CAST

An OLDISH WOMAN, 70s plus, more or less. Can be played by a male or female, but probably someone over 50.

An EDUCATED MONKEY

THREE ALIENS

They can be robotic, blobs, big and furry, or whatever, as long as they can do the role. (if you can find real aliens, great. If not, use humans in costume)

THREE REGULAR PEOPLE/ASTRONAUTS. Can be played by the actors who are the aliens.

THREE ANIMALS. From different phyla, such as amphibian, insect, one mammal; or one fish, one bird, one crustacean, etc.

You can triple up on the roles if you can find appropriate actors.

Lighting varies from normal to bizarre and creepy. Neon lights of various shapes and bizarre colors are scattered around the stage. Other than that, it is mostly chairs, or a bench.

Setting:

Somewhere in a city. Or maybe a TV studio. Or just maybe this particular theater.

Lights up on an oldish woman waddling on stage, because either she is chubby, has arthritis, or is carrying a lot of stuff, or a combination of all three.

OLD LADY:

Let me quote from the great sage, Richard Pryor: “I’ve had a life”.

Sometimes hard, sometimes easy, sometimes fun, sometimes very sad. I’ve had love, lost it, had it again, lost it, had it, lost it, and had it. Now I’m in the having it stage. My husband is from another country, which, as anyone who still knows me, is pretty typical for me.

I’ve done a few exceptional, unique things, and other pretty normal, ordinary things. I was ok-looking, not beautiful, but not hideous either. I’ve led a minimally spoiled American life and been fortunate not to have lived through famine, mass pestilence, or war that tore me from my home.

Until now, of course.

My profession was, is, theatre. Would have liked to have been a carpenter, sculptor, science fiction writer, potter, anthropologist, herbalist, animal sanctuary runner, agronomist, hell, even an astronaut if I could have gotten over my fear of heights. But I chose theatre. It’s risky but safe, and I can learn about many things for a short time.

So I am still in theatre, but with a twist. I am in charge of making sure that people do not think too hard about the, and I quote, “end of life as we know it”. I’m not talking about, say, the destruction of the middle class, or a major change from a rural to urban culture, or even global warming so folks don’t get to have beach houses anymore. I’m talking about life as we know it.

From now on, it will be life as we don’t know it. That is, not on earth. We gotta move. We have been told, in no uncertain terms, by the powers that be, that we have to leave, vacate, hit the road Jack. Find another place, lease is up, we’re razing the neighborhood. And not just the U.S. Everywhere. Shacks, huts, hogans, caves, fortresses, mansions, apartment buildings, lean-tos, you name it, we gotta go.

It has taken about 10,000 years, but every other living thing on earth has finally called in the chips, is fed up with us, and, with a few previously unknown cosmic connections, has booted us off god’s green acre into the vast unknown of outer space.

Not that we don’t deserve it. We do. We screwed things up royally, some more than others, but that doesn’t matter. Too too too bad, we’ve been told. But it’s not my fault, cried the poor and downtrodden. And they are right, it’s not. But again, too bad. We all gotta go.

Pause here for energetic rendition of Hit the Road, Jack, looped until the following action is complete

OLDISH LADY, during the song, goes offstage and comes back with one woman and two men. They are dressed in space suits with helmets attached to their belts like hikers’ water bottles. She takes a space suit out of her bag and is helped into it by the other three. When they are all dressed in space suits, they all start dancing a slow “soft shoe” dance. Their helmets bang against each other. The dance should clash with the music. When everyone gets tired, they stop and sit down. OLDISH LADY goes back to her chair/bench.

The three astronauts go off stage. Silence while OLDISH LADY takes out a Tupperware container with a sandwich inside and some old newspapers. She eats the sandwich, humming the tune and leafing through an old NY Times Arts & Leisure section.

The three actors return to the stage, this time wearing the costumes of a CAT, a BUTTERFLY, and a FROG. (or any animals the director thinks up representing Mammalia, Amphibia, and Insecta). They walk on animal-like, making animal-like sounds that are actually speeches from Martin Luther King (I Have a Dream), Hitler (Nuremberg) and Simon Bolivar (Rallying the troops), in English, German and Spanish. They totally ignore the meaning of their speech.

OLDISH LADY, however, understands what they are saying. As the ANIMALS dance and talk, they move nearer and farther from Oldish Lady. She reacts with horror or admiration or both to the speeches.

.

LIGHTS OUT.

LIGHTS UP.

OLDISH LADY:

So, as I was saying, we have to go. We have been given a place to go to. Unlike ourselves, our evicters are not totally inhumane. And we can bring memories. I’d like you to look at some slides, it’s powerpoint. I didn’t prepare it, my nephew did.

SLIDE SHOW:

Slide 1: My husband. He left last week.

Slide 2: My kids. They left with my husband and their kids.

Slide 3 thru 6: Some friends

Slide 4 thru 10. Some things I used to have.

Slide 11 thru 20: some pretty places

OLDISH LADY names the places as they appear. The locations are totally up to the director and actors. They should be, however, beautiful natural scenery

Slide 21 thru 30: Some ugly places.

OLDISH LADY starts to cry and cries throughout these photos, even as she narrates them. They should include scenes of war and torture, environmental destruction, cruelty and torture of animals, including experimentation, and any other absolutely horrible pictures the director can find.

LIGHTS OUT at end of last photo.

MUSIC of VIVALDI, something light and airy and totally recognizably a cliché. Images of prancing deer and bunnies should pop into the audience’s minds..

LIGHTS UP.

The stage is empty. The three actors bound on stage. They are in costumes of ALIENS, Not too scary but weird and disturbing enough.

ALIEN 1:

Talks in a buzzing sound. Supra titles translate into Greek for the audience.

ALIEN 2:

Talks in a trilling sound. Supra titles translated into Thai

ALIEN 3:

Talks in low deep tones. Supra titles translated into Ibo.

The ALIENS, as they speak, will use exaggerated gestures (or American Sign Language if they know it) to tell the following story. Their movements should be very clear and understood by anybody in the audience. Speakers of ASL, Thai, Greek and Ibo will be more fortunate than others. They take turns telling the story, sometimes overlapping each other, sometimes interrupting each other, sometimes talking simultaneously.

The story is the following:

Once upon a time, in a place far far away, lived on old lady. She knew many things, like how to grow things in a garden, how to take care of animals, how to do higher calculus.

She wondered, what if you couldn’t be reincarnated until you were forgotten by the living? So someone like Shakespeare is actually suffering in a reincarnation limbo because he is so famous. He’s stuck there, never to be anything every again?

She said, can you imagine a world where sex for young people is allowed only with old women. Hah hah. Aliens laugh if they find this funny. If not, not.

LIGHTS UP on the EDUCATED MONKEY, seen on stage with an old-fashioned typewriter. He/she taps on it slowly, at a time. The MONKEY is dressed in a pink skirt and little cute jacket. It can be a puppet, or a person.

THE FOLLOWING IS SPOKEN BY THE MONKEY. IT IS A TREATISE ON THEATER THAT CAN OR CAN NOT BE INCLUDED IN THE PLAY. PLEASE SKIP IF YOU DON’T LIKE LIVE THEATER.

During this, there can be films and slides of great movements of people from news reports, stills of refugees, The 10 Commandments with Charleton Heston, etc. OLDISH WOMAN plays a hurdy gurdy, which annoys the hell out of the MONKEY.

MONKEY:

Theatre should sometimes reflect the feelings and emotions of the audience; sometimes it should give us something to think about. Theater should aspire to changing the world; sometimes it should be for a good laugh or cry. Theatre should tell a good, clear story; or, it could be a cacaphony of bizarre images that leave one totally confused. Theatre should examine the moral and social issues of its day; but sometimes a peek at the old ways helps us appreciate the new. Theatre should carefully avoid stereotypes and categorization of people by gender, ethnicity, sexual persuasion, nationality, religion, appearance and ability. Those people who belong to a particular category, by their own definition, should have the right to make fun of themselves.

Theatre should expose the whims and cruelties of the world. It can be whimsical, but shouldn’t be cruel.

Everyone should have a chance to do theatre. But skill makes great theatre, as in any art or craft. It would be better if more people could make a living doing theatre and their work was considered valid by the whole society. But the times in human society when that has happened, when theatre was your day job, it made for lazy artists and too much government control.

For the next 20 years (if we live that long), it will become increasingly difficult for people to be able to think for themselves without extreme anxiety. Theatre people are, generally, by nature, rule breakers within the context of a society. They are permitted, to some extent, to speak up, to shock, awaken and penetrate a society’s complacency and self-satisfaction. They are permitted, in some places clandestinely, to think of the bizarre, amoral, noncomformist, surreal, abstract, and merciful way to live life.

We must not let that permission be rescinded, by anyone, anything, anywhere. We may have to risk our lives (it’s happened, you all know that), and our sanity. But we shouldn’t ask anyone, including ourselves, to unnecessarily risk themselves. We may have to give up fame, fortune, recognition, access to audiences–such as it is. We may have go to all the non-theatre people who live in our country and world, and do theatre with them, in a garage or yard, or basement. We just have to keep going. Be creative, be funny, be tragic, be brave.

LIGHTS DIM.

LIGHTS UP VERY BRIGHT.

OLDISH WOMAN is gone. MONKEY is gone.

.

TWO ACTORS walk/run/skip across the stage carrying suitcases, backpacks, etc. An ALIEN checks their documents, searches through their luggage, stamps the documents and the people. The people climb up a rope ladder that has been suspended from the ceiling. They have to leave their stuff behind. The ALIEN throws it off the stage.

LIGHTS OUT

LIGHT UP SOMEWHERE ONSTAGE THAT IS HARD FOR THE AUDIENCE TO SEE. OLDISH WOMAN is hiding.

However, she is eating some Paul Newman cookies very loudly. ALIEN approaches. Looks for her. Finds her. This ALIEN can be as human like or strange and amoeba-like as the director cares for. It, however, needs some kind of appendage to grab a cookie and some kind of orifice to stick the cookie in.

The ALIEN grabs a cookie and throws the cookie into the audience. A second ALIEN comes and steals a cookie. It stuffs the cookie in its orifice and hums an Om Khartum tune.

The third ALIEN comes on stage, gets its cookie and starts to drag OLDISH WOMAN off stage. The other ALIENS help. She is screaming bloody murder but also laughing hysterically. This process of dragging her out should be prolonged and awful.

SILENCE

Then there is a great big huge loud ferocious frightening explosive sound like 10 million megaspaceships taking off. If possible, one can increase bass on the sound system so the seats vibrate.

SILENCE

The ANIMALS COME ON STAGE

One ANIMAL has a thermos. It opens the thermos and pours water on the stage. Sits down next to it.

A second ANIMAL comes in and throws a lot of leaves and branches around and settles in to sleep.

A third ANIMAL brings in a tape deck or cassette and turns it on and starts dancing. Something like from Harry Partch, maybe.

LIGHTS FADE SLOWLY.

BLACK OUT