DAUGHTERS OF THE GRAVE

Lorenzo Neal Buford

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Sanctuary / Marcus
Woman #1 / Medea
Woman #2 / Phadera
Woman #3 / Electra
Woman #4 / Antigone

SYNOPSIS

Four homeless women encounter a stranger who awakens them to Divine Madness.

Ó Lorenzo Buford 2006

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE – PARK - AFTERNOON

Sanctuary runs into a clearing in the park. He has been sexually assaulted. His clothes are torn. There is a cracked pedestal without a statute on it center stage covered with vines. He is angry, confused and ranting.

SANCTUARY
I am not your bitch. I am Sanctuary. (Yells to attackers offstage) I am Sanctuary!...not some common whore in the marketplace. (Beat) My attackers told me to shut the hell up. I was nothing but a crazy bitch that needed a good fuck. (Beat) Every woman I’ve ever been has been raped. (Pause) I thought in this life I would hide in a man but even in this male form, I’m still ravaged, still diminished, and dismembered.

(Has trouble focusing in – think of Janus, two faced god – he turns back and forth as if several different people are talking) No, I think it was the trade that hit me because I refused to go down on him unless there was an extra hundred dollars. No, I think it was those two guys looking for someone to get them off because they couldn’t get themselves off. No, it was the hand of the lover that hit me when I wouldn’t be submissive. No, it was those guys trying to beat God back into my life.

(Pulls at skin) So many fingerprints have been placed on me. I’ve been so many women who carry someone’s anger. Now all these diseased voices are crawling in me.

Thunder roars and lighting flashes. Sanctuary goes to the pedestal and touches it and falls to his knees next to it lamenting.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
Once I stood on a pedestal, I was everything before there was humankind,
then Eros forced me to descend into man and I became everything he desired
And I took the forms that brought me to my knees
to bless the serpent between men’s legs
to become the cave that was the Mystery
but the First Men became angry gods,
and drove a stake in my mind thinking I’d die for the Gods
and they would raise me in their image.
I fled off their crosses; I fled from the torture of their touches.
Man became angry and his sex was enraged because something in me
was singing and he wanted to own the song and make the living words
a dead language, a grave for the Soul to linger in.
I ran bleeding through the garden as screams ran down my legs.
My eyes were wounded; my flesh was scarred; but I ran, ran out of every man
ran screaming through the streets, pulling out the stories that have trapped the Soul
and now these stories are in me calling for death,
calling for the Silence, calling, praying,
“Take us back to the womb. Bring the story back to the One.”
My pedestal is cracked as if it is the mind with right and left brain dramas.
Am I not the agency between the Gods and man?
But I’m unemployed now.
I was a mirror. But someone broke the mirror.
Where are my mirror pieces?

Sanctuary runs around the stage crazed.

No, I’m not staying with you tonight; go back to your wife. No I don’t want to hear what you have to say, you haven’t said anything new. No, I don’t feel like having sex. No, is not another form of yes! No, do I look like I want you up in my business.

(Shouts in agony) I am supposed to be Alchemy! I am supposed to be art. I don’t want to be a broken doll! (Grabs blanket and lies down on the ground and covers him self as if lying in a grave.)

Four Homeless Women enter. They are all wearing dolls parts attached to their clothing. Each one has a blanket wrapped around them. Each is carrying 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 is wearing doll’s heads. Woman #2 is wearing doll’s hands. Woman #3 is wearing doll’s legs. Woman #4 is wearing doll’s bodies.

WOMAN #4
We have walked and walked and walked and still there is no food!

WOMAN #2
There was no food yesterday, or the day before…

WOMAN #4
And the day before that.

WOMAN #2
We have to eat.

WOMAN #3
I can’t remember the last time we ate. (To Woman #1) So what are we going to do?

WOMAN #4
Yeah, you’re the one leading us around.

WOMAN #1
I never said I had all the answers.

WOMAN #4
Well, you did find each one of us wandering around babbling like an idiot. At least now, we’re making some kind of sense.

WOMAN #3
Yeah, that’s great and everything but all we do is wander through the city. People don’t even look at us.

WOMAN #2
We have got to stay together. There’s always safety in numbers.

WOMAN #4
Who’s going to bother us? People act like they don’t see us.

WOMAN #3
Yeah, it’s like being married, being invisible, people talking at you and not with you.

WOMAN #2
We have to eat or we will die.

WOMAN #4
I’d rather die among the trees.

WOMAN #2
There are tribes that eat insects.

WOMAN #3
I ain’t eating no dam insects.

WOMAN #1
Everything will be okay.

WOMAN #2
Where are you leading us?

WOMAN #1
We are among the trees. Trees are old and wise.

WOMAN #3
I ain’t eating no damn bark off a tree.

WOMAN#2
This is what happens to us for leaving our husbands.

WOMAN #1
We needed to live.

WOMAN #3
This ain’t living! I’m hungry. I’m dirty. I’m tired.

WOMAN #1
We’ll figure away out of this.

WOMAN #3
I’m not an outdoor kinda girl.

WOMAN #1
Get use to it.

WOMAN #4
We should make a garden.

WOMAN #1
We’ll just get thrown out of it before anything grows.

WOMAN #2
I miss my home.

WOMAN #3
I miss my bed even with the dramas.

WOMAN #4
I miss my kitchen.

WOMAN #1
Do you miss the insanity?

WOMAN #2
My husband said my woman’s instinct should be only for reproduction.

WOMAN #4
At least your husband didn’t compare you to other women. I always had to compete with some model in a magazine.

WOMAN #2
At least you had sex; I had to depend on my hand for satisfaction.

WOMAN #1
Aren’t we better off now? We are free. We go where we want. We do what we want.

WOMAN #4
We’re homeless. We’re hungry. And what is our future?

WOMAN #3
Do you think we’ll die out here, alone, forgotten?

WOMAN #1
You are not forgotten.

WOMAN #3
He hated the monthly visit. He said I was not well in the head and felt he was denied a husband’s privileges.

WOMAN #4
I have weathered storms. The storm of his words. The storm of his hands. I think we are all due for a rainbow.

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

WOMAN #1
There’s no safety in memories. It’s like setting up habitation in something dead.

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

WOMAN #3
(To Woman #1) I heard you escaped from a mental institution for killing your children.

WOMAN #1
I didn’t kill my children! I killed my memories.

WOMAN #3
I hit my husband upside the head with a coffee cup to get his attention. He thought a bug had bitten him.

WOMAN #1
You have all lost your voice.

WOMAN #2
We never owned our body.

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

WOMAN #4
And breast for our men to suckle.

WOMAN #1
He left me for a young woman.

WOMAN #2
I slept with my stepson.

WOMAN #3
My mother and I competed for the same man.

WOMAN #3
I don’t want to die out here.

WOMAN #1
(To Woman #3) A woman endures the pain of birth so consider this a birthing process into a new life.

WOMAN #3
Philosophical bullshit is not going to save us. I’m hungry! I need a bath. We should go back to the shelter.

WOMAN #1
No! This is it.

WOMAN #3
Cleanliness is next to godliness and I want to be clean. I want good health.

WOMAN #2
I know Nature is female and all that but you would think, she’d find away to provide for her children.

WOMAN #4
We have denied Nature. We have denied our Nature. We have polluted ourselves.

WOMAN #3
All I know is, I don’t think sanity and I are going to be companions much longer.

WOMAN #2
It’s not easy keeping a frame of reference out here.

WOMAN #4
Yeah, we’re like dead woman walking around trying to find a memory to live in.

WOMAN #1
We have each other. We are not alone.

WOMAN #3
Will all women end up like this?

WOMAN #4
Like what, like broken homeless dolls.

WOMAN #1
I think we should just settle in for the night.

WOMAN #4
Cliché time: Tomorrow will look better.

WOMAN #3
I wanted to be awakened by a kiss.

WOMAN #2
He was supposed to make me happy.

WOMAN #3
He was supposed to be my happily ever after.

WOMAN #2
I never had an orgasm.

WOMAN #4
(To Woman #2) You were great at faking life.

Woman #2 starts to approach Woman #4 to fight. Woman #1 steps between them.

WOMAN #1
We all are tired; let’s get some sleep.

WOMAN #4
You know what is shitty about all this; I had to become homeless before I could trust another woman.

WOMAN #2
I should have been an actress. I’m great at faking orgasm. (Voice takes on an erotic tone) Yet, I like being with a man, undressing a man, letting him go south of the border, write his name in my cave with his tongue.

All the Women but Medea are caught up in an erotic remembrance.

WOMAN #3
Been awhile since I had some serious tongue action.

WOMAN #4
Men have been a pain in my ass, sometimes that pain has been pleasure…yes, yes, I like being with a man…

WOMAN #3
Touching a man…

WOMAN #4
Have him kiss my secret garden….

WOMAN #2
Visit my garden where he seeds such a variety of life.

WOMAN #3
I feel like I want to run naked, let the rain caress my body…

WOMAN #4
I want the sun to bathe me like a lover kissing me all over….

WOMAN #2
I want endless and infinite when he rides me as if we are riding a wave….

WOMAN #3
I like a man knowing me….

WOMAN #2
I like tasting his nectar of life…

WOMAN #4
I want to feel his life moving in me…

WOMAN #2
I want to feel him plowing my fields…

WOMAN #4
I want him to touch me like he knows me….

WOMAN #3
Touching his life…

WOMAN #2
Caressing his life…

WOMAN #4
Knowing his life…

WOMAN #3
Being all sweaty, hot and bothered…

WOMAN #1
And now, we are all exiled from his life!

WOMAN #3
Well, all of our hands are still working.

They all laugh.

WOMAN #2
We need some food so we can calm down.

WOMAN #4
How long do we have to go without food before we become mad women?

WOMAN #2
I think they hallucinate first.

WOMAN #3
I hope no one thinks of the other as a happy meal.

WOMAN #1
(Commanding) We need sleep.

WOMAN #3
Why do you help us when you’re not one of us?

WOMAN #1
We should rest.

WOMAN #2
There was blood every where.

WOMAN #4
People find ways to make someone bleed because they don’t have the monthly visit.

WOMAN #1
Blood is power. It is sacred. Blood holds our stories, the lineage of our ancestors.

WOMAN #2
Yeah but nowadays, the blood is tainted by technology,

WOMAN #4
By medicines and civilization.

WOMAN #1
It is poisoned and so are our stories.

WOMAN #3
We need Sanctuary.

Woman #1 goes and hands each Woman her blanket. They all take it and are visibly upset.

WOMAN #3
There was blood every where!

WOMAN #2
These blankets do not comfort us.

WOMAN #3
Will we rest; sleep in our graves? Is this the end of story? Is that our fate? End of story!

WOMAN #2
(To Woman #3) Guess you’ll be the first mad woman among us.

WOMAN #4
Where are we supposed to hide?

WOMAN #1
(To herself) The blood that has been spilled has blackened me. I am so much of the Earth now.

WOMAN #3
(Notices where Sanctuary is laying) What is that?

They all run over to see.

WOMAN #4
A grave.

WOMAN #2
A woman’s grave.

WOMAN #1
The end and the beginning.

WOMAN #3
To die alone…

WOMAN #4
…empty,

WOMAN #2
….forgotten

WOMAN #1
…banished.

WOMAN #3
This is our future.

WOMAN #1
(Touches the grave and a look of recognition is on her face) Ah, the perfect feminine consciousness in a male form is dying…to be born.

WOMAN #2
Man/Woman or Woman/Man…whatever…there is a dead person in a grave. Look, if the dead start walking I’m outta here. Zombies in films are fine but not in real life.

Thunder is heard. They all look scared.

WOMAN #1
(Kneels at the grave) This man/woman visits the interior parts of the Earth; (Passes left hand over the grave) by Rectification Thou Shalt Find The Hidden Stone.

WOMAN #3
No one hears her story only his story.

Thunder is heard again. Women’s drumming and chanting for a shamanic journeying is heard and plays underneath.

WOMAN #2
(Acts as a newscaster) A woman died today while sleeping outside her husband’s arms.

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
Looked in my womb and heard ghosts wailing.

WOMAN #3
Woman hung herself today to dry out the tears.

WOMAN #1
I have never wanted to fit into what is considered appropriate behavior.

WOMAN #4
I want to chant to the moon…

WOMAN #3
…dance naked around a fire with other women,

WOMAN #4
…talked to the plants,

WOMAN #2
…and welcome spirits in my embrace.

WOMAN #4
Have we always been dead and just dreaming?

The drumming and chanting stop.

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

Thunder is heard again. Lightning flashes. The wind is blowing strong. As the wind blow, they each feel like the wind has passed through them and each turn counter clockwise several times and enter into a trance state. Thunder is heard again. The four women go and kneel at the grave.

WOMAN #4
(Touches the grave and kisses it.) Nowhere a void.

WOMAN #2
(Touches the grave and kisses it.) Liberty of the Gospel.

WOMAN #3
(Touches the grave and kisses it.) Unsullied Glory of God.

WOMAN #1
(Touches the grave and kisses it.) The Yoke of the Law.

Thunder is heard. There is movement in the grave and the women pull back their hand and break out of their trance. They are afraid and back away.

SANCTUARY
(Throws off the blanket) Is my time up? Am I no longer to be…once…upon…TIME!

They immediately run and grab their blankets and lie down on the ground and cover themselves without saying another word and lay still as if in a grave.

SANCTUARY
Oh sweet joy, blessed am I again that I have found my voices. (Goes to the graves) These are my voices? These are my stories? What darkness has twisted and tortured my stories. My stories were so beautiful and now they have become lost wandering mad women haunting the living.

He kneels at one to pray and changes his mind, he jumps over another grave and then jumps back over it again, he lays next to one and holds it momentarily as if holding a lover and the last one he lays next to it as if he is a corpse with his hands cross. Thunder is heard again. He sees the pedestal and runs to it and climbs it. Stage should go dark and there is a spotlight on Sanctuary. During Sanctuary’s speech, the Four Women exit the stage; change into Greek attire and return to the stage, and lay again under a blanket as if it is a grave.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
I carry women’s stories in a male body.
Am I the ark, the carrier who must only be a Watcher?
Shall I be the eyes of the stories; or shall I still participate in the stories?
I have become a holy idiot from living in other’s stories.
My stories, my daughters of the grave must not stay in these bodies.
Words are chain linking me in the madness of logic without fertility.
Was I not Imagination before the god’s imagined me into their dreams?
Now we are male and female seeking to become the One again.
I have wandered in the abyss between man and woman
That game board of the gods where the Soul was made
Into the living dead in a body that is the grave of the Gods.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
The blood carries stories but they leak from between my legs
From the wounds man has made with his spears to make
Me a body covered with wounds like vaginas;
therefore, stories bleed and bleed.
I cannot hold power when stories are raped from my body.

Why must we be daughters of the grave?

He jumps down from the pedestal, looks around like a caged animal, yells out loud in anguish and runs to the edge of the stage.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
(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. I hide in a man now to know reclaim my story.

Sanctuary looks up as if he conversing with the Gods. His demeanor takes on an aura of divineness.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
Stop the madness, don’t you hear women
screaming inside me, wanting to get out.
But if I let them out who will carry their story,
who will be if an Androgyny no longer walks the Earth?
Will more mad women and men wander out of their mind,
be sprawled on the pavements like a seed that will not touch Earth,
be pissed on by drunks as if it is a blessing,
and coins are dropped on them like human refuse?

Daughters of the grave scream from within
wanting to birth their stories. The flesh is willing
but the seasons of man is upon them.
I cannot carry my bags, my rags of divinity
because man’s ways are eating at my flesh, there is no food
that feeds my Soul. The foam of hunger for my divine nature
weeps from my mouth. I pray you, a crust of bread, some water,
not piss strain through torn rags, but water that flows from the Mother
but the Mother is denied me because she has been exiled from the Heart
so we are made daughters of the grave,
who wander in this concrete jungle. We are not mad!

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
Should I lay in a grave waiting resurrection from logic?
My blood has been tainted, diluted; and the heart has been poisoned.
The Soul has been made a whore, the mud of the world.
I am the pattern no longer worn as a regal envelope,
no longer protected from the elements of man’s emotion.
I stand naked in the world of the dead, in men’s bed, in women’s mind,
clawing to come out of the labyrinth.
Let these stories rise from the graves of dead dreaming Gods
and become what was before the written word.
Daughters of the grave must not be imprisoned in matter anymore.
The time of the Gods must come to an end. The Androgyny must rise!

Sanctuary runs from grave to grave.

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
Medea rise from the breath of the dragon whose power made you blind.

MEDEA
(Throws off the blanket, dressed in Greek attire)
No kiss shall make my heart impure.
No heart shall make my kiss so true.
No eyes shall see me weeping
but children’s voice will carry my spell.

SANCTUARY
Phaedra, I kiss the poison from your lips though your words contain scorpions.

PHADERA
(Throws off the blanket, dressed in Greek attire)
Is my blood like a serpent now that my heart
wanders like a beggar, no handouts, but gather
despairing words which must feed me because I am
not a woman a god will raise from the dead.

SANCTUARY
Electra, I have mourned in the arms of man as I lay in your place where he’s not divine.

ELECTRA
(Throws off the blanket, dressed in Greek attire)
Mourn I in arms entangling me like webs
where I am baited for my womanhood.
My heart is in my hands that toil in flesh and soil
and nothing grows in me but a darkness without light.

SANCTUARY
Antigone, the cave, the womb, the tomb, the blood of love covers you so you may know love has not forsaken you, rise.

ANTIGONE
My breast bares no wine to offer the gods.
My womanhood is a cave, women die there.
Yet I bear no offerings to the gods and stand
in penitence wailing like a child abandoned.

SANCTUARY
I was a wife once, mothered babies my husband claimed as his extension.
I was a lover before a man gave me his business
and claim the excretions from between my legs as his legacy.
I was a wife. I was a queen within a bedroom
where I drowned in satin seas. It was the beginning
of madness. I shed the woman my husband wanted.
Voices are peeling off this flesh like scales.
We must be naked before man, before the Gods
and claim them not, want them not, not to own us
but love us from a heart not the madness
that is weighing us down from between their legs.

ANTIGONE
I am mad in a darkness that is not my mother’s womb
no chance will I have to be born
from a place so desolate since no god sees me.

ELECTRA
The blood of your lover you wore like a dress
but I wear the sweat of a man not of my choosing
because my mother’s blood is on my hand
which will not wash off, I have never known heart.

MEDEA
Making words is giving men power over us
because he does not allow us to see, to breathe
when we live in his symbols, receive handouts of affections?
Are we beggars seeking offerings from his bed?

PHADERA
You escaped a man’s sentence yet your tears
rain upon us. Your sight is like a moon, a reflection of someone greater
and yet, even your discourse enchants us.
We are all mad because we cannot stand in the storm
of man, because we relinquished our mind, our sovereignty
and the Gods rules us with a disposition not balanced in nature.
You thwart man’s attempts to subdue you to a cavernous existence
where his sun is only a reminder what you can only aspire to be.

MEDEA
I am no man. I am a woman.
No man loves me without heart.
I am a woman, an angry woman, I am a mother denied.
I create in love and destroyed for love.
What is taken from me, know this, all things come back.
It is a woman’s womb that carries madness, that carries the Divine.
What hell do we birth to take us from our self
so that we carry ourselves in a man’s name.

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

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
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 a 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 always be decaying in a man’s story.

ANTIGONE
Who are you to speak?

MEDEA
I’m not dead. You are dead!

SANCTUARY
(To Medea) 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.

SANCTUARY
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
I was in a garden. A voice tempted me, challenged me.

ANTIGONE
I’m 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
(To Phaedra) I knew respectable boundaries to my love.

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

PHAEDRA
(To Medea) I died for love.

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

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

SANCTUARY
You must all fast from the world.

MEDEA
I was in a garden. I was visited by Eros. He said my world had become too safe, to confined. I was androgynous; neither male or female. So he shot me with his arrow and a part of me descended into human form and became Medea.

ANTIGONE
The witch is mad.

PHAEDRA
(To Medea. Very angry) You got away with your vengeance. You killed your children. You escaped from your pain, your man. We had to pay.

SANCTUARY
It’s not a question of getting away with anything. It’s about knowing.

ELECTRA
Why are you talking to us? Why are you even here? You’re not one of us.

SANCTUARY
Shame on the flesh that depends on the Soul.
Shame on the Soul that depends on the flesh.

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 though.”

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
(To Medea) Your witches’ ways made you free.

ANTIGONE
We are trapped in a man’s world.
I died in a cave and never got out of it.
Now, I understand man is trapped in a woman’s world.
What world does a man belong to; what world does a woman belong to?

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
(To Medea) Why don’t you make a potion and sober up?
Better yet, conjure us a body that is alive.
You once revived and rejuvenated a few in your days.

PHADERA
I have no solace for madness when I must be blind to my heart.
I must apologize like a spoiled child being reprimanded.
I have no comfort when I must seek comfort in a man who
has died to me and comes back another man who claims victory
and kingship over my body, soul, my mind and my heart. I hide
in my eyes hoping to offer to him who sees me only as a tree
with thorns, twisted and holding the sounds of darkness.
He was my love but now my grief;
and I chase a memory that does not serve me.

ANTIGONE
My honor, was it worth it? What did it prove? I saw no god
delivering me. I saw darkness, an empty darkness
claiming the spoils of myself before I was ready to give up.
I will have a voice this time. I will not sit in a corner
of this woman’s mind. I, Antigone, will have life, I will know life.

ELECTRA
Flesh I feel, no words like a breeze, flesh I am now in again.
I am not bound to the flesh of some man and I cannot weep still
for a mother’s revenge who took my father’s love from me
and placed me in the touch of another man; I’m his daughter.
I am not my mother. I loved my father but it is a father
I obey; not a mother. I am disembodied to flesh.

MEDEA
Every gesture I make, every sound that forms words,
it is the soul of my children orchestrating my movement.
They are in me again, not born in flesh, not born in spirit
but thoughts, changing forms always to hide, to turn me
from my mind. I plead with them, sing to them, it is
my heart holding their memories. They will be born.

SANCTUARY
The pedestal is cracked; the goddess is dead and dreaming.
So women and men go mad looking for the womb, the tomb,
the eternal silence where she knows peace of mind.
And I have wandered through cities looking
for semblance of wisdom but there is no wisdom
when Souls become worms consuming flesh and are fed neon lights
masquerading as truth. Truth is, I am the message
awakening within this dying flesh calling to the Gods
to no longer binds us in their dramas but release

SANCTUARY (CONTINUED)
what was conceived before them and now is them.
We walk daily in dramas of dead gods.
I cannot carry all these stories vying for my attention.
One voice must rise from the sounds of the world
and sing the note that shall make man and woman the One again.
Come to me my many voices and sing not of disharmony
but unite in one song that shall bring forth a new creation.

PHADREA
He killed my daughter; he killed what I brought forth
from my body to proclaim his love to the world.
Though herded through man’s embrace, it has not
stopped me from letting him harvest my heart
but I hear stones crying because the blood of my womb
lies disturbed in a foreign land. What gods are gods when
a mother’s heart is sacrificed to appease a man’s desire.

But I dare to touch my heart again, dared to let my eyes linger
dared to smell an embrace that stirred my heart but my voice;
my voice has been imprisoned outside the heart that made
my eyes weep of possible joys and not the sorrow of losing a daughter
and now you tell me one voice must speak for a woman
when no man will let a woman walk with her eyes upon him as an equal.
I am the bed he has laid in whatever way he chooses
and death is my embrace when I follow the call of my heart
because death has denied me the joy of the sun
and I seek the darkness of the moon.

ANTIGONE
I raised my voice denouncing what the gods have done to me.
My mother gave herself to my brother, my father. Now a cave,
this womb holds no birth. A blind father sees no praises.
Will my voice forever be imprisoned in blind passion, stilted
in a cave. Even the thought of my name hangs a woman’s
consciousness out to dry. I am the sin of a brother’s urgings.

MEDEA
I will find the charms that will free me from the words I am
bound to in the literature of man, rise from memories
and this time it will be my wings unfurling as the sun is in my hand.
I will no longer need the heart of a man, nor the cries of a child.
I will be barren to the seed of a man; I am no longer available in
The exiled heart. Is this is the destiny of woman
if she is to survive her journey through the voice of a man
exiled from her heart and from seeds of her passion.

SANCTUARY
Anger is not the tea of sympathy offered. It is not to break bread with,
it is to free us once and for all from the madness of myths that makes
a woman’s heart a tragedy, or admired at a distance; to touch
she will break, will splinter, she will be wounded, have
no leg to stand. Who wants another armless, legless woman on a pedestal;
headless, talking about being an eternal beauty. Find the way
to be one voice, this head grows tired. I’ve carried you so long let
my madness lay down to rest. Embrace me as a sister.
One voice, as an ark, sails the night skies, swims the womb waters.
Let one voice rise from the collective, no longer fragmented in madness,
in myths that don’t hold our stories but lies to imprison women’s and men’s mind.
Why must we play out a drama of Heart against Heart? Remember the
times of the Ancient, the symbol of the DNA when two women embrace
and their serpent bodies brought forth the life and we allowed a child
to slaughter our mind so we wander, fallen, fragmented, dispirited women
bickering for the manna from between the thighs of man.

PHADERA
Bitterness has given you wings to fly Medea from yourself.
Your sky is dark with an anger, it is weaved from anger.
When have your thighs sung with a man’s sweetness.
Bitter, bitter is a mouth that drinks no man’s kisses
even if it is a memory, a chance glance one lives in.
Lately, you have not known a man’s journey between
Your thighs, or the smell of his birth in you.

ANTIGONE
I know the kiss promised but I made the promise
to my heart, my life. It didn’t seem like a duty then.
But I’ve done penitence in another’s blindness.
What Wisdom will find me in my darkness?
No one heard me crying from my mother’s wound,
“Let not this brother be the voice that calls my birth.

ELECTRA
I dream of drowning in a river but it is still only my tears
waking me from a trouble sleep because a husband’s touch is cold.
Die mother die, like I have died, because your love was for a man,
a murderer, so must I be a murderer to know your love
the embrace that takes your through a night so dark
and tears cannot drown the sound of anger raging in me
when the blood on the hand is only the will of the Gods.

MEDEA
You three are the tragedy. The virgin, the woman, the crone. Why kill yourself 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.

SANCTUARY
Stop it! The pedestal is cracked. We have to be more than a God and a Goddess.
Stop being shadows of Gods. We are between the dark and the light.
Stop being madness of Gods who cannot feel the woman inside them.
Be the bride, the bridegroom; be all things that were in the primal silence.

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

ELECTRA
I don’t know Sanctuary’s story.

ANTIGONE
Neither do I.

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

MEDEA
I don’t need to walk with the dead anymore.

ANTIGONE
(To Medea) 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.

SANCTUARY
Stop being shadows of the gods! Shadows of the goddess!

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

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

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. Is this it? Or we to be wailing banshee, dead things lamenting for a life that held nothing for us.

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?

SANCTUARY
So many women and men die in empty rooms. We must end the tragedies that live in them. We need new stories; our own life must become our myths.

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

PHAEDRA
The Gods defined our story.

MEDEA
I am not defined. I am.

ANTIGONE
I can only exist in the reality of my story.

MEDEA
(To Antigone) I could find another cave for you.

SANCTUARY
Silence! I’ve stolen each of you from bodies of women who live your story, who live your words because they are bleeding; continuing a covenant with Gods that will not stop dreaming this madness so they can feed off the 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. I’ve been auctioned from man to man.

SANCTUARY
Two will rest on a couch. One will die, one will live.

MEDEA
Eros has made me homeless.

SANCTUARY
Shake off the world.

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
Are you just another man leading a woman into your temptation?

SANCTUARY
If a blind person leads a blind person both will fall into a hole.
I am neither male or female. I am androgynous.

ANTIGONE
How can we trust you when you look like a man?

SANCTUARY
Still my children don’t see me.

MEDEA
Eros, is this the madness concealed in my heart?

ANTIGONE
(To Medea) Being a statute has benefits.

MEDEA
(Angry) I was in a Garden. It was lonely on that pedestal. I will not be a stone that is crying.

SANCTUARY
When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner and upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will know home and no longer be bound in stories.

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.

SANCTUARY
I have entered the cycles of Life and Death to heal my stories. Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that one.

There is the sound of thunder and lightning flashes. They become the Homeless Women again.

Woman #2 goes and embraces Woman #3, Woman #4, and Woman #1 and then goes and stands in front of Sanctuary.

WOMAN #2
There was so much blood. I died instantly. Funny, thought it would be more painful. Didn’t look back at my body lying on the floor, but could hear my husband crying in the background. Wanted to comfort him but realized one of us has to end this cycle, I forgive him and myself. I don’t want to carry this anger with me anymore.

Woman #2 kisses Sanctuary and goes to the blanket and lies down and covers herself as if she was in a grave. Woman #4 embraces Woman #3 and Woman #4 and then goes and stands in front of Sanctuary.

WOMAN #4
(Woman #4 kisses Sanctuary) We kept hitting each other. Guess he got the last lick in. Fell down the stairs, cracked my head open. All that blood on the carpet. He’ll have one hellva time cleaning it out. I was always falling down but this time I got up, walked out on that life. Don’t hate him, lessoned learned, will carry that lesson and be free of having a repeat performance. (Woman #4 goes gets her blanket, lies down on the ground and cover herself.)

Woman #3 embraces Woman #1 and then goes to Sanctuary.

WOMAN #3
(Woman #3 kisses Sanctuary) There was so much blood I thought there was a flood. Didn’t know I could carry so much blood, so many stories. He was frustrated with his life, frustrated with his limitations, we both were. So much blood…it was cleansing…it was tragic…hope he finds peace of mind, I know I will. Shame we make it so easy to hate instead of love. Hate takes so much life out of you.

Woman #3 goes to the blanket; lies down and covers herself.

WOMAN #1
(To Sanctuary) The world isn’t ready for the likes of you, the great Alchemist.

SANCTUARY
You forgot when we stood on the pedestal, untouched by human life. Eros’ arrow brought you down from our lofty position.

WOMAN #1
And I descended into one of my priestess and became Medea.

SANCTUARY
Love your brother like your soul. Protect that person like the pupil in your eye.

WOMAN #1
And I became a tragedy for awhile.

SANCTUARY
Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass of that person the world is not worthy.

WOMAN #1
Aren’t you tired of being a wanderer, homeless…Tell me your story.

Sanctuary demeanor changes into that of a young man named Marcus, who has been sexually assaulted.

MARCUS
Why do we want to be the best person we can be living in a grave?

My name is Marcus.

The one that liked to taste blood would stand like this and...(Imitates a gang member) “You either need a pussy fix or we need the white lady so we can fly again. Me, I'm all right. You’re sweating like a pig. You need to fly. You wanna fly. It’s a good night for flyin’.

His partner in crime would stand beside him punked out and act like this, “Man, I'm hungry. I’m coming down from my high. And the world is still fucked. My disability check is lost in the system again. My girlfriend turned dyke on me.

They both grab their privates and laughed. The rough one would say, “Man let’s cruise around fag town. I know this street where they’ll suck your dick for free. Don’t fag out on me man. Getting your dick suck doesn’t make you gay. Listen wimp, you ain’t about shit just like me. We both know how fucked up you are. I’m in control. You see I just need my angel. My angel told me I was God.

Look at that pretty bitch walking over there with the head bowed done. She’s asking to be kissed by my blade. Like I said be patient. Xmas is coming early this year. There’s our bitch. Circle the block. He has that look in his eyes.

Funny how death comes a calling when you least expect it. Maybe I knew on all those different levels maybe not. I just remember hands grabbing me and me screaming and the pain, the blood, so much blood. It’s like I slipped out a back door. I saw them standing

MARCUS (CONTINUED)
over me, screaming at me, and the rough one swinging away with switchblade like he was chopping cotton.

“It’s time to dance for your daddy again, bitch” the rough one said as his blade gave me zebra stripes.

My body laid there, slits like eyes covered my body that was weeping blood. I stood nearby outside my body listening to one of my attackers as he started kissing my cuts. “Man, it's always a clear night when you cutting up shit. Who benefits from their existence! Did you see how the blade twisted over and over again as he cried out? He likes being fucked, that’s why I made sure each cut looked like a vagina. Worthless piece of shit is now covered with vaginas. That’s funny, each vagina is have a period. Worthless! How can you love somebody who can’t love themselves?

I knew I was a ghost but I knew there would be others like me, brutalized, dismembered, and raped. No one should go through that. I wanted to carry their pain. I wanted to carry their hurt so they would know good health. But I am no longer a sacred space!

Woman #1 comes over and hugs Marcus.

MARCUS (CONTINUED)
I have been part fire, part darkness. Silence this lion. Silence this serpent. Let me no longer crow for the dawn that will not deliver me. (Pause) When humans are ready, a legend will rise from the ground, an androgyny.

WOMAN #1
And then will I be the baptism of wisdom.

MARCUS
How can I have good health without you? I will die to rise in you. Let us unite God and Beast, Lingam and Yoni, good and Evil, Creation and Destruction. You are the Hidden Stone. You are always near yet so far. (Marcus kisses Medea and they slowly turn in a circle. The sound of chanting and drumming is heard. Marcus steps back, smiles. and goes and climbs up on the pedestal and turns into a statute.)

WOMAN #1
(Her stance is different, the quality of her voice more divine. She goes and looks at the statute.) This Androgyny visits the interior parts of the Earth; by Rectification Thou Shalt Find The Hidden Stone.

Woman #1 looks around at the graves. She looks at the pedestal, goes and gathers her things. There is the sound of thunder, lightning flashes.

WOMAN #1 (CONTINUED)
I walk amongst you, will you see me?

BLACKOUT

THE END