Surge: A Tale of Sleeping Beauty (from Grimm’s Weimar Republic)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ANGEL/ BELLA
GIRL
PARTY GUESTS
BELLA AT 16/ YOUNGER MAXINE
MAXINE
CARA
DOCTOR
6 YOUNG MEN
SCENES:
A CHILD’S BEDROOM; A LIVING ROOM; A LABORATORY; A SUSPENDED ANIMATION TANK
A child sleeps in the foreground,. An angelic being, completely burnished gold with lengthy gold braids and golden vestments appears beside the sleeping GIRL.
ANGEL
Wake up little one
Wake up
It’s time for another sort of bedtime story
The GIRL continues to sleep, stirring somewhat, nevertheless, the ANGEL continues
ANGEL:
A girl turns sixteen,
A party scene is revealed, at first a play of silhouettes and then finally lit up. It is BELLA’s 16th birthday party, surrounded by friends and loved ones, she opens gifts. She gets a makeup kit, psychedelic tights, her favorite CD’s and an anonymous gold wrapped package…
BELLA
(Delighted) This is the one that came in the mail this morning, right mom? Who’s this from?
MAXINE
Oh I didn’t see that one, hmmm…. (handles the present) out of state address—who could that be? (she suddenly blanches)
BELLA
Mom, you okay? What’s wrong?
MAXINE
Nothing pet, nothing—I’m sure. Let’s see what it is—
BELLA opens up the package and the entire Birthday Party exclaims “wow!” in concert. The surprise on BELLA’s face transforms into something quizzical. Without warning she spasms and falls on to the floor in a seizure. Disbelief turns into a relief effort as everyone dives in to help. The scenario becomes muted and dimmed as the Birthday party becomes once again a play of silhouettes. MAXINE steps forward.
MAXINE
It happened during the baby shower. We invited everyone we knew, even people we didn’t. But we didn’t want my sister in-law Cara there. So no one told her—
The birthday party scene has become a baby shower. A buoyantly pregnant YOUNGER MAXINE sits on the couch with friends and well wishers. The table is laden with huge presents.
MAXINE
No one told her. And that’s how she knew.
The doorbell rings. Enter CARA, uber-stylish and vampish.
CARA
Surprise!!! Missed me darling?
YOUNGER MAXINE
Cara, h-how wonderful that you could m-make it—
CARA
Y-yes M-maxine. Considering that I wasn’t invited. Not that that’s your fault of course—naturally you had nothing to do with the planning—
YOUNGER MAXINE
I—
CARA
Nevertheless, see what a lovely girl I am— I brought you a present!
CARA hands YOUNGER MAXINE a huge gold wrapped parcel. It looks suspiciously like the one from the birthday party. YOUNGER MAXINE handles it as though it were a letter bomb.
CARA
Go on, open it—don’t be timid.
With trepidation, YOUNGER MAXINE unwraps the present. There is silence at first and then a collective “Wow!” as the content is revealed. YOUNGER MAXINE swoons and the babyshower becomes a relief effort.
MAXINE
My poor baby.
I went into shock, the doctors were afraid I’d lose her. But I didn’t. They said she’d be okay—except for the fact that I had experienced a neural surge—they suspected that that this caused the brain tissue of the fetus to be scarred.
It was too early to tell what impact this all had. We were to watch and wait and caution for signs of petit mal or severe epilepsy. Years and years and nothing: we watched and waited and sighed relief each time extreme excitement left us behind with a relatively normal young girl.
A healthy beautiful girl.
My beautiful little girl.
MAXINE walks away, a DOCTOR steps up to take her place.
DOCTOR
Sometimes this condition is dormant. When Bella was brought here, the excitement of her 16th birthday party had triggered such and extreme neural surge that it thrust her into a severe coma. A most unusual case, specialists from the world over have come to examine her
In the background BELLA, now played by the golden ANGEL floats in suspended animation in a tank. It is impossible to tell if the tank is filled with sky or water, the colors are deep ocean blues and greens and turquoises that deepen and intensify and flash like lightning on water or vivid storm clouds.
DOCTOR
We call her Sleeping Beauty.
Years have passed since the incident,
the world has changed.
Her parents passed on,
teenage companions married, divorced,
neurotic with
children of their own to love or torture.
Yet our sleeping princess remains unmoved
Immortal,
unfading in the bloom of her youth.
Unaware in her glass tank
Such that the world spins its web of time and trauma
spawning new generations of medical students
and researchers who travel
far and wide to ogle the sleeping spectacle.
Her beauty,
her enigma…
For the moment,
let us imagine she dreams the world
and we are all figments of her neural firings
The DOCTOR leaves.
BELLA/ANGEL continues to float suspended in the tank. The atmosphere in the tank glows with even deeper luminous depths as BELLA/ANGEL begins to speak. She is sleeptalking, her eyes are closed.
BELLA/ANGEL
A man is never truly awake
so science tells us
even in one’s waking life,
there are even deeper awakenings and revisionings,
revelations
sometimes called Truth
at other times,
Beauty
and time there is
one falls away from these
deep deep into a slumber
a deep lucid coma
called Love
so the polemic is triggered:
can we speak of sleep states
in opposition to waking states?
are not the two
a grand gray scale equation
of being?
The luminosity of the tank begins to pulsate with mild flashes of blue and green
BELLA/ANGEL
Beta. 33 to 14 hertz. The world of fight and flight with 33 Hz being the heightened awareness of orgasms and 14, the level of capacity needed for filing alphabetically at your corporate day job.
the pulsing slows down—gradually as she speaks
BELLA/ANGEL
Alpha. 14 to 9 hertz.
The relaxation stage.
A reefer induced drone.
the zone
where all is mellow
you flow, you’re slow
Heavy, heaviest, heavier,
your eye lids start to drop
You are in
(The tank vibrates at a slower hypnotic rate)
Theta 5-8 hertz
your eyelids begin to flutter
rapidly
rapidly rapidly rapidly
rapid
eye
movement
into the realm of Morpheus
the realm of dreams
heaven, hell
future
ghosts
and seasons past
bent, stemmed, filtered
into
subtle quantum flux
such is the nature of dreams
beneath Morpheus,
lies Delta,
the state of deep cellular repair
here,
Adam is retrofitted with Eve
and vice versa
gene pools devised
or revised
in a hothouse to guide
those libidinal instincts
responsible for Jack /Jane
boy meets girl
syndrome
all these formed and
pulsing at the same vibration
as the planet
there you have it
time passes, worlds revolve
gravity throbs
I do not change
my sleep, a strange sort of immortality
cells oscillating at the rate of eternity
And in my body,
dreams
You may ask,
“Of what?
What does she dream of in her coma?”
Lighting reveals her to be suspended at the center of a vast shimmering spider web. As she speaks, the characters are revealed to cling to or hang from this web—like insects caught in a spider’s lair…
BELLA/ANGEL
A young boy on the hill
A green man in the woods
A knight astride his horse
A prince upon his throne
One who walks by the sea
And another watches stars
For a moment there is silence. BELLA/ANGEL remains suspended, the young men suspended on different points of the web. A flash and the image of a briar patch net of thorns and roses drops over them like a curtain. The first young starts climbing up towards her—
BELLA/ANGEL
And sometimes I dream he will save me
The young man is about to reach and there is a lightning surge, a flash. The briar net disappears and he with it. Darkness for a moment. The web takes on the illusion of thick golden braids The second young man goes for it—he limbers towards BELLA/ANGEL—
BELLA/ANGEL
Sometimes I dream he will save me,
Lightning surge. Flash. The braid appears to snap, he falls, darkness. The web takes on the form of thick green curling vine. The third young man steps up to the task.
BELLA/ANGEL
Sometimes I think he will save me
Lightning flash. Vine breaks, boy falls. Darkness. The lights back on,
BELLA/ANGEL and the fourth young man are now suspended upright, opposite each other—almost like a bee nuptial. They reach out to kiss.
BELLA/ANGEL
Sometimes I wish he will save me
Lightning flash. They both fall away from each other. Darkness. Lights. BELLA/ANGEL and the fifth young man floating opposite each other. They reach to kiss
BELLA/ANGEL
Sometimes I dream he will save me
Lightning. Flash. They fall away. Darkness. Lights. BELLA/ANGEL and sixth young man hang opposite each other, reaching—
BELLA/ANGEL
Sometimes I dream he will save me,
Lightning flash. They fall away. Darkness. Lights. BELLA/ANGEL goes into spasms of lightning surges and flashes. The tank darkening dimming and glowing in sequence—
BELLA/ANGEL
SOMETIMES I THINK HE WILL SAVE ME
SOMETIMES I WISH HE WILL SAVE ME
SOMETIMES I DREAM HE WILL SAVE ME
SOMETIMES I DREAM HE WILL SAVE ME
SOMETIMES I DREAM HE WILL SAVE ME
SOMETIMES I DREAM HE WILL SAVE ME
SAVE ME
SAVE ME
SAVE ME
SAVE ME
SAVE ME—
She becomes muted and dimmed as our attention is once again in the foreground with the sleeping child, thrashing fitfully in her sleep—
GIRL
Save me save me save me save me save me—
MAXINE rushes into the room and wakes her up.
MAXINE
My poor baby, it’s alright honey—it’s just a bad dream, only a dream, pet—
GIRL
Mom, I had a horrible dream—
MAXINE
Ssshhh…just a dream
GIRL
I dreamed I was in a coma mommy
MAXINE
It’s alright pet, you’re too young to know what a coma is—
GIRL
And it was caused by a neural surge you had when you were pregnant with me,
MAXINE
(freezes) my poor baby, don’t listen to them—
GIRL
It happened because Aunt Cara showed up—
MAXINE
(crying freely and rocking her child) NO! No no, no…. I don’t believe them!
GIRL
And I dreamed that one day
MAXINE
NO NO NO NO NO
GIRL
One day—
MAXINE
No baby, don’t listen to them—
GIRL
One day he will save me
One day he will save me
One day he will save me
Save me
Save me
Save me mother
Save me
Save me
Save me
BLACKOUT
©2004, 2013 onome ekeh