocks, grinning approvingly of what’s happening.
The Birds: How long has it been now? Countless amounts of lost feathers. Our frail bodies undergo hardships for a significant cause. We know every curve of your adolescent shape. We have felt places where no prince has been. You care for us so. So much that you let our tired fucking bodies sleep in a tree full of thorns. How must we bare our little ones in a place where we have been subject to secrete our blood. We mustn’t complain. All we are inherent to is dressing you in the finest and watching over your rotting mother. We are falling, draining of ones strength and patientence. No one will notice or anguish our death. Below the tree we will lay stiff, frigid our bellies bloated with maggots and later break open with flies. You will by then, have debouched your body and we will smile from the soil. All for you.
Before it got too far I swallowed poisons. Went to crawl around aimlessly like a child who needed nothing more or less than a block, a block of unadulterated anything. Blood and arsenic slowly bending into everything I am, so that you can move freely once again the way you did when all of your rotten pictures became whole again.
A blast of increasingly cold and prickled tendencies start to sweep over my goosebumbed body. Curdling up into myself as stares start to twist ’round black masses of light moving in three directions., Clouds moving at rates to slow for me to notice any longer. Moving at uncharted speeds sedated vegetables wake up to the creaking sound of insecurity blasting so loud into our heads the way we used to wake up Saturday mornings to glorify mutilation to glorify death and to confirm all your latest fears, crooked pictures coming to a close inside of themselves, closing up our flesh until there is nothing left but scarred flesh no more holes we cannot move this way any longer we cannot move. Move.
Move.
We are motionless in ourselves with hands twiddling themselves into birds and sharpened teeth tearing flesh from limbs and revealing articulated fears without words, putting camaraderie back into the lock and key where it belongs. Too much about falling and little to do with the way our blood has started to procreate in the warmth of slime in sewers. Skin started to wrap itself around every new body. We cannot move because we are young, weak, and innocent.
