by Susan Holsclaw

Act One

Scene:  Theater scrim painted- a clearing in the forest where a teahouse with a cultivated garden stands.  A prominent fig tree is in front.  A young woman, Rapunsel, sits on a stump.

Voice:  "though we live in muddy water may we live with the purity of the lotus, thus we bow to Buddha."

Rapunsel:

Oh, wind willow wall of my discontent.

[Lights dim to dark then brighten.  Rapunsel is now standing near the teahouse.]

Rapunsel: 

Toppling up off the path,

in a clap of recognition,

I don't know how to love.

[Rapunsel looks up at the teahouse where two circular disks are painted to be birds.during her next poem the bird disks rotate in one clockwise circle]

Rapunsel:

Three stories high

on a sloping rooftop

two pigeons are making love

folding around themselves

more certain than butterflies

irredescent wings pulse on shingle and air,

below a fig tree scatters its fruit.

[A snake, unseen by Rapunsel has dropped a fig, actually he throws the fig at Rapunsel.  Raspunsel turns and walks away.  The snake, still behind the fig tree, sticks its head through a hole in the fig tree and versifies.]

Snake:

I'm not God.....

I don't mind the sadness

but I'm not completely clear yet,

have you ever lost your responsibility?

Rapunsel: 

And there I was salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs.

[She turns and sees the snake in the tree, her expression changes from one of serene musing to one of exasperation.  She sits down disgruntedly on the stump.]

Rapunsel:

In the brilliant sun I bathed naked near the stream, [baudy]

a thick rattlesnake poised himself in adjacent rushes.

An almost perfect day.

spotlight into the long darkness of myself.

[Snake slips out from theater gauze and approaches Rapunsel.]

Snake:

Even a dog could not mistake the gentle swaying of your robe,

the consecrated earth, Blessed One,

I have seen with the eyes of the deer! [victoriously spoken]

Rapunsel:

Elsewhere someone is spinning pennies in the dirt, [agreeing disgruntedly]

[Snake coming closer]

SNAKE:

When the earth is strewn with bones,

the whole round earth covered with dry white bones,

no flesh.

It will be quite spectacular.

Rapunsel:

Secretly we love it. [exasperated like a Jewish joke]

Snake:

Our earth, a uniform silent planet tumbling

ecstatically through space,

allow yourself this luxury, LOOK!

WE ARE NOT NEEDED!

[Snake comes closer and circles Rapunsel who stares back in disbelief or as if hypnotized]

Snake:

See, from here it's very peaceful....hissssssss

[Lights focus on grasses which are people lieing face up with cut paper grass on their front edges....now they wiggle their grass.]

Grass chorus:

One moment passes to be replaced by another [females]

and so with opportunity [males]

Learn from the current and also from the pebble [females]

Do not hesitate [males]

Choice is but an instant recognized in time [females]

Do not grasp [males]

The wheel is always turning.[females] Take heed:  [males]

Do not squander your life. [Both females and males & turning to a howl]

Sound off-stage:  CRACK  pthud

[Rapunsel breaks from the snake's grip and runs away through the scrim.  Lighting reverses revealing the Beaver's Glade, where a stream of children is circulating intoning their water sounds...and bird actors are randomly calling their calls and are tossing several balls between themselves.  A tree lays newly fallen to the side of a still pond (the beaver's pond)  Rapunsel, relieved to be away from the snake sighs and begins peeling off her clothes.  She tosses a pebble into the the pool and watching the ripples interrupt her reflection.]

Rapunsel:

Your face was so transparent

Opening like a kaleidoscope

and to me

and the grace amid the hunger and opalescent shyness

was too much!

[Rapunsel dives in]  SPLASH!

Act Two

Scene:  The Beaver's Glade by night.  Rapunsel lies sleeping wrapped in her coverlet.  Pairs of tiny lights indicate animals in the glade.  The stream continues to circulate and sing.

Owl:  Who who who whom.......Who who who whom

Forest:  Thok thock che che che

Beaver:  Ong ong gnong.............SPLEISCH eu

ssssshhhh

Owl:  Who who who whom

[The Beaver emerges from the pool near Rapunsel's sleeping body.  He hobbles over to her and a bright disk of a moon illuminates the drips of water falling from his face on to her face.]

Beaver:  snffff ssssnnnnffff

Rapunsel:

Bolders clattering hard upon themselves,  [without stirring]

a voice tearing thru the night

numb bursting conscious   [somnambulistically]

for a moment I live backwards,  [still not moving]

head ablaze and acrid, hoarse rasping throat

arms ache to catapult stone, bone and sinue vibrate

body must.....[eyes open]

numb bursting terror    [somnambulistically]

ARISE!   [sits up with a jolt]

THERE IS AN ANIMAL SMELLING MY FACE!

[now the Beaver runs away and Rapunsel is throwing stones after it and shouts.]

Voice:

GO AWAY!

Rapunsel:

Alive!  I wake in a frenzy glimpsing a large creature

hurrying away up the dry creek bed.

I do triple time now

pulling my coverlet closer

the night stills, the stream rushes on

stars glitter, pond mirror sky.

I remember now

swimming, that shape that slid by me

the downed tree in the brook

IT WAS A BEAVER!

I remember now

that spot in my back and the times that it tightens

Oh, ghastly fear dissolved at last

to flow up my spine

breaking from my face like heat waves and tinker toys.

Alone, lonely in the night, I look forward

exhausted, I praise the Beaver who sniffed you out!

[Rapunsel lies back down.  Forest sounds recommence.  Gradually the lights come back up indicating morning.  Swirls of fog (dry ice) surround a sitting Rapunsel.  Mario enters carrying a pail and humming and singing]

Mario:  

mmmmmmmmmm and oh how I grieved down South

by the raging river alone, and oh how I grieved down South,

by the raging river alone.

Why hadn't I taken you into my arms that day

the first time we were alone in that shiny red hat box....

[Mario all but bumps into Rapunsel. He recoils with a start and Rapunsel stands and faces him]

Mario: 

Oh excuse me Miss,

I have lost my fear.

Rapunsel:

Too much of that!

Mario: 

Have you seen it pass?

Rapunsel: 

No, nothing but a Beaver....what are you carrying?

Mario: 

It's milk, Miss.  I'm told that I might coax my fear back home if I offer it milk.

Rapunsel:

Will you recite with me?

[Mario shuffles his feet, takes a card from Rapunsel, looks around and begins]

Mario: 

The persons were as stones in a field at early morning

Rapunsel: 

It is the Monsoon.

Mario: 

Mist rising was the only motion

Rapunsel: 

Sky and sea and earth

Mario:  

And a chill that roused the blood

Rapunsel: 

Are one dark mass of wet

Mario: 

It was another time all together

Rapunsel: 

My boat is made of rushes

Mario: 

And a wall was slowly crumbling somewhere deep within

Rapunsel: 

And I myself of mud

Mario: 

A wailing could be heard

Rapunsel: 

My pole sinks into the mud and tangled rushes

Mario: 

Beyond the stony silence

Rapunsel: 

I am an antique people

Mario: 

Which stiffled any movement

Rapunsel: 

Mindfull of the weather, the meaning of the symbol

Mario: 

And soaked the dryness blue

Rapunsel: 

Every heiroglyph we formed was tota

l and was perfect

Mario: 

Blue and rose and yellow

Rapunsel: 

Like our great pyramids

Mario: 

I cannot fall in love again

Rapunsel: 

That is where I first met you

Mario: 

I cannot love again...forever

Repunsel: 

I'd recognize those feet anywhere

Mario: 

And over an antique multitude

Rapunsel: 

You were a scribe or priest or prince

Mario: 

Far back in my dream

Rapunsel: 

And I a common artisan

Mario: 

Something living stirred

Rapunsel: 

Thus we began our journey

Mario: 

Discovered, apprehended, wildly terrified and individual

Rapunsel: 

It was a tremendous time, we ARE an antique people

Mario: 

And it sought an opening or else another tunnel

Rapunsel: 

But it is not so in ordinary life, notice how we tremble.

Rapunsel:

Drink the milk.

[Mario drinks the milk, Rapunsel takes the pail, reaches in and brings out a small stone with a hole in the center and hands the stone to Mario.]

Rapunsel:

I think this is yours.

[Mario takes the stone.  The lights fade.]

Act Three

The Song of the Marabou upon the Sagacious Sea

Scene:  A glowing disk of a moon with a smiling mobile face in the center.  The "moon" is otherwise dressed in black and playing a violin- a section from Dvorak Concerto in A minor.  A stork-ish shaped bird is wading at the edge of the water.  Fish are jumping.  After an interval.

Voice: 

I too loved the stream, the crayfish scuttling backwards

the days rolling by overhead

the waterbugs with their strange shadows

skating on the surface in the slow places,

and hours spent examining stones, finger

ing the riverlets.

Wading in that stream between the two banks

all the way up to the culvert

where the silt was rich and deep and soft

and shaped in underwater forms of alluvial perfection

and sucked at my six year old feet and summer legs

I knew what trespass was and

my desire was greater...to be part of this.

I pulled one leg free and then the other

leaving cloudy swirls of sediment and

holes behind me

that closed silently beneath the moving water...

and reaching my hand into that unknown ooze,

the feeling that overwhelmed me

when I actually touched a turtle's egg one day

and held it for a moment in my hand.

Flushed and shivering, eyes brimming with shame

Shame and hunger

For I wanted the thing

though I was no traitor

I gave the egg back

back to the stream

back to the turtle,

and headed home confounded by a heavy longing, in child body

cradle to the slow stirrings of the woman already formed within.

END