Lorenzo Buford

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CHARIS Played by an androgynous looking male

WOMAN #1 / MEDEA

WOMAN #2 / PHAEDRA

WOMAN #3 / ELECTRA

WOMAN #4 / ANTIGONE

SYNOPSIS
Four homeless women living in a park encounters a strange mad woman who changes them into four women from various Greek tragedies.

TIME: PRESENT

PLACE: PARK

© Lorenzo Buford 2006
All rights reserved.
ACT ONE

SCENE ONE – PARK - AFTERNOON

Four Homeless Women all wearing long coats with dolls parts attached are sitting in a park rummaging through their bags. As they talk, they take various items out and surround themselves with it as if creating a sacred space to sit in. WOMAN #1 (MEDEA) has doll’s heads, WOMAN #2 (PHADERA) has doll’s hands, WOMAN #3 (ELECTRA), has doll’s legs hanging from it, WOMAN #4 (ANTIGONE) has doll’s bodies. A cracked pedestal covered with vines sits center stage.

WOMAN #1
(Squeeze the various heads on her coat) No head do I sit on. (Defiant. Clutches head of one of the dolls and raging at the sky.) Am I not the power behind the throne?

WOMAN #2
Has my passion been unnatural? What is natural about passion?

WOMAN #4
This body is a tomb. (Acts as if she is weighing scales.) Death, lover. Lover, death.

WOMAN #3
What piece of ground can I stand on that does not hold my tears?

WOMAN #1
(Acts as a newscaster) A woman died today while sleeping outside her husband’s arms.

WOMAN#4
(Acts as a gossip columnist) A woman was raped today. She showed her business to the world

WOMAN #2
(As if coming out of meditative pose) Looked in my womb and heard ghosts wailing.

WOMAN #3
(To herself) Woman hung herself to dry out the tears.

WOMAN #1
(Runs to the pedestal, climbs on it, stand still like a statute for a moment then screams.) I am not a phoenix to the voices in my head.

WOMAN #4
(Pulls at her flesh) Get out of me. Stop making me mad. Feelings are making me mad. Get out of me.

WOMAN #2
What is wrong with my feelings? Mine were not misguided. Sure I’m off course. Aren’t feelings suppose to move us beyond the mundane.

WOMAN #4
I want out of this. Feelings have killed us.

WOMAN #2
Have killed us?

WOMAN #4
(Imitating a man) Don’t start that woman thing, (being herself) you know men get all crazed when we’re feeling.

They all laugh. They grab each others’ hand and do a circle dance while chanting: Women have got too many feelings. Women have got to many feelings.

The sound of thunder is heard and they break hands and run around the stage screaming.

WOMAN #3
Hate when the curse visits me every month. My husband said I was a crazy woman then.

WOMAN #4
Feelings. Emotions. They’re crawling through me.

WOMAN #1
He never ate me out. And he wouldn’t let me go down on him. Said it wasn’t a wife’s place, that place was reserved for whores only.

WOMAN #4
Husband always complained he was fucking a dead woman.

WOMAN #1
(Yells at Woman #4) Now you’re dead. Stop complaining.

WOMAN #3
Every day I keep seeing him hitting me upside my head.

WOMAN #4
I never wanted his leftovers after he has been in some other woman’s hootchie.

WOMAN #1
Women can always smell another woman on their man.

WOMAN #2
We are alone.
WOMAN #1
Stupid old bitches.

WOMAN #2
I am nobody’s bitch.

WOMAN #3
Momma always said a man will have to do everything for me.

WOMAN #2
I couldn’t clean house right.

WOMAN #1
I didn’t know how to take care of my children.

WOMAN #4
I didn’t know to take care of my man.

WOMAN #1
Look at us, man crazy, crazed by man.

WOMAN #3
Will all women end up like this?

WOMAN #4
All women will end like broken homeless dolls.

WOMAN #2
Men act like the pussy would kill them.

WOMAN #4
Yeah, but what man doesn’t want the snatch talking to them.

WOMAN #2
Snatch. Sounds like something stolen. Something taken without permission.

WOMAN #3
They will track it down like they were on a hunt.

WOMAN #1
Never had one of those orgasms you read about in women’s magazines.

WOMAN #2
I should have been an actress. I’m great at faking orgasm.

WOMAN #3
(To Woman #2) You were great at faking at life.
WOMAN #1
(Reprimanding tone) None of you lived life. You were dead then, and you’re dead now.

WOMAN #3
You don’t have a policy on life, okay. Get with the program. We all died because of a man.

WOMAN #2
The dick gets to talking; men get crazy and its women who get institutionalized in their madness.

WOMAN #3
Men think if they stick in, we’re supposed to jump up and down like they have done something.

WOMAN #4
(Jumps up and down) I feel it. That’s it baby. Yes, make momma holler. You got it daddy. Tear it up. Make momma holler. Ah, daddy, it’s talking to you. Hit my spot baby.

WOMAN #1 and 2 jump up and down shouting “Hit my spot baby. Hit my spot.”

WOMAN #3
(Shouts at WOMAN #1 and 2) Men fuck who they want, when they want even without permission.

WOMAN #1
I topped a man once. I put on a strap on; he got on top of me and rode me until he was speaking in tongues.

WOMAN #2
I thought about fucking a man like he fucked me so he’d feel what I felt. It didn’t happen. I just lay there thinking…this is it. I’m supposed to praise god for this position I’m going to lay in the rest of my life.

WOMAN #4
If you’re going to get fucked, lay there like you’re dead. Me, I want to be made love to.

WOMAN #2
(Pulls out man’s coat out of a shopping cart and puts it on) I want to feel safe.
WOMAN #1
There’s no refuge outside our heart, our passions.

WOMAN #4
I’m tired of being trapped in somebody else’s madness instead of my own.

WOMAN #1
I always believed I needed permission,

WOMAN #4
For acceptance,

WOMAN #3
For religious dogmas and a male god;

WOMAN #2
The bill of rights to give me permission to be a woman,

WOMAN #3
Tired of needing permission to live according to my nature.

WOMAN #1
Now I’m out in nature, babbling like some damn fool because I don’t know my nature.

WOMAN #3
I can still smell a man. No matter how much wandering we’ve done, and how many baths I don’t take, I can still smell a man.

WOMAN #4
No matter how much we run from a man, complain about a man, even in our madness, we still want a man.

WOMAN #2
I wanted to let my juices flow. Is that a crime?

WOMAN #3
Let’s hear an Amen for letting the juices flow.

All in unison: Amen for the flowing of the juices.

WOMAN #2
If I have to be mad, let me be drunk on the juices.

All in unison: Amen for the flowing of the juices.

All the women gather in a circle. Woman #1 goes to the center of the circle. The women are rocking and moaning to themselves when they aren’t talking.
WOMAN #1
There’s no safety in memories.

WOMAN #3
I’m tired of wandering through this city, wandering in and out of her heads. I’m tired of begging for a crust of bread. Is this supposed to be a woman’s last supper?

WOMAN #4
Where are my stories? I can’t find my stories.
WOMAN #2
(Angry) I gave a man my stories so I could be a wife.

WOMAN #2
(Tearfully) I don’t know any stories.

WOMAN #4
When was it good to be a woman?

WOMAN #1
Had this dream where I was falling, first I was this thing, then I was a woman, then I was a man, and mind you, I was still falling and then when I landed, I was this black rock that sat on a pedestal.

WOMAN #3
Mad women don’t have dreams. We rant. We rave. We’re dead to life.

WOMAN #1
I’m not dead.

WOMAN #4
(Teasing) Of course she’s not dead, she’s on vacation.

WOMAN #2
(Teasing) She’s on vacation.

WOMAN #3
(Teasing) She’s on vacation.

WOMAN #1
Shut the fuck up. Sound like a bunch of old hens who can’t lay eggs. (Sniffs) I smell a man.

WOMAN #3
You smell four funky old women. Wishful thinking I call it. I still got that itch for a man. It’s been so long since I had a man visit my business.

WOMAN #4
Your business is like our business, out of business.

WOMAN #2
My business was acting like some wind up doll.

WOMAN #4
Dolls break.

They all scream and fall to the ground. They then get up and run to various parts of the stage, separate, feeling alone and looking at each other suspiciously.

WOMAN #2
Once again a woman’s circle is broken.

WOMAN #1
(Squeezes the heads on her coat) He never gave me head. Said I had a fish smell. Told him, everything down there was natural.

WOMAN #3
My husband was old as dirt. So try getting fucked by wrinkles. It scratches your skin.

WOMAN #1
He let a younger woman sleep in our bed. I saw him go down on her. With me, he said he always felt like he was falling in and getting lost.

WOMAN #4
My man thought I was taking something from him. Weren’t we supposed to be giving each other something….love.

WOMAN #3
Why is there a war of genitalia between us?

WOMAN #2
We are not allowed to make a home in ourselves.

WOMAN #4
Where is a woman supposed to be if she is not in a man’s dream?

WOMAN #3
I want my own story. I want my own story.

WOMAN #1
(Looks at the pedestal. Goes to it and climbs up on it.) I’m in a dream. It has to be. I was safe here. Safe in my own private garden.

WOMAN #2
What you are is whacked? Get off there for you fall and break your neck.

WOMAN #3
I settled for an old man after my husband put me out to pasture. He had money. Still didn’t satisfy momma that I married money.

WOMAN #1
(Gets off pedestal) Now I’m headless.
WOMAN #4
I feel you.

WOMAN #3
None of you are feeling me. You don’t hear. Just like a man. (Pause) Caught my mother with my husband on the sheets she gave me as a wedding gift.

WOMAN #1
Dick is the death of women.

WOMAN #2
Goes in…

WOMAN #3
Leaves its calling card…

WOMAN #4
And then nine months later it pulls everything out of us.

WOMAN #2
My stepson was taking a shower, I walked in to bring him a fresh towel, he look so good, so virile…

WOMAN #1
(Yells) How many phalluses will we worship? You don’t get it. We don’t have a foot to stand on. Look at the pedestal. It’s cracked. What was honored has fallen? Phallic gods are always playing dramas in our head.

WOMAN #3
(Teasing) We’ve fallen and we can’t get up.

WOMAN #4
Stop it. Can’t we just have some silence? Some peace of mind.

WOMAN #2
Wanted to throw off my clothes, have him take me right then and there in the door so that I know I’m open to possibilities.

WOMAN #1
Another bitch in heat.

WOMAN #2
I had to be the good stepmother. Give my stepson a clean towel. Got myself a towel later to dry his dreams from between my legs. I needed his song between my legs.

WOMAN #1
My husband, Mr. Suit, Mr. Corporate America, Mr. Overachiever put me out because I wasn’t fresh enough, needed something young to make him feel like he was still a man. Told him to get Viagra and get over himself and come home to me.

WOMAN #3
(Cries out in pain) My mother denied me her love.

WOMAN #1
That’s our problem. Women want love. Men want to fuck.

WOMAN #3
No one hears me.

WOMAN #2
What is wrong with lust? (Walks over to pedestal and appears she will get upon it but doesn’t and falls to her knees)

WOMAN #4
Who will love a dead woman?

WOMAN #2
(Acts as a newscaster) A woman died today while waiting for her husband to respond to her question.

WOMAN #4
(Acts as a gossip columnist) Hollywood’s newest starlet joined the ranks of other actresses demoting the status of women as she portrayed a woman being an object of men’s fantasy.

WOMAN #1
(As if coming out of meditative state) Looked in my cave and saw shadows dancing on the wall.

WOMAN #3
(To herself) Woman hung herself today, she was bored with repetition.

There is the sound of thunder. Women get a nervous look on their face. They start sniffing the air. Thunder sounds again. They take on a dreamlike quality.

WOMAN #1
Never did fit into what is appropriate behavior for women. I chanted to the moon, dance naked around a fire with other women, talked to the plants, and welcomed spirits in my embrace. Now he thinks I’m too old for his embrace because I answered the call of nature.

WOMAN #2
Married a man who drove my daughter to suicide. I didn’t believe her when she said (childlike) he touched her like he touches mommie.

WOMAN #4
Have we always been dead?

WOMAN #3
I hate the way my husband wants me. Always salivating like its feeding time. I can’t put on enough clothes to discourage his passion. I don’t want to lay next to someone who is like a lid on a coffin.

WOMAN #1
We never had a voice.

WOMAN #2
We had a body.

WOMAN #3
We had vaginas for men to cry in.

WOMAN #4
And breast for our grown babies to suckle.

WOMAN #1
He left me for a young woman.

WOMAN #2
I slept with my stepson.

WOMAN #3
I left because my mother was jealous her husband’s eye might belong to me.

WOMAN #4
(Cries out) My mother slept with my husband!

WOMAN #1
I need a full moon. I want to dance naked. I’m still alive. I know I’m alive.

WOMAN #4
I don’t want to be dead.

WOMAN #3
Only my hand has brought me release.

WOMAN #4
(Sings) She’s got the whole world in her hand.

They all laugh.

WOMAN #2
People look at me like a crazy woman to spit on.

WOMAN #1
Have you looked at yourself lately?

WOMAN #2
I’m not dead.

WOMAN #1
I know I’m still alive.

WOMAN #2
Men have younger women. Why couldn’t I have a younger man?

WOMAN #3
Those raging hormones our like little deaths.

WOMAN #1
Who shall be our deliverer from this madness?

Charis enters raging, spitting as if possessed causing the other women to run and grab blankets and cover themselves as if it was the ground being pulled over them and they lay down as if in a grave. As Charis speaks, she runs to the various impromptu graves.

CHARIS
I am not your whore I told him. But he told me to shut up. I was nothing but a crazy bitch who needed a good fuck. Every woman I’ve ever been has been raped. I’ve been so many women to understand the anger of men. Now all these voices are crawling around in me diseased. No comfort, no home. I’m bleeding in the mouths of every man who want to know a woman’s story. (Goes to the pedestal, looks upward) I’m homeless outside the touch of my Beloved. (Pointing at the women laying under blankets) My children, my blood have become words that are now flesh. Now they are being raped, murdered, made homeless, treated like crazy women. I am known now as The Grave.

The women serve as the Chorus.

CHORUS
Mother, we are your mad daughters. We are the Daughters of the Grave.

CHARIS
(Looking upward) This is what you have done to my words. Why Father, have you forsaken me and made me heaven’s whore? When will Eros know my darkness? I’m tired of wandering the streets. (Pointing to the graves) Hear my voices Father.

CHORUS
Daughters of the grave call to rise.

Spotlight is on Charis and the rest of the stage is dark. Note: Women exit stage to make costume change into Greek attire and speak from offstage.

CHARIS
Stop the voices my Beloved. The gods have filled me with their madness. (Touches stomach) This one gave me a dead baby inside. (Touches arm) This one puts a needle in my arm and told me I’d see god. (Touches heart) This one said he loved me as he was fucking my sister. (Touches stomach) This one told me I’d be the mother of his children as he ran off with some man. (Grabs neck by both hands as if being strangled) This one strangled me because some dog told him that I was a whore. (Touches genital area) Another one said daddy loves his little girl and proceeded to act like I was his wife. (Gets up on pedestal) I hide in a man now to know reclaim my story.

CHORUS
Mother, your daughters of the graves have roamed like ghosts haunting the dreams of man. Whose imagination are we now, where will we stand?

CHARIS
(Sits on the pedestal, takes a bottle from her coat pocket and drinks throughout her speech.) I carry women’s stories. Am I the ark, the carrier who is the Watcher? / Shall I be the eyes of the stories? Shall I participate in the stories? / I am going mad from the stories that will not stay in their graves. / I go mad from dictates of books printed by man. / Words chainlink me in the madness of logic without fertility. / I am divine Silence that became imagination? / Yet, another god imagined me and I became a woman, then a man, yet in all forms I am exiled from my heart, my Beloved.

CHORUS
He called us a bitch. He called us a whore. He called us a little girl. He gave us his candy that drips ever more.

CHARIS
I am so full of stories. Yet, so many stories, these children wander lost, homeless, wander dead without dreams.

CHORUS
Stop playing with the dead. We want to know life.

CHARIS
Once I was a man who heard the voice of the Beloved and ran into the woods to find him and when I did, I danced for him, danced naked around the fire and became his woman. (Pause) But without all my stories, the war does not go well in my head.

CHORUS
We have stories. We are your blood.
CHARIS
Have to be crazy to be divine.

CHORUS
Mother.

CHARIS
(As an incantation) Give me my voice Father. Let the Goddess rise. Let Eros now know his bride. My voice wanders homeless and alone, bring forth these stories from the bones. Give me my voice let my stories rise.

CHORUS
Buried, buried, must we hide?
Buried, buried, must we die?

CHARIS
(Takes on the stance of a sorceress)
Let these voices rise from the graves in my mind and become what was before the written word. I must not be imprisoned in matter anymore. Let the Goddesses rise!

The sound of thunder and lightning is heard several times. The lights come up and the four women are under the blanket but they are standing.

(She runs from grave to grave)
Medea rise from the breath of the dragon whose power made you blind. Phaedra, I kiss the poison from your lips though your words contain its sting. Electra, I mourn in the arms of man as I lay in your place where he’s not divine. Antigone, the cave, the womb, the tomb, the blood of love covers you so you may know love has not forsaken you, rise. (Pause) My daughters, my mothers, my sisters, bring me my blood and come out of my mind. Someone must know your blood flows in all of us and the story must be told. I will not live outside my mind. Phaedra, Electra, Antigone, Medea rise!

The FOUR WOMEN throw off their blankets. They are dressed in Greek attire.

PHAEDRA
I am Phaedra. He didn’t hear the whispers of my heart so he shamed me before his father’s eyes. My heart grieved for a daughter taken from me and found love in his son’s eyes but he chose to be blind. Was my passion a hideous monster?

ELECTRA
I am Electra. You think you are a matron of problems, you try being the puppets of male gods who cannot fulfill their phallic dreams.

ANTIGONE
I am Antigone. My breasts are full. Yet, no child will nurse from them; no man will caress them or let me know his phallic god. I scream from a cave where I cannot be born; it is not like a womb but a man’s tomb.
MEDEA
I am Medea. You gave your life to a man and then mourn. You will not be pity by Gods or man. You have to take your stand. Stand and look him in the eye when he betrays your heart. Kill the betrayer.

ELECTRA
I’ve been written this way. My tears bring the wrath of gods upon me.

MEDEA
We all have had hair days when it comes to the love of a man.

ANTIGONE
I sat in the cave thinking, “Look at me so righteous, so pure, surely the gods will turn an eye and bless me even if my death was not purified.” (Sarcastic) Surely, no god would turn his eyes from a virgin.

MEDEA
I smell the madness of man upon all of you. You will lie always decaying in a man’s story.

ANTIGONE
Who are you to speak?

MEDEA
I’m not dead. You are dead!

CHARIS
You must understand the depths of your stories.

ANTIGONE
Stories. Stories. I’m so tired of hearing about stories. We are our stories. End of story.

ELECTRA
We don’t know any other story to live in.

CHARIS
These stories were put on you. You have enacted them so well you don’t know the difference between reality and the story.

PHAEDRA
We’re just mad homeless women.

MEDEA
Something is wrong.

ANTIGONE
Nothing is wrong, we’re dead.

MEDEA
I was in a garden. A voice tempted me, challenged me. I smell the workings of Eros.

ANTIGONE
Antigone is dead to love. I’m dead to children. I’m dead to myself.

ELECTRA
(Sarcastically) I think I can spare a few more tears for your situation.

PHAEDRA
Phallic devotion has been the death of all of us.

ANTIGONE
I knew respectable boundaries to my love.

MEDEA
Love has no boundaries. Only our denials give us limitations. And ignorance leads us.

PHAEDRA
I died for love.

ELECTRA
You died for lust. (Pause) Is this a purgatory for mad dead women?

MEDEA
Get this right, you’re dead.

CHARIS
Our tongues have become venomous. Our words are like daggers. We’ve forgotten the Garden.

MEDEA
I was in a garden. I was visited by Eros. He said my world had become too safe, to confine.

ANTIGONE
The witch is mad.

PHAEDRA
You got away with your vengeance. We paid.

CHARIS
It’s not a question of getting away with anything. It’s about knowing. You girls need a drink. Your words are gathering dust.

ELECTRA
You’re old and crazy.

CHARIS
I prefer to think of it as divine madness.

MEDEA
(Walks over to the pedestal, to herself) This place I was in was a garden, there was a temple.

ANTIGONE
Must we continue to walk down memory lane? I’m tired of being staged over and over again, folks applauding, poor thing, good drama.

PHAEDRA
I am still in that moment weeping like a mad woman knowing I will not know his embrace, his kiss, only a ghost conjured from a dream.

MEDEA
A man will not be the death of me. I have taken Jason’s name. His name ends with me. What I gave life, I gave death.

ELECTRA
Your witches’ ways made you free.

ANTIGONE
Some women will never get out of a man’s world alive. I died in a cave and never got out of it.

ELECTRA
I am tired of the dramas these gods play out in their fits of boredom.

MEDEA
Am I still dreaming in that garden?

ELECTRA
Why don’t you make a potion and sober up? Better yet, conjure us a body. Once you revive and rejuvenated a few in your days.

PHAEDRA
Bet she prefer to cut us up and toss us into the sea also.

ANTGONE
There’d be no King to pick up our pieces.

ELECTRA
She wouldn’t care. (Smartly) She’s not dead. We’re reminders of what she could become.

MEDEA
You three are the tragedy. The virgin, the woman, the crone. Why kill myself over a man? I’m not coming back to repeat that story.

ELECTRA
You murdered your children.

MEDEA
My children will always live in me.

ELECTRA
I hope their voices drive you mad.

MEDEA
Ah, mourning becomes Electra.

CHARIS
My voice is so fragmented.

ANTIGONE
So what’s your story?

PHAEDRA
How could I touch my husband when his son’s face was the sun?

ANTIGONE
I wasn’t talking to you.

PHAEDRA
Your man let you die.

ANTIGONE
Bitch.

CHARIS
Stop it! The pedestal is cracked, there is no Goddess.

PHAEDRA
Even the goddess is no more than a birthing vessel.

ELECTRA
I don’t know her story.

ANTIGONE
Neither do I?

PHAEDRA
Like that’s going to make a difference for us. (To CHARIS) So what man turned you out?

MEDEA
I’m not dead.

ANTIGONE
To us, you’re dead.

ELECTRA
Maybe you need to pull the pot out the closet and whip up a batch of reality. We’re here. You’re here. End of story.

MEDEA
I am the only one who survived the heart attack of a man.

CHARIS
Stop being shadows of the gods!

ELECTRA
Are we in a bad mood too? So which god fucked you over?

MEDEA
(To Electra) Your tears have polluted your mouth with bitterness.

ELECTRA
Every time some wannabe actress wants to play me, I pick up a few words here and there. I’ve been played by whores, by virgins and housewives seeking salvation from stage lights. So like I was saying old woman, who fucked you dry?

MEDEA
Leave her alone. (Goes to comfort CHARIS who is visibly disturbed.)

ANTIGONE
I was dead when my lover finally decided to be a man and push back the rock. He took my body and buried it. But my spirit was still there crying. I stood there yelling at him, I’m here. I’m here.” He kissed dead flesh while I stood there in spirit with aching lips.

PHAEDRA
Enough of you. I want to hear the old woman’s story. If she’s going to be around, we might as well get the 411 on her.

ANTIGONE
Another story, another cave, another place to die in.

MEDEA
That’s why you’re dead. You surrender so easily.

ANTIGONE
How many caves are filled with dead women?

CHARIS
So many women die in empty rooms. We must stop the story that lives in them. We need new stories.

ELECTRA
I don’t know anything else. The gods sort of limited my theatrical run.

PHAEDRA
Men defined our story.

MEDEA
I am not defined. I am.

ANTIGONE
I see we do not smell reality yet.

MEDEA
I could find another cave for you.

CHARIS
Silence.

ANTIGONE
Let’s get this woman’s story over with.

CHARIS
I’ve stolen each of you from bodies of women who live your story, who live your words because we are bleeding; continuing a covenant with gods that will not stop dreaming this madness so they can feed off a woman’s soul.

PHADERA
I dared to love even in the midst of blood.

ANTIGONE
Am I truly my father’s daughter, blind. The blind leading the blind.

ELECTRA
I am still mourning.

MEDEA
Eros said I needed to know love.

CHARIS
I’ve been passed from body to body and yet no man knows my name.

MEDEA
So old woman, what land will a woman live in when she is blind inside?

CHARIS
(Laments) I cannot bleed more children from my body. I need resolution. Lead me from the beds of temptation my Beloved. I’m tired of being auctioned from man to man.

MEDEA
Eros has made me homeless.

ANTIGONE
My womanhood is a cave. Women will die there. I can only birth ghost.

ELECTRA
Mother loved her man more than me.

PHAEDRA
What poison will bring silence to your raging mind old woman?

CHARIS
I want my name back my Beloved. I am the fallen daughter, heaven’s holy whore.

PHAEDRA
I don’t want my death recycled from mouth to mouth…

ANTIGONE
from hearts that don’t understand the architect of my passion…

ELECTRA
buried in words that hold the anger of the gods.

PHAEDRA
You will be tired like us one day old woman.

ANTIGONE
Must a cave be a womb, a tomb? Must life know death to know life.

ELECTRA
What can we do? Our voices are dead.

MEDEA
I’m not dead. I will awaken from this dream.

ANTIGONE
I’m getting tired of you.

CHARIS
Still my children don’t see me.

MEDEA
(Cries out) Eros, is this the madness concealed in my heart?

ANTIGONE
Being a statute has benefits.

MEDEA
I was in a Garden.

PHADERA
Face it, if you had to do it all over again, would you turn down the pleasure of a man?

CHARIS
I must have my voice again.

ANTIGONE
She’s rambling again.

MEDEA
It was lonely on that pedestal. I will not be a stone that is crying.

CHARIS
I am Charis. I am the breeze that makes leaves laugh. I am the soil beneath your feet. I am the insects that crawl upon the Earth. I am houses sheltering men from their emotional storms. I am the hand pulling a newborn from its mother’s womb. I am the flower crying as it is pulled from the soil. I am the animal hunted without permission. I am the blood flowing in your veins. I am the ocean, the mountains. I am the sky and all that is beneath and all that is above.

MEDEA
I was standing on a pedestal. Eros enveloped me. I stepped down to know the world outside my island paradise. Leaving that sanctuary I became Medea. When a Goddess dies, silence leaves the world. Mother?

CHARIS
I am the Male Mother. Not a woman. Not a man. It began when I masturbated myself. I felt a breeze inside like someone was ripping paper off a wall. The breeze began to feel sticky. My insides attempted to swallow this feeling which started becoming a heavy mass. This mass grew heavier. There was a scream coming out of me as I pushed it out. This gelatin mass fell out of me, taking a shape I didn’t want to hold in my mind. It laid there on the sheets screaming like curtains being torn down violently from every window
CHARIS (Continued)
in the house. I wrapped it in a sheet, ran to the corner of my existence, put it in a cloud of light and dropped it into this dark abyss. I gave this thing a part of me so it wouldn’t be alone in this outer darkness. It used my light power and began creating the material world. In its ignorance, it manifested my hidden passions, denials which became you. I created this god without the permission of my Father, without the love of my Beloved because I wanted to know myself. So it took my stories which became patterns, blueprints to manifest reality. I have descended into the material world to reclaim my light power. I have entered the cycles of death to heal my stories.

They each speak in a state of detachment.

PHAEDRA
I saw out of your eyes old woman, a woman suffocating her children, her husband had left her for another woman.

ANTIGONE
I saw out of your eyes a woman kill herself when she could no longer see or feel the embrace of a lover because he died in rules that had no symptoms of divine.

ELECTRA
I saw a woman through your eyes taking pills after pills altering the state of her mind.

ELECTRA goes and embrace ANTIGONE, PHAEDRA, MEDEA and then goes and stands in front of CHARIS.

ELECTRA
I will give you my voice. I will weep no more. I will die no more within my mother’s blood.

ELECTRA goes to the blanket lays down and cover herself as if she was in a grave. ANTIGONE embraces PHAEDRA and MEDEA and then goes and stands in front of CHARIS.

ANTIGONE
I will give you my spirit. I will no longer be disengaged from feelings. You are the ground that shall make it holy.

ANTIGONE goes to a blanket, lays down and covers herself. PHAEDRA embraces MEDEA and then goes to CHARIS.

PHAEDRA
I will give you my heart. It will become a home for the Beloved.

PHAEDRA goes to the blanket, lays down and covers herself.

MEDEA
Was it just a dream?

CHARIS
No. It is real. You and I are the same. When I stepped from the pedestal, I became many women. I needed this experience to understand what my child had created. It is time to heal what I have set in motion.

MEDEA
Let me look upon you Mother, my black mirror. How fairs our wound?

They look at each other deeply and then embrace.

CHARIS goes to a blanket, picks it up.

CHARIS
A goddess must die to know life. (Lies down and covers himself with the blanket.)

MEDEA looks around at the graves. She looks at the pedestal, goes and stands upon it. There is the sound of thunder.

MEDEA
(Her stance is different, the quality of her voice more heavenly.) I am the First Sound when Silence spoke and placed me upon a throne from which creation flows. In my folly to create like Silence, I manifested without contemplating the Silence and what fell from me was Imagination in its chaotic form that continued manifesting without Silence and the Breath of Life. I am the Last who shall be First. (Lightning flashes across the sky. MEDEA looks up as a spotlight shines upon her.) My Beloved!

BLACKOUT

THE END