PLAY #119: DEAD-LINES (MARCH 31)

The top of a mountain (perhaps the same mountain as PLAY 32; RESOLUTION.)

Two ACCOUNTANTS OF TRUTH hold a large piece of tape out, as if at a race.

 

LEADER OF CHEER stands to the side, speaking to people further down on the mountain, applauding, encouraging, applauding.

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #1

Why the applause?

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #2

Something to do? Countries doing something?

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #1

Yes, but what if it’s not enough? This is the deadline for countries to pledge their emissions reductions contributions and-

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #1

There are some. The EU. Mexico. The US.

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #1

Promises and pledges. How do we make sure they’re met? Especially when countries don’t even meet a deadline to promise something.

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #2

There’s always October.

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #1

But there’s always another month, another thing to be pushed back. When do we push back?

 

ACCOUNTANT OF TRUTH #2

We push. We pull. We applaud. Even when it’s not enough. Because it’s something.

 

ACCOUNTANT #1 is skeptical, especially with LEADER OF CHEER continuing, with the tape-unbroken, with the play just about to end.

PLAY #118: THE BLACK HOLE (MARCH 30)

Pithole, Pennsylvania.

Two ghosts enter, clothes from the 1860s.

They look around for signs of life: nothing.

 

GHOST #1

False alarm.

 

GHOST #2

Always the case.

 

GHOST #1

Death is not the tragedy.

 

GHOST #2

Every day.

 

GHOST #1

The real tragedy is dying somewhere with nobody to haunt.

 

GHOST #2

You say that every day.

 

GHOST #1

And true as tragedy it remains.

 

Pause.

 

GHOST #1

I was sure the surveyors would be here.

 

GHOST #2

Nothing’s been here for over a century.

 

GHOST #1

Excited about the possibilities.

 

GHOST #2

Not a dribble.

 

GHOST #1

Eager to start.

GHOST #2

Not a drop.

 

GHOST #1

Energy pulsing through the place.

 

GHOST #2

What are you on about? You know it’s all dried up. It’s never going be like it used to. No scandals to spy on, no bar brawls, no money gesyering up every which way. Pithole’s as dead as we are. Deader maybe.

 

GHOST #1

There’s gas here. All over Pennsylvania. Big fracking business.

 

GHOST #2

Here?

 

GHOST #1

Close enough.

It’ll be the life of the place again. All that energy waiting to be harnessed.

 

GHOST #2

So you want to propose to these surveyors?

 

GHOST #1

No. I want to scare the shit out of them. I want them to see the future if they don’t keep fossil fuels in the ground. I want them to know what a blip in time this rush will be, how fast the money will fade, how long the traces will remain.

 

GHOST #2 thinks about it.

 

GHOST #2

Alright so. I’m in. What do we do now?

 

GHOST #1

What we always do. Wait.

 

GHOST #2

You really think they’ll come by Pithole?

 

GHOST #1

Sure as sundown.

 

The ghosts wait as sun sets…

PLAY #117: THE BINDING (MARCH 28)

UN NEGOTIATORS bring in lots of pages of The Lima Accord.

Pages stacked together.

 

NEGOTIATOR #1

In Lima, we talked into the night, we put words to pages.

 

More UN NEGOTIATORS enter with more pages.

 

NEGOTIATOR #2

In Geneva, we stirred more words in.

 

A NEGOTIATOR enters with string, assesses the document from different angles.

A huddle with the string.

Different tentative ideas, nothing attempted.

 

NEGOTIATOR #1

What sort of knots do we need in Paris?

 

NEGOTIATOR #2

                                   Who will pay for the binding?

 

THE UN NEGOTIATORS look at the document, at the string, each other.

 

PLAY #116: AND IF GINA MCCARTHY WERE RUNNING THIS SHOW, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN? (MARCH 27)

Office of the EPA.

Three WORKERS huddle by the water-cooler.

 

WORKER #1

Gina McCarthy ties herself in knots calling for a binding climate treaty.

 

WORKER #2

Obama unloops all her promises.

 

WORKER #3

Answers lurk in the gaps between their words.

 

The WORKERS nod, take some water from the cooler, disperse.

PLAY #115: TAKE THESE READY MEALS AND GOOD LUCK! (MARCH 26)

2012.

Red Hook, Brooklyn, after Sandy.

It is snowing.

 

VIOLET, an elderly black lady, stands outside her apartment building.

VIOLET holds a clutch of disposable meals in silver foil.

Too many to hold.

One falls to the snow, bursts brightly under VIOLET’s foot as she stoops to pick it up.

 

VIOLET

This damned snow is some encore to Sandy

Red Cross dump ready meals and go

Might as well be invisible as black right now.

 

VIOLET looks at the paltry meals in her hand, shakes her head, moves inside from the snow.

Snow continues to fall on the ready-meal.

 

 

 

PLAY #114: THE PORTRAIT OF DEAN DORIAN (MARCH 25)

A plush University room in the United States.

UNIVERSITY TOUR-GUIDE leads a small group of admiring onlookers.

Everybody admires the portrait of the Dean – a handsome, smiling man, the kind you would trust with your children, your money, your organs.

 

UNIVERSITY TOUR GUIDE

This University fully supports sustainable development

 

THE SABOTEUR

while funding climate chaos.

 

THE SABOTEUR jumps out from the group and leaps on top of a mahogany desk.

Gasps from all, not least the tour-guide.

From the desk, THE SABOTEUR pulls up the portrait of the smiling dean, revealing another one behind.

 

This portrait is of the same man but with grey hair, a haggard visage.

There is a strange dark tinge to his skin, a swirling oily vortex where his previously trim suit had been.

Silence.

The odd gasp.

Silence.

 

THE SABOTEUR

A relentless sun offers no refuge for shadows.

 

THE SABOTEUR sticks an orange square on the portrait, jumps into the crowd.

TOUR-GUIDE looks at crowd, unsure what to do.

 

PLAY #113: WHISTLE-WORK (MARCH 24)

A prison cell.

From under the door, oil leaks slowly out.

 

On the floor opposite it, a large stack of papers with a big label:

OBAMA’S CLIMATE RHETORIC.

 

The oil trickles across the floor, seeps into the pages.

UNION OF LEAKERS watch the situation, dispassionate.

 

UNION OF LEAKERS

Chelsea Manning’s whistle pierces BP

sounds sharp against Obama’s drone

posterity picks the winning tune.

 

The oil continues to seep across.

THE UNION OF LEAKERS hold up whistles.

They start to blow, out of synch, louder and louder.

 

GUARDS enter, put them into that cell door.

A cacophony of struggle and blowing whistles, the sounds of whistles continuing even after the lights go out.

PLAY #112: PERESTROIKA HAS MULTIPLE TENSES (MARCH 23)

A pyramid of red coal.

Lots of actors in MARGARET THATCHER face-masks enter.

Very fast music.

The MARGARET THATCHERS run around as if in a video game, smashing the coal with mallets, pocketing coal in handbag, stomping up and down on coal.

 

MARGARET THATCHERS exit in unison.

Dust rising.

CHORUS enters.

 

CHORUS

Maggie T extracted unions to save the climate

a bare state renews privately

perestroika comes in the oddest shapes.

 

ACTORS enter without face-masks, survey the dust and rubble.

 

The possibility that things can be salvaged, that something will be renewed, hangs in the air too.

PLAY #111: EGGS, CANNONS, AND OTHER FRAGILE SPHERES (MARCH 21)

Remnants of a wall, some sections still quite high.

Rubble on the ground.

HELEN stands on top of the wall, throwing eggs from a great height.

Eggs smash on rubble.

 

HELEN

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the King’s horses

And all the King’s men-

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN enters.

HELEN pauses, egg in hand.

Quite a number of years have passed since they saw each other last.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Need something to aim at?

 

HELEN

No.

It’s a performance piece.

More effective when the space is unpopulated.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

A-ha.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN looks around.

HELEN lowers the egg.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

It fell.

 

HELEN

Yes.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

I didn’t think it-

 

HELEN

Possible?

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Yes.

 

HELEN

You should read more books.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Perhaps.

Maybe I can now.

Time!

 

Pause.

 

HELEN

Congratulations.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Not on me. Lots of people responsible for divesting and then everything else, well…

 

HELEN

A win is something.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Yes.

Thanks.

 

Pause.

 

HELEN

You know the original Humpty Dumpty was a cannon?

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

I hope you’re not going to change your mind about aiming.

 

HELEN

From a battle before the English Restoration, I think.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Charles…?

 

HELEN

Yes, the first. The Royalists refused to accept that the world they were in was changing.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

‘All the king’s horses…’

 

HELEN

Lots of battles. A familiar story.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

And a cannon fell.

 

HELEN

Or an egg. It depends which way you read it.

 

Pause.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

It didn’t last though, did it?

 

HELEN

What?

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

The new world after the overthrow of monarchy. Didn’t Charles the Second come right back?

 

HELEN

Yes.

The Restoration.

History seals over scars

Monarchy can be remarkably resilient

Skin finds a way to smooth over wounds.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Everything broken gets mended again?

 

HELEN

Maybe not everything.

 

HELEN drops the egg.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Of course from a scientific perspective there’s only one story

 

HELEN

Entropy?

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

That’s the one

Everything’s headed there

doesn’t matter what you do to fill in the time between.

 

HELEN

Doesn’t it?

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

Maybe just who you spend it with.

 

Pause.

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN surveys the rubble.

 

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN

It really did fall.

I didn’t think it possible.

And-

 

But HELEN has gone while he has been looking, off to find another wall.

RELUCTANT MATHEMATICIAN looks at the spot where she was for a moment, exits.

 

 

PLAY #110: SPRING TO ACTION (MARCH 20)

READ THIS VERSION – formatting messed up on wp. PLAY 110

 

The large wall, a portion of bricks extended from play 109…

Sounds of birds.

DAFFODIL & CROCUS CHORUS enter –dressed in very bright shades of yellow & purple.

CROCUS CHORUS start drawing purple flowers on the wall.

Some of the CROCUS CHORUS start to dismantle the extension of the wall.

DAFFODIL CHORUS swirl around in front of the wall – some draw bright yellow flowers on the ground, the wall, themselves, in chalk.

 

DAFFODIL CHORUS & CROCUS CHORUS speak or sing simultaneously.

 

DAFFODIL                                       CROCUS

Spring                                              Shake off

Salute                                              snow.

We salute you Spring.

 

joy in the air                                     where are there seasons?

like pollen                                         how do we divide this time?

yoke-yellow                                      wet and dry

bursting toward the sky                     rainy

and there must be                                     not

happiness                                         surely

under such skies                                there’s a subjectivity to spring

surely Spring means different things

especially as climate changes

this is the dawn                                and though there are problems

the beginning                                   in the language of spring

flower-power                                             action comes at dawn as at dusk

a freshness to the world                     this could be the beginning

possibility like pollen                           of change

everywhere in the air                         this Spring could be something

even if it’s autumn elsewhere

even if the where has no Spring

Spring springs

possibilities like pollen

flowers like fire.

 

THE CROCUS CHORUS have broken down the additional wall.

They get to work on dismantling the rest of the wall.

 

DAFFODIL CHORUS                         CROCUS CHORUS

and isn’t is something                         Spring can’t be denied

that breath of blue                            for better

the growth of grass                                    worse

meadows                                         there’s a certain iconography

isn’t there something about                there’s something about

meadows?                                        meadows!

and flower-power is not                     at least they’re a space to absorb

to be denied.                                            vomit.

there is power here

walls can crumble before weeds

when we think of change

of the kind of change necessary

to stop the capitalist cataclysm

then isn’t the spring

a useful symbol?

isn’t Spring                                       doesn’t the spring

something to be saved?                     with all its contained energy

how can we do wrong                       all its potential to explode

when such happiness is to be had?      show us ways to be?

 

CROCUS CHORUS start to spring about the stage, down low, then high jumps.

DAFFODIL CHORUS swirl around.

The wall is broken down.