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Discarded Landscape(2005)
Discarded Landscape was a performance by Weather Talking Theater Company and performed at the 2005 Performing Arts Chicago PAC Edge Festival. The performance was created through collaborative research and the performers Tiffany Bullard, Jeff Harms and Donovan Sherman developed a script over months of improvisation in rehearsal. The play was directed by Brian Torrey Scott, scored by Sam Wagster, and art diurected by Nicholas Monsour. In the performance, a man (Robert) and his two twenty-something children (Andrew and Elizabeth) who have recently lost their wife and mother revisit a domestic space that is physically and psychologically abandoned. The absent character of the Mother delivers these two monologues written by Nicholas Monsour — the first delivered from off-stage by the director, and the second by the character of Elizabeth who plays the role of the Mother in the final act. ***** |
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Mother's Monologue, The First Yes Robert, my eyes were shut. But I was awake. In a sense, I watched the glare through my eyelids fade and you hid your eyes behind a Wind Shield. Every hour or so I caught a glimpse of the changing scenery: first the city, then the farms, and then the wild. Barren, then ordered, then lush. We crossed the river and I could tell from the smell of corpses. If you had looked, you wouldn’t have found any movement beneath my mascara — only a strained calmness. I said I wanted Elizabeth to drive so that I could talk to her while you and Andrew slept. I never got the chance to talk to her, she was always off in someplace, her room, on her own, nowhere that I knew. Like me she would have made a fine actor with that implacable shell we share. And out in the dark I thought we left too late. “I’ll be waiting in the car,” I said. “The roads will be hell,” I warned. You laughed, and with every sound you made an illusion fall off of your tongue and dissolve into the ground; and soon enough, this tower of disappointment. Not mine Robert, theirs. If they ask you, Robert, don’t romanticize — it doesn’t suit you. Unlike your wife and daughter, you and your son can’t help but betray every thought with your ridiculous faces. Even though Andrew emulated your tactic and grew a beard as soon as he could, neither of you can hide your eyes. I really hated arriving in the dark, with the landscape obscured. It was dark around me, but I was awake.
Mother's Monologue, The Second What time was it there? What exactly did an hour mean? One day a motionless sun appeared like a tight metal coin. Maybe it was a moon. We kept moving around from room to room to avoid the unrelenting heat pressure from burning holes in our clothing like our bodies. Occasionally I forgot to look at the clocks that I think were broken anyway. Elizabeth preferred to place her back to the light so that we wouldn’t see her face age or emote. Andrew in full shadow and you in full light. I’m glad we named him after the brother you lost when you were so many years old, although it did encourage an unhealthy sort of wishful thinking. Elizabeth’s plan worked and now she is the same age she always was, Andrew has reverted into an overlooked nook of his adolescence, and you and I are burnt to a fucking crisp. But that was a result of the architecture as much as anything; our rooms became rotten and unhinged in the stagnant pool of moments. Robert, I don’t mean to pry, but… Cut the house in half and count the rings, starting from the marrow. Let the rooms bleed into each other and the secrets may scab over. And it would give you something to do — you could put some use to your tools that clutter the garage floor. Oh, I meant to tell you before, a floor board came loose yesterday, downstairs, which opened up a bottomless crevasse, then water and gas flooded the house and coated the walls with a thick mineral husk. When you get a chance, maybe you could do something about it. And when you finish that, you can join me in the front room where I will probably be napping. Leave the windows open, I like to let the stored up wind pour out in the afternoon.
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