Stories for Childwoman
Any theory that insists elsewhere is the place to be, is no longer a very pleasant theory for me.
I wrote the Stories for Childwoman many years ago, when writing as a profession of life still seemed feasible to me. A well-known New York poet accepted my writing submissions for participation in one of her exclusive one on one workshops. I remember she said my piece reminded her of Shelley but lacked the necessary tragic tension of a Greek play! I did a classic bursting into tears and the tears did not want to stop. That was the end of my attempts to publish it!
I revisited this play again and again, over the years, changed hardly a word, and recently discovered that what I wrote then, I would probably write again today, not so differently. The Grecian tragic male models I am asked to follow do not speak to me so loudly any longer. Enough of tragedy…as the focal turning point. Nor do the comparisons of my writing with European romantic male poets of long ago…
My voices come from being a woman… living and displaced in a world sub-texted by males… my silences stay from constant perceptions of displacements and my ensuing adjustments. My sense of humor also stays steady as counterbalance and compass.
so very simple! So very complicated…
So, here it is. Stories for Childwoman, in the first act and the Ride to Mother Moon. Wanting to be heard, once again.
STORIES FOR CHILDWOMAN
a play
by Erica Weick
2001/2005/2007/2013/2022/2023
CAST OF CHARACTERS
CHILDWOMAN
JESTERS
GRANDMOTHER
GRANDCHILDREN
THE CREATURES OF DREAM
NATHANAEL
SHE-GOAT
PAVLOVIAN WHORE
MARY THE GO-GO DANCER
THE KEEPER OF SINS
THE LEOPARD
GINNIE, THE ANTELOPE
ADOLPHO, LETCHER EXTRAORDINAIRE
SEA MONSTERS
HUNTERS AND THE GATHERERS
CATS
MUSIC
MIS EN SCENE (some notes)
COSTUMES
LIGHTING
THE PLAY
STORIES FOR CHILDWOMAN
ACT ONE
RIDE TO MOTHER MOON
ACT TWO
EXILE OF CHILDWOMAN
DREAMS
ACT THREE
JOURNEY FROM EXILE
PLACE OF SINS
MUSEUM OF THE UNCLAIMED
SEA MONSTERS
MARY THE GO-GO DANCER
KEEPER OF SEVEN SINS
BORN FROM A PUFF OF WIND INSIDE A CLOUD
CAT
THE LEOPARD AND THE ANTELOPE
BUILDINGS
THE HUNTERS AND THE GATHERERS
PATHOS
ALL OF MY WOMEN
GATHERING OF ALL OF THEM
SKY HOOKS
THE END
CAST OF CHARACTERS
CHILDWOMAN
Lonely actress in this theatre of dreams. In Act One she does not speak. She is the woman scribbling her stories with borrowed pens, at the edges of paper napkins, inside the cafes in Paris, writing on the walls, hunched over her place, inside her den. Her territories, her urges, her passions, the lightness of her poetry define her. Her words and discoveries define also her darkness, her other souls - she is the one who is capable of existence in at least three universes at once, if not in more. She juggles well. She travels alone through the tundra, she jumps into holes where water falls. She follows the boys in search of calm water.
She dances, sensual and sexual. Alone she pokes fun at entire societies, quick and fast sense of humor. Yet she remains a creature of safety of her "den of inequities". She cannot talk. Her story is the story of a woman who writes well but cannot speak. She wants to learn her voices. She wants to break through and out of the maze.
Living in exile, she wants to journey in search of her native land. In this search, she meets characters from dreams, the inhabitants of the embroideries woven in her imaginary, in her theatre of absurdities. She does not evolve into an adult, a liberated woman, a role model, a good girl or a bad girl. She does not participate in evolution. She does not believe in evolution, nor does she believe in creation. She is, simply she is. For now, she grazes, for then she rages.
JESTERS
Jesters, publicity and advertising people. Announcers of the play, they speak for Childwoman.
GRANDMOTHER
A woman of fifty, sometimes of sixty, sometimes of eighty. Rough and gifted, she is an old woman who did not necessarily get her way in. Storyteller, non-linear timeline, random link to poems.
GRANDCHILDREN
Reminders, links to current generation and linear time. They feel fast, they think fast. Their tempo speaks of speed, it cuts through the chase, it gets to the linear point! They are raised by grandmother and so carry with them a strong conviction about the non- linearity of stuff, about the unending possibilities of discoveries. She has taught, showed them about wonder. They remind us of treasures that have been lost, of children of imagination, like in Huxley's Island, community children for the future of now. A boy and a girl dressed in modern black juxtaposed to colorful gear.
THE CREATURES OF DREAM
NATHANAEL
A male/female figure. Childwoman falls in wonder of him.
"On the verge of some happiness, she stood perfectly still." He is the strong cat, the closest to the Fool of Taro, a loving male female that nurtures, gets female and male to the top edge of precipice and flies away from certainty, from nest. He is the leopard of many spots, the she-purveyor of change, the one with wings.
SHE-GOAT
The wise woman of containment. The woman of the ordered universe, the caretaker, the material mother.
PAVLOVIAN WHORE
MARY, THE GO GO DANCER
THE KEEPER OF SINS
THE LEOPARD
GINNIE, THE ANTELOPE
ADOLPHO, THE SCIENCE TEACHER LETCHER EXTRAORDINAIRE
SEA MONSTERS
HUNTERS AND THE GATHERERS
CATS
MUSIC
Throughout the performance, we hear live piano playing Eric Satie, Keith Jarrett, Darius Milhaud, Ernesto Nazareth, Brazilian waltzes, Chopin.
Music determines the tension in this play. When Childwoman falls in wonder. When she gets a first voice, she sings a capella. There is a capella "noise", then there is singing. Eventually, she is joined by a chorus and by dance.
Music, dance and visual textures permeate all.
MIS EN SCENE (some notes)
Soft, diaphanous settings for “The ride to Mother Moon”.
Large tall scaffolding in backstage. Large white screens. Childwoman will climb the stages and will practice calligraphy with her poems. Computer tech to provide "plastic" poems on large computer screens.
The play can take place in a stark urban environment, but it has to incorporate the elements of nature outside, of herbs, dried flowers, grasses that make her world.
Dream sequences are magnificent opportunities for imagination and fun!
COSTUMES
Fantastic costumes for dream work. Lots of native dried flowers and legumes as adornment. Beige maroon bark, copper grasses, brown pods, yellowish wreaths. The sea monsters are more garish with deep greens and deep reds. Algae and Coral colors.
Jesters and Publicity /Ad Men and Women wear suits with jester hats. Briefcases, mismatched tops and bottoms, contrast between black and white suits and garish colors of clown costumes. At the end of the play, they strip off black and white costumes to reveal body paint and feathers.
Grandchildren wear black, accessories of expansive colors (including lime green, much disliked by me lime green)!
LIGHTING
Blues and soft peaches for the first act.
Stories for Child Woman
ACT I
ONE
Ride to Mother Moon
BACKGROUND MUSIC IN FAST TEMPO (DARIUS MILHAUD AND ERNESTO NAZARETH):
FROM LEFT AND RIGHT, FRONT AND BACK COME THE JESTERS, THE PUBLICITY MEN AND WOMEN, THE ADVERTISING PEOPLE TO ANNOUNCE THE PLAY FOR TODAY. OTHER CAST CHARACTERS STAND ABOUT THE STAGE IN SEMI DARKNESS AND ARE REVEALED BY SOFT SPOTLIGHTS FROM BELOW. JESTERS STRING LAUNDRY LINES ACROSS THE STAGE AND HANG POETRY BOOKLETS ON THE LINE. ADMISSION TO THE FUN STARTS.
JESTERS ANNOUNCE IN DEEP, FAR-REACHING, WELL-TRAINED THEATRE VOICES.
Linear poetry
All about linear poetry, semilinear prose and dreams,
no strings attached the verses the reverses.
Wet from the press the ink
Poetic laundry
Composted lines,
dangling outside to dry.
Pay no more than for the cost of sadness,
no more than for the cost of joy.
No strings attached literature,
Prêt- a- porter some prose and poetry,
some dreams
hanging by a thread
on the line.
JESTERS RECITE BACK AND FORTH THE NEXT GIVE AND TAKE LINES
This is the story of Childwoman, the story of Grandmother and of her Grandchildren.
Grandmother dreams and weaves dreamy tales of the imaginary.
She tells Grandchildren about the stories of Childwoman.
How Childwoman is forbidden by the gods to speak. How she then falls and how she dreams.
"If I were a socialite or even a socialist,
I would fall in love with my enemies,
a brave being.
But I am not a socialite,
not even a socialist.
All I can do for now is fall in love with you,
I can push you back into the background
I can watch you fall right into my dreams".
This is then a story about dreams!
A story to remind us about the tendrils of dream. Gifts to connect us to past and to the days to come. Strange behaviors, the feeling thoughts we have inside dreams, intricate weavings, imaginations we develop and invent.
Points of intersection between, let's say, what we are after in our imaginary meanderings of the mind during the day, and what we are after in our encounters with passion at night.
Might we maybe even say dreams are the ninety percent percentile attitudes we take from night to day?
Not the telling of dream, proverbial tiring psychological pad and pencil by the night table.
Rather more grandmotherly glimpses of other things, rarely to come by these days –
a touch of magic, touch of myth in creation, midgets, miraculous rabbit holes where one drowns to become queen and king; male horses in love with women in escapades; antelopes riding leopards across overflowing rivers; sun worshippers; bead giving black fishing women; men so white and intense.
Beyond daily boundaries, to foreign lands we visit in dream.
Theatre of absurdities where we really live! Rulers of our daily beings!
Dreams are who we were, what we are, who we will become!
Because dreams do not belong to the author, to the reader, to the audience. They belong to the others in you.
As another, we are connected through a dream.
TWO JESTERS ADVANCE TO CENTER-FRONT STAGE AND RECITE THE LINES
Take a spoon, honey, and dab into the bittersweet.
Not so fast, my friend,
the bittersweet is juice reserved for those who see the light.
Go then and tip tap toe into the future.
Not so my friend, the future is not for you.
And so, you plunge into the depths, the hairy woman underneath the pond.
Pretend to know a soul and tell her story.
(GRANDMOTHER TELLS HER STORY - SOFT SPOTLIGHT FROM BELOW REVEALS HER AND GRANDCHILDREN CENTER STAGE RIGHT)
Once upon a time, when the gods were furiously all at play,
there was a woman child inside a maze.
Childwoman,
the flotsam and jetsam of their whims.
Forbidden by the gods to talk. Not for her delights of do re mi.
She imagined instead the power of seer inside the mist.
With many alphabets in hand she wrote of her imaginings.
She wrote of definition:
(CHILDOWMAN WRITES STAGE LEFT. JESTERS RECITE HER WORDS AS HER VOICE IS SPOKEN THROUGH THEM. SWISHING SOUNDS OF SILK IN BACKGROUND AS SHE RECALLS THOUGHTS. BIRD CALLS FOLLOWED BY DRUMMING. SLOW JAZZ RAG TUNES AS WORDS OF POEM ARE PROJECTED ON TO SCREEN. IF NEEDED AS BACKGROUND, BOB DYLAN MUSIC - NOT LYRICS.)
How when in her middle age, when she was more mature,
she would write dictionaries.
deal in the philology of the soul, the taxonomies of the species.
conquer the world of words
and get lost inside the archives.
Smell the green mildew, thallophytic plant of the hidden treasures,
behind dark dank alleys,
know the secret of the deepest poem.
With the methodic synthesis, love and the furrowed brows of all librarians,
a deep ecologist of the heart,
she would be pure inside,
lost outside of all context,
firmly planted inside the landscape,
with recognition by all herbs,
the noble greetings of many flowers,
- a fundamental anti-environmentalist.
Of how she wished to hear the silence and the rustling sounds
in the gathering of all thoughts.
hear the pure sound of books of poetry and of music.
name all loves, all bird calls.
She wished for ownership of nothing
yet wanted plenty of nomenclature and of stature.
She lived in dreams,
resided in the peace of attics
and of all caves.
She wrote about her theories regarding the universe.
(LARGE MOBILES BUILT FROM CLOCK PIECES, WHEELS HANGING FROM THE HEIGHTS START TO MOVE SLOWLY ALL OVER THE STAGE. THE WHEEL STRUCTURES ARE MADE OF BLACK LACE, MARRIAGE OF VEIL TO TECHNOLOGY. SCREEN PROJECTIONS OF WOMEN MAKING LACE THE OLD FASHION WAY, WITH PEGS, LIKE IN MEAIPE.)
She had a certainty about the universe.
The universe, huge space in time,
made out entirely of interchangeable parts.
Recycling station where we, in illusion, thought we were unique.
Yet where we fitted like clogs on wheel,
like palm on fist,
like interlace,
like wave on shore.
Where we could be replaced at will,
exchanged one for the other.
The universe, this place in time so big,
it could contain all variation,
all distribution, all permutation.
A paradoxical verse in spare parts.
She, the seeker of connotations, these butterflies,
she wanted all of these beauties,
the blue azure, the other ones background in white,
black of foreground meshed into gray.
She wanted these floating connotations!
Inside her body, she wanted all, these connotations,
just like tattoos, these variations.
(BUTTERFLY TATOOING DANCE IN BACKGROUND. GRANDMOTHER RESUMES TELLING OF STORY. LIGHTS FOCUS ON CHILDWOMAN'S DEN. HER CAVE WAY UP ON LEFT STAGE. ALL TALISMANS FROM HER SEARCHES CREATING GREAT VISUAL EFFECTS - SNAKE SKINS TURNING AND REVEALING RICHNESS OF TEXTURE, ENLARGED GRAIN OF FISH SKIN, SEED PODS, BROWNS, BEIGES OF LATE FALL AND WINTER HARVESTS.)
(GRANDMOTHER)
She wrote, she wrote and more she wrote. Alone inside her cave, enmeshed in maze.
With all her hoarded treasures, amongst the skins of cobra from the yard, collected scouring pelts from fish in Lake Victoria, the many seeds from many places.
Sweet smell of over wintered herb, a touch of scent from stale Indian incense, a box of treasures of birthdays past, the photographs from childhood, they in quartet, the four of them, she and her brothers between the growing Alamanda vines.
This was the den of her iniquities, the where she lived and where she hid.
In the good company of all the wolves, with fierceness she wrote about her brothers.
CHILDWOMAN WRITES. SCREEN PROJECTIONS OF WHITE WOLVES IN SNOW. SEARCH FOR FOOD, SCENES OF CARING LOVE INSIDE THE DEN. NO PUPS, JUST ADULT WOLVES.
A poem made out of my pieces,
thrown to my brothers the wolves.
Howling of words returned and tripled, regurgitated, composted
and soothing dirt, chewed meat from my soul.
As I take a loupe to my writing I see the full moon clear air
thickening with animal hair from dawn,
these little fuzzy extensions in my letters growing.
In the clarity of the moon, from under the earth, from underground,
the deep breathing of the soul feels need.
Diversions of dance in animal earth.
Yet nothing changes.
She knew with cold precision the clear cut, the stone of feeling. The sharpness of herself, she knew of that, and she remained forbidden by the gods to talk.
She practiced her calligraphy with diligence, said not a word.
It was then she dreamed her first remembered dream of Pathos.
(NATHANAEL SPEAKS)
Around the fringes and fields of pathos please,
bring the biggest healing pad in your building truck,
and in awesome fear,
I shall open my vein and pour a little blood into a cup,
and then we can exchange this fluid thought,
so that we can be bosom buddies and brothers.
CHILDWOMAN SEES NATHANAEL. HE STANDS STILL OPPOSITE HER DEN. DRESSED IN BLACK WITH SPLASHES OF GREEN, THE JOKESTER OR THE FOOL OF TAROT. WOMAN'S VOICE RECITES
On the verge of some happiness,
she stood perfectly still as she watched him
as a pure color become a hue,
as a pure color become a lighter version of the blues,
a tint of something,
a darker shade made out of black and white,
a hue no less but so indefinite to qualify as definition.
On the verge of some happiness,
she could not quite decide the value of his color,
the brightness of that hue, the tone of his connotations,
the soul full moment of that second.
And she stood perfectly still,
on the verge of that happiness,
at the edge of that color,
in the mist of that love and that hue.
(GRANDMOTHER CONTINUES TO TELL STORY)
Childwoman falls in wonder of Nathanael. She needs to talk to him. As the fool that he is, brainless man, he leaves her! Flies off the cliff
and takes residence inside her dreams.
(GRANDMOTHER TALKS TO THE CHILDREN )
But children it is late, and I am tired.
GRANDCHILDREN PLEAD
No, no, grandmother, we must have, the worse of it, the best of it, we must stay! You told us we always were family. And as such we must stay, we must remain!
GRANDMOTHER
Ah, well, then you must stay. And so I also must remain…
But then the story goes that she, a most costly mistake Childwoman made.
By then, that's when she tripped and when she fell. As all stories go, one never quite knows what causes the tides to change, what shadows are really at play. In this story it goes that Childwoman saw an Oldwoman passing by. She felt the need to court and to invite this female inside, this she-goat.
Knowing and not knowing, learning and not learning, feeling and unfeeling ways to break out and through her maze. She wondered if She-Oldwoman Goat could maybe teach her other ways. Power of different words in wind, beats of drums and other pulses. It seemed she could be the one who kept the universe clockwise, she could teach her maybe some magic woven, some role reversed!
In the unknowing of her childish ways, Childwoman she chose the untested path to antagonize the other.
She spoke out of line, she spoke out of time, she spoke out of space. And the other, She-Goat, the keeper of paths, she the one who might help her break in and through the maze
in a whim of fury She-Goat, the keeper of all things, delivered a mighty blow and in a hiss hits Childwoman.
And down Childwoman she falls.
Strange how you do know it is about to happen, the assault. When we are visiting New York City or Rio or hometown. You know how I hold on to your hands! Yet what you maybe do not know is that I know when it is about to happen. I just do not know why or how. Warped time and space, uncanny sense I have.
On the verge, she was so close to see through all the veils… To break free and see out of maze. Sister to no sister, sister to her absent brothers, she fell!
And in her fall a tear in the fabric of her being. She dreaded yet another life to live to find the other. Nathanael and his imaginary pathos did not suffice, nor did the other, the She-goat. Alone again, Childwoman retreats inside, back to her caves.
(STRANGE ALIEN HUMMING. HOARSE WOMAN VOICE)
I come from wrong doings.
I come from the other side of the tracks, not these tracks.
I mean the south of the border, the great river, the Rio Grande,
I come from there.
I come from the other side of the big water, the Atlantic Ocean
and even from there I am not quite sure where I come from,
uncertain birth of feeling.
Who would want to birth me but an alien?
I come from where Jung and deep analysis even Deepak could not rename
nor recall, nor figure out?
I come from deepabuse, forgotten, turned away images of self?
I come from where men have taken. I spoke too soon, I spoke too eloquently, I spoke too much?
You see,
I come from deeply felt and failed communism,
I come from ideas squashed by material goods.
I come from schizo land and I come with a sweet note from Phrenia.
My grandmother's name is Saphronia - spelled with high Ph
She died and was banned in the alphabet of her original native land.
Too much spunk too many alkaline humors,
I come with power unending to be forever here
the this of the who that she was
and I am.
SOFT MUSIC - NINA SIMONE (MY NAME IS SAPHRONIA, AUNT SARAH…) GRANDMOTHER CONTINUES TO TELL.
But it is strange - these things come late, don't they, when all the gods do play, the maze so intricate? What can she do but wonder where she is going? Something in her life cracked open, made noise loud enough for her to hear.
"You need to change your ways", the gods did tell her, in roars of drunken laughter the gods at play.
"You need to change in many ways, less blind, less deaf to find these others" the God of Light.
"It does not mean you are less, you who always thought survivor was the lesser being" the Goddess of Mercy.
She can but try to do it?
The beauty that she sees as key of tune, words and hallucinations, her dreams not sufficient. No more Nathanael? No more another?
(WOMAN VOICE RECITES)
Free Fall
I bring
on purpose and on a platter,
dissatisfaction to you
Carefully and at random,
I choose for you organic love.
A love of self that spreads like a seed by the wind,
and without germination
bypasses the places of mating.
A love of ashes and a love of the jump and the fall
A fall so light so gentle it falls
without need for safety net.
(GRANDMOTHER)
Yet is she not still the woman afraid to cross the bridge to meet this other woman, this other man inside of her? The older ones and then the child? You have a gate to open, she has is a bridge to cross across this river --
"Look mom, no hands! Look dad, it's me! Look child! Look, friend, look lover!
I have learned to ride!"
(SCREEN PROJECTS BLUE IMAGES OF WITCH HUMPY DUMPTY CHILDWOMAN TRAVELLING IN HER BYCICLE TOWARD BLUE MOTHER MOON)
This woman child riding her bicycle,
travelling so fast, no time, all time toward the rising Sun, toward Sunset.
This humpy dumpty woman in the blue night to reach Mother Moon.
She can but try to meet them, reach out and touch their hand, outgoing gesture.
Meanwhile she writes and stays alone for peace.
The gods, ah, the gods, they're still at play…