Tangles In Your Teeth
Good Things Coming |
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Good Things Coming |
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Home from work due to an impending snow storm. Intent on writing a new one-act, I review the play I've written for our summer show, Tangles In Your Teeth. I can not create anything remotely comical if I do not include physicality of some kind. If I had to analyze myself, I'd declare that my fear of comic writing, fear of failure in a genre with which I'm unfamiliar, forces me to rely on physical movement. I know how to add movement and dance to a play. I know how to move my characters. I rely on all of this with Tangles...
AMELIA storms through the audience, to JULIA. AMELIA I knew I’d find you here, wallowing, and talking to yourself like your great-great grandmother Leonora. JULIA Mom, I asked you not to come. AMELIA (holding her daughter’s face) In times of crisis, don’t listen to the voice in your head. Your inner voice is crazy. Trust me, Julia. I’ve been on this planet long enough to know that your inner voice is --it’s not right. Listen to your mother. Let my voice be your voice of reason. JULIA You are the most unreasonable person I know. AMELIA lifts JULIA’s chin, and turns her face, left to right, staring at her chin. JULIA What are you doing? AMELIA I’m trying to gauge the extent of your depression. AMELIA raises JULIA’s arm, and pulls on her shirt’s shoulder to view her daughter’s arm pit. AMELIA Your arm pit has not seen a razor in at least a week, maybe since Samuel went to Italy. JULIA … AMELIA At the rate of hair growth possessed by the women in our family, I can safely tell you that you’re on the verge of becoming a werewolf. JULIA YOU are my voice of reason? YOU are the one offering me comfort in my vulnerable state? JULIA places the earrings back into the box. AMELIA You know that your great-great grandmother Leonora turned into a she-wolf, and ran off with the minstrel’s son-- JULIA I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. AMELIA We have a tendency to shapeshift in our family. You’re vulnerable to the family curse. JULIA We do not shapeshift! That’s insane. AMELIA I’ve done it. JULIA No, you haven’t. AMELIA Her beloved Aldo, the person she loved most in the world, oh, how she adored the touch of his skin, the way he held her, the way he spoke, left her for a woman with a cleft palate. What does she do? JULIA She ran off with another man. From “offstage”, we hear LEONORA’S VOICE. LEONORA’S VOICE I should mention the gold-split of your iris, the dazzle at the pupil AMELIA She turned into a wildebeast, bit the head all off her chickens, and was doomed to a life of depravity and sickness. From “offstage”, LEONORA’S VOICE. LEONORA’S VOICE adjacent to the teal. The scream, yes, of your eyes. AMELIA You look just like her, it’s uncanny. You could become her, depressed, mad, tormented. Have you noticed an affinity for shiny objects lately, or a heightened sense of smell? Pause. JULIA No. AMELIA pats her daughter’s cheek. AMELIA I’ll get you a tweezer. Chuck has several in his room.
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June 2018
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