 | STORY |
This 10-minute tragedy follows the journey - and harrowing reminiscences - of a mother and child hurtling through space.
| PRODUCTION HISTORY |
Workshop, Greensboro Cultural Center, NC, 2002.
Performance, Vagabond Theater Festival: Ten by Ten, Carrboro
Arts Center, NC, 2003.
| PUBLICATION HISTORY |
Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. Featured in the gallery of the Fall 2004 issue.
| AWARDS |
Winning entry for the Vagabond Theater Festival: Ten by Ten.
| SELECTION |
FROM "SIXTH INTERLUDE"
Character: "Mother"
MOTHER:
(TALKING TO DAUGHTER)
Once upon a time there was a woman - my grandmother -who lived in an apple tree.
She had discovered this tree - which looked like a run-of-the-mill, everyday,
ordinary tree - after searching for more than a hundred years. The tree provided
her with everything she needed - fruit for food, leaves for clothes, branches to rest in - and
good friendship. She was happy and the tree was happy. "Don't sit under the
apple tree, with anyone else but me," she'd serenade on starlit summer
nights, cradled in the tree's gently rocking limbs. But their happiness was
not to last. One dark, terrible day all the trees in the world died, leaving this one little
tree as the last of its kind.
News spread like a plague about the sole surviving tree, and the woman who lived as its
companion. Suddenly, without warning - in fact, right out of the blue - teaming hordes
swooped down upon the happy pair.
"Alien tree invades
earth!" "Who's behind this hoax?" "Hey, lady, we'll give you a billion
dollars." "Did your father beat you with apples?"
They shouted and shrieked, their
endless barbs and queries shaking the tree and the woman to their very roots.
And when all their questions had spewed out (though it's funny how they never asked the most
important question), do you think the swarming crowds
went home? No! Not yet satisfied, they desired something more.
At first it was just the tiniest piece of bark, and the itsiest, bitsiest little
leaf. But later it was gouged slices off the tree's gnarled roots and whole
branches severed from the trunk. The woman tried to repair the tree - for every
fallen leaf or lost limb, she carefully cut off a piece of her own body and grafted it to
the tree in the hopes of saving it.
But the tree, its apples now bleached an ashen white, was dying. "Don't sit under the apple tree
with anyone else but me, with anyone else but me, with anyone else but
- "the woman sang over and over until her voice grew hoarse - and then was lost
forever. And still the angry mob wanted more. "Last tree, my foot - it's
dead like all the rest." "Satan appeared to me in the branches last
night -it's an omen!" "Cut it down - at least we can get something for the
wood." They crowed and cawed, cameras poised like birds of prey ready to
capture the tree's imminent demise. Grandmother, summoning her last ounce of
breath, cried out: "ENOUGH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH!" -
but no one could hear
her, and in any case, they weren't listening. In fact, no one had listened for a
very long time. (The whole world, it seemed, had been struck deaf.) It was
then Grandmother understood what she had to do. "I won't let them hurt
you any more," she silently vowed to her stricken companion as she wound her
naked, broken body around the tree's barren trunk. And then quietly, and very
tenderly grandmother, in a final act of desperation, set -
(MOTHER ABRUPTLY STOPS TALKING)
|
PHOTOGRAPHS |
You can view a slide show of photos from the Greensboro Cultural Center production here. You must have a flash enabled browser to view this. The file size is large, so there may be a wait until the file loads if you have a slow connection.
If you do not have flash, or have a slow connection, you may wish to view the production photos here.