A barnboard shed in the rain and lightning and thunder. Oil lamps hanging from rafters illuminate warmly inside the shed; the light from these is obviated by lightning when it flashes. The sound of drumming pervades. The drumming is steady, imperfect. Some of the drummers are simply beating the down beat, over and over. Some are rapping out more fancy rhythms. The drums are congas, doumbecs, a bohdran, a jembe, etc. Most of the large crowd of people is crammed into the narrow shed. All are talking, mixing, laughing. Most are swaying with the rhythm. Clothing is particoloured and clearly optional; the garments worn range from colorful feathered gowns to nothing but a loincloth or just nothing. Shortly a chant starts in some undeterminable corner of the shed, and almost everybody joins in. The chant, like the drumming, is steady but not perfectly concerted. The words are simple, repetitive, probably something about Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Sometime during the following scene, someone near the drumming circle pulls out a plastic recorder, and pipes along with the chant, improvising around its limited melody.
rattlesnake [out of breath]
dolphin [standing in the rain;
mariah [from her tent]
lone wolf [when people mutter about the rain and the crampedness of the shed]
LILY Yeah, most people run inside out of the rain. But we love it.
Mat: based on me of course, though he’s not a recorder player in this. he’s not a self-professed drummer, either, but at some crucial point in the action he will get on the drums and jam his heart out, because of how he has something to say that can’t be expressed no other way, and it will be ironic because the pagans will think he’s all cool, they’ll just eat up the drumming, and totally misunderstand where the fire under his ass is coming from. their misunderstanding will need to be made clear, perhaps thru interaction with other drummers (a dylan song? heh heh) or who knows what.
Mat’s girlfriend (Julia? Corrina? Guinevere?) Does she get taken in?
Persephone: based on Pam Fleener only more openly wicked; a possible distraction from the girlfriend, hmmm....
Dolphin: (see the 18nov sheet) he’s kinda like Sean from Nebraska; charismatic, handsome, deep voice, good with the theatrics.
Based On:
*Tess
*Ambika
Tom
*Jasmine (Lily)
*Keith
*Ryan
*Charlene
Erin (A convert from Southern Baptism!)
Jon Benton
Dave
Ron
*Brenda (Raven)
Scott
*Salamander (grant)—use him!
*Randy
*Mimosa and Wade
Zephyr
Molly and Emily
Mariah
Fat Girl (see notes on clipboard)
Black-dress girl (ibid.)
Rose & Larry and their little girl Joy
Sheba & CJ (they ain’t gonna be dogs in the play.)
Bryant
?Bill (the wild man freakout guy)
*Kenny Kline
Howard (the guy who tousled my wet hair and said “Blessed Be.”)
A woman whose job it is to pull eyes out of dead people at the hospital/morgue. She has a beeper; when it goes off, she has to go do her job. (Ask David at work for details).
some things to remember, maybe use:
“Earth my body, water my blood. Air my breath and fire my spirit…
We are a circle. Within a circle. With no beginning. And never ending…
[was there another part for that one?]–something about “With every _____, there is [or] I feel [?] a _______…”
“Around Goes the Good Earth” song
“RAIN…” chant. They actually thought drumming and chanting affected the weather.
“Do you remember when God was a woman? she had very many names [rpt]. We called her Isis [cf historical notes on this bloody goddess], Astarte, Deanna (sp?) Hecate, Demeter, Kali (sp?) and Anana…”
Amoeba.
Stereo.
Those “sensual feasts” wherein you couldn’t feed yourself or use utensils.
The watching girlfriend-mud-sandwich scene, with Mat drumming the beat of their thrusts.
Some point, in some scene: The chants start slowly, and build. Then one by one another chant is layered in. They fit together, but you can hear there are many parts. It gets higher and higher, louder and louder, complexer and complexer. Then, shortly before it is going to end, a solo lead electric guitar comes in, loud, distorted, whammying, riffing, grinding out a countermelody/harmony/lead against the rhythm of the mad chanting. And then it all fades out as one. Next Scene.
the overweight tendencies they have…folds of flesh.
Fat Girl: “We are such individualistic people.”
button: “Anarcha wicce” (anarchist witch—tho she was reluctant to translate the first word for me)
button: “Born again Pagan”
they mimick Native American rituals (e.g., burning sage) because “they [native am.’s] ought to know what is most comfortable for the entities that live on this land…”
So important which way the pentagram goes.
Also important to know which direction you’re facing; Fat Girl wasn’t sure, had to ask.
She said “should” and “supposed to” fairly often.
Most of the people at the meeting were bejewelled, pierced, long-haired, dyed, or in some other way visually non-mainstream.
The other girl, in the black dress, looked like Mary Fritz in the eyes...that sorta european rennaissance look.
“Celtic or Gardenarian (sp?) tradition is popular because it has been written up in books.”
About other traditions: “We just try to live with each other, because we know their intention is not evil.”
“Positive energy clearing out any negative vibes...”
She had her stuff laid out on a pillowcase.
“Grounding and Centering.” (She forgets again which direction she’s facing.) “Being connected with the energy of the Earth. I visualize a glowing ball of light—they call them Chakras in Indian/Hindu…—it spins off a thread that goes into the earth, heading for the fire at the center. The central fire is part of me, I am part of it… Visualize a circle to contain the raised energy, to focus it… Then it’s appropriate to invoke the four directions (some people make the circle by invoking the directions)…”
She speaks of “my tradition…’We’ do so-and-so…” But she calls herself solitary. I guess that just means she’s not in a coven.
She stresses that the athame doesn’t cut anybody.
She mentions Astrology in connexion with all this.
NOTE: the play will be more compelling and honest if I use my own feelings/impressions about the directions/elements etc. It has to be more than just closed-mindedly badmouthing them.
Possible Title: I Invoke Also The Rain.
Maybe have 5 scenes: one per element plus one for closure/redemption. Incorporate into each its appropriate tools, objects, animals, moods, lighting, time, ETC!
More catch-phrases: “Welcomed into the circle” “the center” “the lord and the lady” “blessed be” “merry meet, merry part, merry meet again” “open but never broken” “do what you will an it harm none”
They seem to have no fear of not being taken seriously...and yet, they strive so hard to have all their facts; they are always talking about the information (which of course is the code information that makes them part of the group—c.f. that cs lewis essay in Dolphin) and showing how much they know. Even Pam does this sometimes, I’ve noticed.
“We’re always supposed to be grounded etc…But we have to do our jobs, go to school…”
“Thank the lord and lady”
“shielding”
—hey, maybe they do this to Mat’s girlfriend, to protect her from him: “You have a symbolic representation of a person, you visualize the energy we raised forming a shield around them…”
“if you keep playing with the energy too long, it loses its focus”
to close it: thank lord & lady & each direction, then stick the excess energy back into the earth, shake it off, physically connect themselves with the earth. EATING “shuts down the psychic [somethin or other]…” is that why so many of ‘em are fat? Or is fatness just another symptom of the nuttiness that makes them need this shit in the first place.
All this pretense (?) of being attached with animals. She uses a cat statue as her familiar, sort of, because they don’t allow animals in her apartment. Even the name of the brand on the bottom of the statue was significant to her... “My mind said, ‘That’s what I need on my altar!’”
“The actual things are just symbols…tho some people can get really keyed into the things.”
“They say it’s a good idea to be consistent with your symbols” (emphasis mine).
“We have our own version of ‘lapsed Catholics’…I’m a lapsed Wiccan…I don’t do ritual as often as I should.”
An example of wanting to impress with the knowledge is when she showed so much concern about getting the names of the eight holidays correct.
“skyclad” “wand” “energy work” “cloak” “tarot” spirits and things
the rocheport incident.
NOTE:::: the play needs to have merit on its own, as a whole play, more than merely a scathing social review. You can include all the groovy music and dancing and firelight and all. The parts you DON’T like will probably come out on their own!
“I didn’t need initiation [,words from higher-ups, etc] to call myself a witch.”
On WHY DID YOU BECOME A WITCH:
“The church had really hurt me bad was the main reason. Political shift...towards feminism...struggling with the male-dominated religion...kept feeling my womanly self sacrificed to become like the male ideal...felt unconnected from my sexuality...there were all these many things wrong with me because I was a human, a woman, the CHurch said, and I went along with that for a while [it sounds like a love/hate relationship with the church; like some kind of obsession with a tyrrannical incestuous father, or something—but definitely NOT indifference]. In Wicca, I felt I found a religion in which I could be a whole person [she needs permission?]...it was a healing experience...for a while i couldn’t handle worshipping the male gods, only the goddess...now i’m able to welcome the male energy.”
“You’re not locked into a dogma,” she says [that’s because what you DO lock yourself into is much more quietly sinister, subtle, sneaky, codified, and deadly like an assassin you don’t see coming].
The other girl: “I had a similar experience...went to catholic school for 12 yrs...for a while i was an atheist [again, NOT indifference or balance]...now i’m in search of...what feels right...like runic magic [“That’s Scandinavian Runes,” Fat Girl pipes in, anxious to show her knowledge].”
Oh yeah: that bit about she thinks she knows male energy: tie that in with their fucked-up drumming, their oversoft underfired drumming, their fear of being boldly individual and screaming it out in non-approved, non-standard, non-orthodox terms.
When Other Girl said she thought the storm the other night was cool, but specifically because of her beliefs it was cool, Fat Girl hastily almost insultedly assured her, “Oh, like I didn’t think it was!”
“One of the ways I try to contact Deity is by talking with them.”
She has an undergrad in Anthropology. dropped out of grad school works at a bakery.
The other girl is a freshman, in Journalism but undecided. “I don’t tend to personify things; my version is more abstract...about the power of nature...”
Fat Girl hastens to add, “but you can feel the polarity [of lord and lady] even if you don’t personify them.”
She says she’s individual, says you’re not stuck in a mold etc. Then: “I came right out of Starhawk.”
“Most of the practitioners I know are solitary.”
“The most important thing is your responsibility: Harm None, including environment, little animals...” she strongly suggests vegetarianism so as not to be a hypocrite.
the threefold law: what you send out comes back to you 3 times over.
She advises staying away from the power-hungry, ones who “curse” because they claim they protect their community by destroying its enemies. She really believes they can destroy with the power, the energy.
“It comes down to ethics.”
“It’s an in-group/out-group thing...we like to joke about the stereotypes.”
“Our beliefs grew out of those of our pagan ancestors” ---yeah right. (need to get more info on this.)
She senses racism vs. white people (unlike blacks, etc) who try to get in touch with their heritage.
she mentions parallels to “the gay and lesbian community.”
NOTE: maybe you could use foreshortening to go from one festival to another...
“...also a workshop [colloquium?] about floods and all-terrain vehicles.”
---this would be funny at the end of a long list of spiritual mumbo-jumbo events.
NOTE: if you use the “real” gods as a sort of chorus, let the audience not quite be able to tell if they’re real or not!
“craft name” “use name”
NOTE: a Major Conflict: They’re so darned alluring! Compelling! Aesthetic, theatric, nightlight exciting…if Mat could just say “No. Go to hell, I want shut of you all!” then there’d be no play!!!
***Most people don’t notice the weird stuff beneath the surface. They just see people being “spiritual” in their way; they don’t see the glazed sickness that lurks behind the gentle-sounding words.
They can’t handle anything outside a certain narrow range of music—not just in terms of the drumming either. (Like when Jas. and Amb. came into Mixt CO and immediately had to change the tape from Kim’s modern whatever-it-was to that Belly-dancing soundtrack.)
A POSSIBLE ENDING: A sort of split-stage kinda thing; Mat somewhere alone, and then a bunch of the pagans somewhere else (with mat’s girlfriend?) and one of them, the most charismatic one or whatever, doing a “will you follow me” type of thing, and then of course the play ends before we know, especially before we know what mat’s girlfriend decides, because the play is not about a cult, it’s about a nascent cult.
Mat’s going to seem too Christlike, too clichéd, if it’s him against everybody. If it’s some kinda “I’m the only one who can see oh no!” thing. That would be unpleasingly unbalanced, I think. Unless I’m trying to make things complicated. But somehow I suspect I will want to have at least somebody who is more smart...maybe somebody who is kinda outside, a wise person, the kind who unwittingly speaks oracular messages but doesn’t make it too obvious, especially cuz you weren’t expecting it out of them any way.
IT COULD BE sorta surreal or absurd or abstract—a good way to use that would be the tape-recorder type speech Tess (along with many religious fanatics, appar ently) employs.
Definitely use the incident when my suddenly singing the Dylan song made everybody stop drumming because they just didn’t get it because it was not part of their little set of rules.