A Full Length Play
Amazons
- A Poetic Farce in Two Acts
1 woman, 1 man, unit set, projections
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2004
Geralyn Horton
Synopsis
The play is set in a huge old house in a run-down section of Cambridge,
the main living area of which has been furnished to serve as a
Temple of the Goddess. This is the underground headquarters of
a band of women devoted to ridding the earth of the threat of
destruction by ridding it of the aggressors-- men. They are testing
their discovery of a method of reproduction by parthenogenesis,
and sending missionaries to every society around the globe to
deal with the chaos that will result when all the functions assigned
to males are suddenly unfilled
By act two most of the women are hugely pregnant. For complicated
reasons which the audience understands but which totally baffle
the masterminds, two of the first three babies born turn out to
be male, and the police are closing in. The style is extravagant,
with excursions into verse, dance, and slapstick.
CHARACTERS
"PENTHESELIA", a.k.a. CELIA PRESCOTT, 50, gray-haired and sturdy.
Ex-wife of an eminent Protestant minister, she is the leader of
the feminist underground and the central presence in the "mother
house" where the play is set.
CLARE HODGE DRUMMOND, Ph.D., early thirties. She is an anthropologist.
Her looks are average, ordinary, and obviously not important to
her or to the audience.
"DR.B", DEBORAH BRUNSLINGER, MD. 40, research scientist whose
specialty is genetics. She is businesslike but eccentric.
LESLEY ANDERSON, late twenties. Tall, muscular, short-haired
and thick-necked, she is in charge of security and is generally
wearing a martial-arts uniform.
DIANA, thirty-ish. High priestess of wicca, mystic and magician,
she is beautiful and very strange, both in person and in garb.
SUSAN GONZALES, early twenties. The "go-fer". No one's quite
sure how she became part of the group or what her role is, but
she's sweet and malleable, so everyone is happy she's around.
IRENE FELDMAN, a dancer. She is tall and almost awkward when
not dancing, and less than fully articulate in speech. A bit reminiscent
of the Fieffer cartoon character.
"SCIO" MD.,PH.D., late forties, perhaps older. A formidable
character to whom the normal attributes of age or appearance or
personal history do not apply. In fact, if she has a name on the
"outside", none of the group would dare to ask what it is.
DOROTHY PRESCOTT GRIMM, 25, Celia's daughter.
EVEREND PETER PRESCOTT, DD, PH.D., 60, professor of theology.
Celia's ex-husband.
ADRIAN GRAEBNER, twenties, a delicate-featured mailman.
OFFICER RYAN 20's, and
DETECTIVE DICK FERGUSON, 50, of the Cambridge police department.
ACT ONE
PROLOGUE (invocation, arms upraised)
PENTHESELIA: Lady of abundance, confusion, joy!
Send us fresh signs. Send us your owl of wisdom!
-Flying and crying, "who?" (turns to address audience)
And you, ladies and gentles, mothers and men,
Children whose ears are open to wonders: Listen!
For strange is my plot, and your story.
How in our time of peril we set our minds
To be wide and clear and brave, to reach our fierce
Objective. And this narrative, as yours,
Twines in and out of countless lines to shape
One fragile music.
SCENE ONE
(A fold-out screen flanked by file drawers being "organized"
by SUE. Labels, clippings, charts, graphs: PENTHESELIA walks in
to DIANA, LESLEY and DR.B.)
SUE: I've tried to keep this up, but we've got to have someone
with training. -
- DIANA: Even before Minerva's death we were behind schedule.
By now
- DR.B: Zhere are huge gaps, even for zhe developed .nations,
where zhere should be s data. Look at zhis! Can zhere really be
tzero vomen gravediggers? In any vestern European country? Only
.02% of crematory vorkers, und 6% of morticians?
PENTHESELIA: You mean do those mortician statistics count wives,
who help out but aren't on the books?
SUE: Morticians, yuck! Why should women do that?
LES: Somebody has to. Corpses rot, they breed germs.
DR.B: In 82% of cultures vomen wash and lay out zhe dead. Men
bury or burn zhem. (indicates chart)
DIANA: And hold the keys to heaven or hell. SUE: Whew. I hope
Minerva gets past him.
LES: Past who, Sue?
SUE: Saint Peter. A suicide--
DIANA: I don't believe you said that! Where did we get this
woman?!
LES: Sue doesn't mean it.
SUE: It's reflex Catholic. From fifth grade. Seeing her hanging
there, I've had nightmares. It's childish, but--
PENTHESELIA: I think we were all more shaken than we admit by
Minerva's death--
DR.B: Especially zhose of us who had to dispose of zhe body.
LES: It wasn't so bad. Except for the State Patrol. When I saw
those blue lights, I thought I'd shit my-
PENTHESELIA: We were naturally paralyzed by grief and shock.
But in the words of the immortal Joe Hill, "Don't mourn, organize."
And we will.
DR.B: You got a replacement?
PENTHESELIA: I hope so. I want you to interview Dr. Clare Drummond.
Tomorrow.
DR.B: So soon? Have ve done zhe vork-up?
SUE: I've heard of her! This stuff here is from her book!
PENTHESELIA: Right. Female Functions: the Division of Labor
in Preindustrial Societies.
DR.B: But ve don't vant just preindustrial. Can she-
PENTHESELIA: Take her analysis and apply it--?
SUE: To the whole world!? (LIGHTS DOWN ON SCENE)
SCENE TWO
(LIGHTS UP ON OUTER DOOR. DR. CLARE DRUMMOND COMES UP THE WALK,
CHECKS THE ADDRESS, HESITATES, THEN RINGS THE DOORBELL. LESLEY,
A SHORT-HAIRED STOCKY WOMAN IN HER LATE TWENTIES, IS IN THE FOYER.
SHE WEARS A KARATE SUIT AND IS SORTING CLIPPINGS AS SHE "STANDS
GUARD". SHE GOES TO THE PEEPHOLE, OPENS THE DOOR A CRACK WHILE
KEEPING IT CHAINED)
LES: Yes? Who is it?
CLARE: Is this 42 Spring Street? Demeter Foundation?
LES: What's your name? ID?
CLARE: I'm Clare Drummond. I have an appointment with Dr. Brunslinger.
(Clare is an angular, intelligent woman in her early thirties,
dressed in an embroidered peasant blouse and a gray suit.)
LES: (INTERCOM) Dr. B? Drummond. Right.(opens door) You're early.
Dr. B'll be right with you.
CLARE: Is this a bad neighborhood for crime? Or do you do defense
work? Is this some kind of security clearance? I've always been
a devout civilian:I wouldn't want to get involved in weapons research,
or-
DR.B: (enters, a mature handsome woman in a lab coat) Dr. Drummond?
I'm Deborah Brunslinger. (shakes hands)
CLARE: But we've met, haven't we?
DR.B: (nods) At zhe Concerned Scientists.
CLARE: I didn't recognize your name. Perhaps I mixed you up
with--
DR.B: I use a different name.
CLARE: Your letter said a research position with a private foundation.
DR.B: Yes. (indicates security) Very private. CLARE: You mean
secret? Covert? I've been approached by the CIA-
DR.B: But you turned zhem down. Goot girl! Even vhen you know
you're not going to get tenure and your grants haf tdried up.
CLARE: Don't waste your time: I won't do it. Before I'd spy
on innocent people who trust me, I'd go back to Colorado and sell
sports equipment.
DR.B: Vhy sports equipment?
CLARE: My aunt owns the place. DR.B: Vhat a vaste of education,
eh? But you should have anticipated. A doctorate in Anthropology--
the study of Man! Did you tink zhat men were going to hire a woman
to study Man?
CLARE: But I study women, mostly! Like Margaret Mead did, or
Ruth Benedict. My research is--
DR.B: Ve know. Ve funded you. Pentheselia and I vere very impressed
mit your African project.
CLARE: You were?
DR.B: Ve'd like to expand. Train teams. Interested?
CLARE: Of course! But I don't understand-
DR.B: You're not supposed to understand! First taintake interview.
Are you villing?
CLARE: I'd give anything! But-- well, I mean--
DR.B: Good. Vwe'll proceed. (CALLING) Lesley!
(LES and DIANA enter with an electronic gadget attached to a
graph. Dr.B fills a syringe.)
Sit up here, please. Take off your jacket und gif me your arm.
CLARE: Now, wait a minute!
DR.B: Dis vork must not be done by spies! You vere approached
by zhe CIA, ya? So ve are not paranoid.
CLARE: All right. Go ahead. (DR.B gives CLARE the shot, nods
at LES to begin asking questions. DIANA watches.)
LES: Full name?
CLARE: Clare Hodge Drummond.
LES: Date of birth?
CLARE: August 9, 1965.
LES: Married?
CLARE: Divorced.
LES: Children?
CLARE: No. None.
LES: How long were you married? CLARE: Long enough to study
the Hausa. The grant was for a couple: among the Hausa men only
talk to men and women to women--married women. Single women aren't
supposed to talk at all. So, I got my interviews, and then Roger
and I filed for divorce. As soon as our book was in galleys.
LES: Your father's dead?
CLARE: Since 1972. An auto accident. Drunk driver.
LES: Your mother never remarried?
CLARE: No. (chuckles) Not interested.
LES: You don't have brothers?
CLARE: I did, I had a brother till I was ten. But he died, of
pneumonia.
LES: That happened to me, too. Did your family ever make you
feel it was your fault?
CLARE: Not really. But sometimes I felt guilty because once
he was gone I got what Craig would have had.
LES: Right! It was like a promotion, wasn't it? Not that I wished
he was dead or anything, at least no more than normal. But boy,
did I move up! Softball, electric trains, camping trips.
CLARE: I moved up to science.
DR.B: Your father vas a respected chemist. How vould you describe
your relationship?
CLARE: Respectful.
LES: You weren't close?
CLARE: After Craig died, Dad would take me to the lab. We'd
work for hours. But it wasn't -- personal.
LES: Do you have a boyfriend now? A lover?
CLARE: No. Well, I did, but he got tenure, and I ...
(CLARE's eyes close, she seems to doze. DR. B looks questioningly
at DIANA, who nods.)
DIANA: The vibrations are good.
DR.B: (to LES) We'll go on.
LES: Don't close your eyes yet. Count for us. One-
CLARE: One..two..three..
DIANA: (holds up amulet) Look at this, keep your eyes on this
shining, shining, you see the shining even as your eyes grow heavy,
heavy, even as your eyes close, behind them you see the shining...
CLARE: Shining...
LES: What's his name, your boyfriend?
CLARE: Sandy. Silly Sandy. 'S shit. Don't want to see him. N'more.
LES: You don't miss him? (CLARE shakes her head, giggles)
DIANA: Who are you?
CLARE: Clare. I'm Clare.
DIANA: What are you?
CLARE: Sc-- scientist. Woman. I'm a woman.
DIANE: How old are you? Thirty-one. In 1996. Count with me,
count the years backwards. Go back. Twenty nine, twenty six, twenty
three-- you love?
CLARE: Man. Mankind. I want to know them all, love them, serve
humanity-
DIANA: Twenty two, Twenty. Is there anyone special? Are you
in love?
CLARE Oh, yes. Love. I am--
DIANA: What's his name?
CLARE: Joshua! (giggles) Alex, Bobby-- Elaine and I, always
a new one. We're in love with love. (laughs)
DIANA: Go back further, deeper. Nineteen, fifteen,seven
CLARE: Seven. Billy! You Big Billy Bully, you better give me
back my butterfly! I don't want you for a boyfriend, not ever,
you meany!
DIANA: Six, five. In the dark, what do you dream of?
CLARE: Animals, good ones. And big scary ones, too. Beasts and
badmen, down in the dark basement. Mommy!
DIANA: Go on into the dark. It's so wide, and you're so small.
Growing smaller. Four, three,
CLARE: Mommy! Don't leave me alone! Let me sleep in your bed.
Please, Mommy.
DIANA: It's Daddy who's coming down the dark hall. Hear his
footsteps? Daddy will hold you--
CLARE: Want Mommy!
DIANA: Lift you up, into the air, flying, up and then fall,
up and then fall, but you won't drop, not unless you've been bad-
CLARE: (shrieking, crying) Mommy!
DIANA: Two years, one (a baby's cry), down and back, back, into
the womb. Floating free, rocked in the red dark, warm and safe.
Not alone longer. Part of her. Heart of her heart. Until again
the beatgrows strong, crushing, Red petals to a snake's embrace.
Poor baby, Expelled from Eden to the chill-sharp air Heir and
exile, stunned by brilliant light!
PENTHESELIA: Clare. Clare. You've come through. You're safe
with me.
(LIGHTS DOWN, PENTHESELIA STEPS FORWARD)
When did I decide to take charge of the world?
We were never really private people,
the Reverend, the children and I.
We lived in parsonages, on show, 4 in a row,
The last one had a parakeet, and a white picket fence,
and the cage and the gate were kept open.
I was even allowed my liberal opinions,
in classes taught by his distinguished colleagues,
where I criticized and held forth, and they were amused.
"Mrs.'s P's so bracing, so abrasive:
That's how Pete sharpens his wits!" For the rest
I wore modest dress, I wore a small-town smile.
Taught Sunday school, poured coffee, sherry, tea.
Our daughter and two sons were groomed for perfection,
but the boys never made it.
Pete Jr. drowned in a neighbor's pool, at night,
Having scaled a chain-link fence and bribed the dog.
Then Tom was always guilty, usually gone.
Wearing out his sneakers, the tires on his bike.
He ran until he hit a bridge abutment
At ninety-five miles an hour.
His father said it must have been God's will
Though past our understanding. I didn't cry.
Not till I went for a week home to my mother,
and Peter forgot to feed Tweety. I found the bird
frozen stiff as tthe weeds by the back porch door.
Peter said, you can't carry on like that,
hysterical over a bird. They have no souls.
Christ never died for them.
I believe in heaven, I think. It exists while I think it.
While you do, too. Our thoughts are wings, and thrones.
There in the bright Empirean my Tweety,
My Pete, my Tom, my mother, your great-gram,
Socrates, George Eliot, Joan of Arc,
Wait now in bliss to greet us; but not sure--
For heaven too is mortal. Heaven can die.
SCENE THREE (CLARE IS BEING SHOWN HER WORK AREA)
DIANA: I'm a technophobe, so the only way I'll have access is
if we talk. I'll need symbol sets. Iconography. Clues to the group
unconscious.
CLARE: I'm sorry. I think you've lost me.
LES: Diana's the High Priestess.
CLARE: Oh. Of what?
SUE: The new religion.
CLARE: Another one! Isn't there a surplus now?
DR.B: Today's religions are fossils. But Zhey were creative,
vonce. Historic response to cataclysm . Ice age, flood, diaspora,
fall of empire: people had to change, and zhey need explanations
as much as expedients.
CLARE: I suppose they did.
SUE: They do. They will again. Soon.
DIANA: The cataclysm's coming: more global than the creep of
glaciers, more instantaneous than the eruption that sent Atlantis
to the bottom of the sea.
LES: All over the world the gods and their reasons will fail.
DIANA: We'll be ready with new ones.
CLARE: I don't see how this--
DR.B: Humankind needs meaning. More than food, or pleasure,
or even relief from pain.
CLARE: I'm afraid I'm not prepared to deal with meta-whatever.
I'm a scientist..
DR.B: A Concerned Scientist.
CLARE: Concerned. Yes. If the research I've done is of use to
you, you're welcome to it. But I just plot the world as it is.
I haven't a plot to save it.
DR.B: But we do.
DIANA: You tell us what the Burmese believe, then I can create
Ritual that will make it possible for them to believe what they
must, to survive.
CLARE: Sounds like some kind of cult.
SUE: Oh, no. We go way beyond that. But don't listen to me.
Pentheselia will explain for you. (CLARE LOOKS PUZZLED) Pentheselia.
Your mother.
CLARE: That wasn't a dream? That woman?
LES: You came through. She made you one of us.
CLARE: Is that supposed to mean to mean something to me? Because
as far as I'm concerned, it's just a job. It has odd requirements:
but I'm used to that. I can respect the customs, wear a veil if
I have to. But I'm not too comfortable with Magic Mammas.
DIANA: I've noticed.
DR.: Did you haf a classical education? Pentheselia was a varrior,
Queen of zhe Amazons. She fought Achilles.
CLARE: Achilles? Then she lost.
LES: This time, she can't!
DR.: Doomsday is mathematically certain. Unless zhere is a radical
change in every society mit zhe technological capability for global
destruction!
CLARE: God, I hope not! I'm afraid that's true, but radical
change?! People haven't changed in 50,000 years.
DIANA: Male aggression is programmed. It meant survival in the
caves .
LES: But it means the end now. For everyone.
CLARE: Change would take a miracle. Blessed are the peacemakers:
but who are they? No culture I've heard of. Even the Arapesh...
DR.: Don't vaste energy on fear. You just graph vhat is now.
Forms of social organization, Division of labor, child-raising.
Just the facts, the anthropology.
DIANA: The feelings, the ways of changing perception and response
right down to the level of instinct: that's my job, and also the
job of our artists. As for literal miracles..
DR.: They're proceeding on schedule.
(DARK. WOMEN IN WHITE ROBES CARRYING CANDLES. PART OF THE WALL
IS USED AS A SCREEN, AND PEACEFUL PASTORAL SLIDES OR FILM OF FLOWERS,
GRACEFUL ANIMALS, SMILING BABIES IN THEIR MOTHER'S ARMS, ARE PROJECTED
ONTO IT. THE WOMEN GATHER, EACH RECEIVING A FLOWER FROM PENTHESELIA,
WHO IS COSTUMED IN A GORGEOUS ROBE. IRENE DOES A GENTLE FLOWER
WORSHIP DANCE TO THE SOUNDS OF POEM AND FLUTE. THE OTHER WOMEN
JOIN HANDS BEHIND HER, CHANTING AND MOVING IN A SOLEMN DANCE.)
SCENE FOUR
PENTHESELIA : (dramatically) Blessed be! May we be Blessed,
with strength and hope! You hold life, you hold perfect beauty
in your hands
(All raise their hands and chant, then IRENE begins her presentation,
breaking the mood with a stuttering, off-hand manner)
IRENE: O K I uh... I haven't done the voice-overs yet, so I'll
read you the stuff that'll be in them as I run the images. Last
week I showed you the Global Warming and Ethnic Cleansingsections?
Right. I think this Hiroshima stuff'll fit after it, although
maybe I should..uh..do some charts here?... anyway, I spliced
on the transition.
(HIROSHIMA PICTURES)
Now this is the projection of the Hiroshima damage if a terrorist
bombed an American City. I've used Boston for the example. (CHARTS)There's
one of the chart. Showing potential blast damage .... you know
this stuff, so I haven't spliced it all in. But Hopkinton's gone
at the initial blast Then assuming there's a hit on the power
plant, here's the extent of destruction just from the melt-down,
Pilgrim radiation.. (ILLUSTRATION)
If you can imagine this, it's intense light, as if the sun came
down on us. Then any animal or person who managed to creep underground
and hide from the fall out, would crawl up into a Nuclear winter.
The ozone is burnt off, so the mutation-causing rays get through,
while the dust cloud blocks the sunlight. No food crops, no flowers:
animals and birds and bugs and babies would all be blast-blind.
(PICTURE: MUTANT ANIMALS)
(PICTURE: MUTANT BABIES)
SUE: (hysterical) No! Please, why do we have to watch this!
We're doing what we can!
IRENE: It's too much, isn't it? If people walk out, if they
can't stand it and go bury their heads in the sand, then we fail.
LES: I don't know if it's too much, or boring. People are used
to machine guns, car crashes, pazazz-
SUE : her eyes, sobbing) That poor little boy!
IRENE: It's supposed to be felt; without feeling humans are
monsters.
PENTHESELIA: Or heroes.
DR.B: Maybe if you intercut mit zhe graphs, gave something for
zhe brain to engage between zhe images... that's vhat I do when
I'm vorking: quantify.
PENTHESELIA: That's what they do! Engineers and the diplomats
and the generals! Numbers, abstractions: We must shake that! Grab
them, and shake them!
LES: How're you going to do the grab part? To get them in front
of the screen you'd have to call it --"Friday The Fourteenth",
or something.
IRENE : (ready to leave) I'll work on it.
DIANA : (hands bag of herbs) Don't let her hysterics get to
you, Irene. Inhale this, and let me do your chakras--
IRENE: I'm too upset: I need to be by myself, now. I think I
see where it's wrong. But- Next week, O.K? I mean, use the herbs
on Sue, O.K.? Do a healing.(exits) (there is a general murmur.
The women regroup)
LES: I'll take Susan upstairs.
DIANA : Lesley! You promised you'd put away the equipment...
and bring the boxes up to my room.
LES: Later, Diana. Sue needs me. (LES and SUE exit)
PENTHESELIA: What did you think?
CLARE: I'm not sure I understand what audience Irene's aiming
for. Public T.V?
PENTHESELIA: You. Women like you. Anthropologists, sociologists,
doctors, psychologists--We need them all--
(DR.B goes to the large display graph upstage which indicates
the level of world tension, the probability of war or ecological
disaster. She adjusts it)
DR.: Less even than we'd hoped. The news today reports that
(fill in timely international event).
CLARE: You mean to organize demonstrations? Or petition drives?
PENTHESELIA: Useless! Thirty five years ago I was doing that
with SANE. Have you even heard of SANE? Or the Women's League
for Peace and Freedom? Or Another Mother for Peace?
DR.: Nagging. Vomen nag, men cover der ears..
DIANA: Worse. It confirms the roles. Pitiful women, arms twined
around the warrior's knees, pleading- Men love it!
CLARE: But what are the women you recruit supposed to do?!
PENTHESELIA: Stop them! Get so angry, so energized by righteous
wrath, that she'll do anything! Don't let the bastards get away
with it!
CLARE: Sabotage? I've always thought that one big "accident"
would shake them.
DIANA: The Russians have had one!
CLARE: If one of our missiles blew up--!
DR.: Sabotage vould alert the CIA, the FBI. If zhe Man sees
just girls, we're O.K. Sewing circles, coffee klatches, zhat vay
we go on undetected until-
CLARE: Until what? What can you change?
PENTHESELIA: Do you have the address list for Australia?
CLARE: It's coded. If Sue's had time to do a print-out...
PENTHESELIA: Would you check, please? Alice's flying to Melbourne
on Tuesday.
CLARE(exit): I'll get right on it.
PENTHESELIA: What are you all thinking of?
DR.: I'm sorry. Clare's become so central, I forget. PENTHESELIA:
We agreed. We don't want another suicide.
DIANA: We've got to tell her zomething. But how soon?
PENTHESELIA: I think we tell her about your work, Dr. B.
DR.: I'm about to do zhe first tests. If it vorks, Clare will
know, vhether ve tell her or not.
PENTHESELIA: As for Scio's part of the project, no. At least
not yet.
DIANA: You think that's why Minerva--? She figured it out?
PENTHESELIA: Clare won't.
DR.B: She's a good scientist. When she looks at her statistics,
she'll see zhe obvious. Zhe solution--
PENTHESELIA: Clare's? I think the obvious won't occur to her.
Not unless it's ethical.
DIANA: It is ethical! On a cosmic scale-
PENTHESELIA: But she's human! To stay human, humane, people
must stay in scale. Reach with the mind only so far as the heart
can follow.
DR.B: But ve need her!
PENTHESELIA: You've lived with this, you've forgotten the enormity.
If we're not Gods, then we're monsters!
DIANA: We are, goddesses, the living face of the All-Mother.
She creates through us, she destroys--
DR.: If we stay on schedule. Face it. Pentheselia. Scio needs
more help than we've got. Clare, or somebody. And we need a guinea
pig. Soon. (LIGHTS DOWN ON SCENE)
PENTHESELIA: How can we predict when or how The pieces will
fall in place? They shift. They kaleidoscope. Once walking though
the financial district November gray. Cement towers looming. Gloom
shutting off every rosy shaft of twilight sun, Another office
tower was rising in a roar of rivets And as I picked my way around
the scaffolding I thought about populations. People crates. Pushing
against the environment, Piling up in vast Malthusian hives, their
lifelines electrical cable. Then I crossed the Charles on a silver
train. And as I looked back across the darkening river, the lights
on the towers sang. There was such a harmony! As if the sunset,
the brightening stars Had waited patient eons for these jewels
To echo heaven's joy.
SCENE FIVE
(DOWNSTAGE, IN CLARE'S WORK AREA. SUE IS READING TO IRENE FROM
THE FILE OF CREATION MYTHS. IRENE IS MOVING TO THE WORDS)
CLARE: "and the Earth- Goddess Mna lay down upon the waters,
and blew with her breath the West Wind. The wind blew, and the
clouds gathered, and spilled rain-seed into the lap of the blessed
Mna as she lay sleeping upon the waters, and her womb teemed with
life. Mna opened her legs and brought forth fishes, and sea-plants,
and Zedra the mighty whale, and Piscar, the dolphin," (PENTHESELIA
and DIANA enter) "and also Yabamu, Mother-of-the-People. Yabamu
swam until she began to be tired, when she said to her brother
the dolphin, let us climb up upon the land, and rest ourselves."(IRENE
poses, DIANA applauds)
DIANA: That's wonderful! That'd be so easy to relate to!
CLARE: Too bad the last Yabakuk who belived in it died in 1893.
PENTHESELIA: There must be others!
IRENE: She read one from the Ngutu.
SUE: The Ngutu believe that their Goddess Tulagas wove the rain-clouds
from her hair, and taught them to plant yams and make wine and
baskets, and oversees their luck.
IRENE: Shall I work with that? I felt uncomfortable because
I've never heard of the Ngutu.
CLARE: Four thousand at the last census, but dwindling. The
men forced into the mines to pay the government's head tax.
DIANA: Sounds like they're out of luck.
CLARE: Cut off from tribal ways, they usually convert to Islam.
PENTHESELIA: By the time we reach them, they'll all be turning
towards Mecca five times a day.
CLARE: In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to even ride a
bicycle.
(AT THE GUARDED DOOR, SUE, DRESSED IN A SENIOR GIRL SCOUT UNIFORM,
INSERTS HER ID AND GIVES THE PASSWORD. LESLEY LETS HER IN, AND
SHE CROSSES TO THE STAIRS AND CLIMBS TO THE UPPER LEVEL.)
DIANA: Not just to read a technical manual! But to to think
of women as Goddesses, as active. Throw off the stifling veil
of femimine "virtue".
PENTHESELIA: That word! "Virtue" comes from the Latin "vir",
man.
CLARE: Most cultures do have the Widow Effect. Husband dies.
The wife takes over his business, or picks up his rifle and fights
off bandits.
PENTHESELIA: Not in the Afghan refugee camps: the women just
sit in the tents, waiting for some male relative. Even a nine-year-old
kid. He's got to give them permission-- to walk outside in the
air, to work, to live! So far we've sent agents in teams, one
pretending to be the husband. It's the only way to reach them.
CLARE: Why bother? It doesn't matter what the women think, they
live in a culture where only warriors count! Come to that, so
do we! Do you realize what percentage of American legislators
are veterans?!
IRENE: That's the point!
CLARE: Don't you see? If the lords of the earth are bent on
destroying it, what good does it do to preach to women? It's useless!
Look at my charts. If every woman in every land on earth was to
oppose war with all her might, what difference would it make?
Women have no armies. Some few of them have a vote, but they don't
govern. They don't design powerplants or tanks or build bombs.
They can't beat into plowshares the swords they've never had.
Knowledge is power? What do they know? We're illiterate, 67% of
us!
DIANA: The Goddess be praised, who has blessed her daughters
with innocent ignorance! The whole structure of world rape will
collapse with the males who run it!
CLARE: How are you going to collapse them? Put a hex on their
peckers?
DIANA: Remember the Amazons!
(ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE STAGE, RUNS UNDER CLARE'S DIALOGUE.
BELL, LIGHTS UP ON DOOR.)
CLARE: There weren't any!
PENTHESELIA: Historical references--
LES: Yes? Who is it?
END OF ACT I
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