My play is very strange. I guess I will post what I have written so far, and you can come up with an ending (I've most of it to go, I suspect), because I do not have one. It's formatted in a very inconsistant style; work through it. Also, it is profound. Do not say that it is not profound, because it is. It is about how we ignore who people really are and instead think of them as this vision of them that we have created of them. Them. Did I mention it is profound?
Okay.
Play opens. JILL, 20ish girl, bookish, glasses-wearing, is sitting on a quintessential park bench. JILL is wearing a sweater, and her hands are each inside the sleeve of the other arm, making what appears to be one “U”-shaped uni-arm. Stage left of JILL is TREE -- a man, mid-20’s, decked out in a brown long-sleeved shirt and a brown floor-length skirt taken in so that he is unable to move his legs. No special makeup. TREE has green paper leaves of various sizes pinned to his shirt, both front and back, and except where stated, TREE has his left arm straight out toward the audience and straight out away from JILL. His face is expressive, and his head is oft in a singular commotion.
JILL is stage center. TREE is stage right.
JILL starts with her head down as curtain opens. She gently bobs it back and forth for a few seconds before looking at TREE. TREE looks back.
Jill: You. You are something, there in your…
Tree: …my what?
Jill: Your, I don’t know, but…tree-ness? You have that, that quality of a monstrosity of, um, those, those California trees, the big ones. Oaks.
Tree: Redwoods.
Jill: Redwoods, yes, and, and yes, and, but you….
[JILL lays down on bench, feet toward TREE.]
Jill:…aren’t like that. You have this slightity of demeanor, where you aren’t Massive Scary Deciduous Kills College Girl in Freak Leaf-Falling Accident. I remember, there was this, I don’t know, this oak…
Tree: Pine.
Jill: …pine, yes, pine tree outside my window, upstairs, right hand-back corner, the house I grew up in, and there was this day…
[Jill removes arms from uniarm.]
Jill: this day when I wanted to get out of the place with my parents, and, yeah, the place, and here I go, wanted to go, out the window. And I had never unlocked the window, because why, I had air conditioning, it was never an issue. And I guess the lock was painted shot, and I never went out the window, and I never climbed down the tree, and I am sad.
Tree: Pines are prickly.
Jill: Yeah.
Tree: You would have been hurt. Pines are prickly. Have you ever touched a pine needle, I mean REALLY touched a pine needle? Touched it so hard it went through skin and membrane and hemoglobin and red-tinged water and bone and membrane and skin and back out the other side? Have you?
Jill. [Pause.] No, do you think I’m cute?
Tree: [Pause.] I’m not sure I’m the best to judge.
Jill: You are my friend, and you can judge.
Tree: That was sick, by the way.
Jill: That was sick.
Tree: My comment. The hemoglobin thing. I don’t know why I…
Jill: No, who cares, I don’t, am I cute?
Tree: [Pause] I suppose, objectively, most heterosexual men would be attracted to you. Of your type.
Jill: My type.
Tree: The type that convenes in libraries and reads James Joyce: Portrait then Ulysses then Finnegan’s then Dubliners then Finnegan’s again -- though not because he didn’t understand it the first time, because he did -- then Exiles then…I guess that’s it. The library probably doesn’t have Exiles. It depends if this hypothetical is in a large or…
Jill: But that’s not, I don’t have a type. Not…not, not, not, I mean, you’re my type, but you’re not a type.
Tree: I’m a tree.
Jill: But I don’t go for trees.
Tree: But you go for me. You are sexually attracted to me.
[Pause. Jill quietly sits up.]
Jill: Why’d you make it? Why’d you make it all blunt and acerbic and crap? That’s not all it is. It’s not, look, there’s this blah blah “sexual attraction,” but lust doesn’t bring me out here every day, snow, rain, math finals, Abbas Kiarostami film festivals, knicker, knicker, knicker, do you, Jiminy Cricket, do you know everything I’ve missed for you? Do you?
Tree: You’ve told me, I believe.
Jill: And you’re not putting out. You know that you’re not putting out, you do, do you?
Tree: [Pause.] I am vaguely aware of that, Jill. I…
Jill: Because it’s not as though you have the whole central nervous system thing going for you. There wouldn’t be any kind of sensation for you. I can, wait a minute…
[Jill gets up and walks over to TREE.]
Jill: …I can take off this leaf…
[Jill takes off leaf on left arm, throws it in front of TREE]
Jill: …and then I can tickle you right there, that leaf-taking-off place…
[Jill remains still, NOT tickling TREE; TREE begins laughing.]
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
