AMERICA FINDING HER WAY
A Trilogy of Plays
by
Karen Sunde
Copyright: Karen Sunde
For all rights to perform these plays, apply to:
Karen Sunde
130 Barrow St. Suite 412
New York , NY 10014
Tel/Fax 212/366-1124
[email protected] www.karensunde.com
CONTENTS
SWEET LAND OF FIRE
Rebellion. New York, 1970: the 24 hours before the “Weatherman house” on 11th street explodes.
NATIVE LAND
Rejuvenation. The rebirth of a family to serve their nation by following their delinquent child’s dreams.
TRACKING BLOOD WHITE
Making magic in America, now: A dying red-neck town’s struggle with its Native American neighbors and the killer bear that haunts the mountain they share.
Plays by Karen Sunde
Screenplays by Karen Sunde
TAGS: bear hunting, urban renewal, Viet Nam protesters, homelessness, New York terrorism, 1960’s radicals, Weathermen, Black Panthers, Fred Hampton, bomb building, civil rights, Native American, healer, shaman, mysticism, sacred mountain, reservation, red-neck town
PRODUCTION HISTORY
SWEET LAND OF FIRE has had readings in New York –at Ensemble Studio Theatre as Day Before Noon, at Abingdon Theatre Company as The Flower’s Last Child, and as Sweet Land Of Fire in a Concert Reading at La MaMa E.T.C.
NATIVE LAND was commissioned by Michael Miner at Actor’s Theater of St. Paul, has had readings at Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York as House Of Eeyore, and as Native Land in a staged reading at Actors Stock Company/New York.
TRACKING BLOOD WHITE was commissioned by Ken Marini for the Cheltenham Center For The Arts, PA, and workshopped there as Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting. A series of concert readings were produced by Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. The Lark Play Development Center, New York presented it as a staged reading during their Playwright’s Week. La MaMa ETC, New York, did the first concert reading of Tracking Blood White
SWEET LAND OF FIRE
the action
based on a real event
is fiction
New York, 1970. The 24 hours before the house on 11th street in Greenwich Village explodes.
SET: One open set ‑ skeletal steps represent New York brownstone, with landing levels.
CHARACTERS: All 21‑30 years
BETH Weatherman, gentle, alienated – anthropologist
ANNE Weatherman, glamorous, fierce leader – lawyer
DAVE former SDS activist, witty, Jewish – physician
SUZY Beth's sister, Midwestern honey – bride
JACK Weatherman, charismatic, macho – architectural engineer
DAMON Black Panther, ferocious, clear-eyed – lawyer
SWEET LAND OF FIRE
Preset: Shafts of sunlight across debris‑strewn set. Center, a winding staircase reaching full height of stage. It has perches at different levels on the way up. Elegant items suspended in air ‑ chandelier, painting, mirror, drapery ‑ create beauty of the brownstone house.
Pre-audio: Bob Dylan’s “When The Ship Comes In,” punctuated by newscasts about Weathermen riots, demonstrations, and rallies.
Sunlight brightens. Music gives way to newscast reporting of solar eclipse: "Hundreds of thousands lining highways and beaches...etc." Lights perform eclipse as newscaster rattles on. Darkening, strange colors. At totality, a siren.
Firemen wearily enter, begin shifting and examining debris. They set a refrigerator upright near staircase. From behind it, Anne scampers in only shreds of clothing. Firemen catch and envelope her in a blanket. The last items they find on "cellar" level are body parts: torso, arm and leg pieces. These they place on a stretcher they carry out as sun and sky return to normal.
Scene blends back to day before; from behind the debris, way back, like a resurrection, comes the ragged figure of Beth: in jeans, sweatshirt, tennis shoes, chopped hair, wire-frame glasses. She is smiling, carrying a paper bag, feels light, released, seems giddy.
Beth: "Now is the winter of our dis‑con‑tent..." (Looks up at staircase, "House") Anne, it's beautiful: "...made glorious summer.”
Anne: (Approaches over rubble, clothed, graceful, strong) What did you expect?
Beth: "And all the clouds..." But it is, it's really just beautiful.
Anne: Come. I'll show you. (Approaches stairs)
Beth: A town‑house?
Anne: My father's grandfather's.
Beth: (Still staring) Built straight up.
Anne: (Climbs) Was Mother who understood it, though. Come on. She brought all the colors out of the wood. (Gestures to Beth to follow her) Belle tried to keep me from sliding these banisters. Your flight late from Newark?
Beth: (Following) Yeah.
Anne: Brace yourself for the city?
Beth: Yup. My mantra is "roar, mobs, roaches, dogshit…”
Anne: (Laughing) …and pig-mobiles! Does it help?
(Anne arrives at bird figurines room; Beth behind her. There may be one bird, several, or none)
Beth: Ooooh, Anne. (Gazing) Birds.
Anne: Ummhmm.
Beth: There must be a hundred. All kinds, colors. Even metal and gold. It's...
Anne: “Immense strength in fragility,” Daddy says. His remaining shred of poetic vision.
Beth: They're his?
Anne: He can't understand how something so delicate has so much strength to lift itself so far.
Beth: So he fills a whole room with birds, while over on East Third...
Anne: You got it.
Beth: ...there's maybe one room for seven people. (Tight) Have you got the stuff?
Anne: (Looks, then quickly) Not yet. (Turns, climbing) Come on. Have a shower.
Beth: Could use one. (Following) How many floors you got, anyway?
Anne: (Ahead of her) How was the wedding?
Beth: A wedding. Like my worst nightmare.
Anne: Your sister?
Beth: Completely straight. If I gave her an apron, she'd drool.
Anne: You behaved.
Beth: Of course.
Anne: It's good you went.
Beth: Nobody asked why I cried.
Anne: (Handing her a towel) Gives the impression we're cooling it. Home and apple pie.
Beth: (Stepping into shower) Not bringing the stuff here, are you.
Anne: (Sits on step) Course not. Getting the house is luck. Dad and Irene are in Paris.
Beth: (Off) Vacationing?
Anne: No, he’s deciding whether the jet-set can afford a 1000 MPH shuttle. Vision, but not poetry.
Beth: (Off) I’ll save him the trip: they'll afford whatever they want. But your mother...?
Anne: ...never comes here anymore. She's with Peter, who's appealing, even honorable, for an attorney. They're fishing in Maine. (Beat) Ned brought over a couple new pieces.
Beth: (Off) What kind?
Anne: A 22 and a 16-gauge. With ammunition. Said they’d need an overhaul. Not fired since duck season in ‘63.
Beth: (Off) The seven lean years since he went pacifist?
Anne: Right on.
Beth: (Off) I'll check ‘em out right away.
Anne: Not before you've rested.
Beth: (Off) You been keeping in practice?
Anne: Three times a week.
(Dave is coming across the debris to the bottom of the steps)
Dave: Hey, is this what it's going to be like after the revolution? Dumbwaiters on every floor?
Anne: N
ot a chance.
Dave: (Climbing) Some scene. Satin valances, Louis-the-whatever dining set...
Anne: Knock it off, Dave.
Dave: Sure beats my front porch barbecue in Queens. And do I see…yup: a fairytale garden out back.
Anne: Oh, I just whipped this up to ease Beth's re-entry to the jungle.
Dave: Beth's here too?
Anne: Back from Kansas.
Dave: (Sings) "Oh, give me a home...where Papa owns land, and Mama the First National Bank." You aren’t worried she’ll get culture shock when she figures out where they keep the kitchen in these palaces?
Beth: (Coming out wet, fastening clothes) Where? (Kisses him) Hi, Dave.
Dave: Not only below-stairs, below ground. That's where the women and slaves consort. (Squeezes her) How's it going, Madonna?
Beth: Where’ve you been? You finish pre-med?
Dave: Mais, bien sur!
Anne: Ned found him. (Showing bedroom) Here's where I'll put you.
Beth: (Looking at elegant room) God, no.
Dave: Oh, why not. Chippendale rocker, soothing Matisse or two. The four-poster's wasted, Anne. She'll sleep on the floor.
Anne: She will not. She'll rest and get strong. That's how we need her.
Dave: R n’R for the troops, huh? Dig it. Just see you wake her in time for the eclipse.
Beth: What eclipse?
Dave: In exactly...24 hours: "I will cause the sun to go down at noon and darken the earth in the clear day." Is it a date, Madonna?
Anne: (Holding Beth's paper bag) Is this all you've got?
Beth: I left a few books on East Third. You didn't blow that place, did you?
Anne: Hanging onto it. Ned's still there with Barton and Josy.
(All three start down the stairs. Beth lags behind at the bird room)
Dave: Big Ned, California's answer to Ivy League frigidity? Are you and he still, uh...
Anne: Don’t be retarded, David. We're grownups.
Dave: Does that mean "no?"
Anne: It means no today, maybe tomorrow. Relative and irrelevant.
(They arrive at kitchen. She signals him to sit at the table)
Dave: Ok, Gorgeous. I'm at your command. What'll it be?
Anne: Just that.
Dave: What?
Anne: We want you.
Dave: My bod. My fantastic bod. I knew the day would come. My relevance would be apparent. Or is it my station wagon you want?
Anne: The package, Davey. Brains included.
Dave: There you touch on my virtue. The brain’s mine alone, virgin pure.
Anne: And just as useless. (Opens refrigerator, calls) Beth!
(Above, Beth is reaching to touch a bird. Dave picks up guitar, tunes it)
Beth: (Calling down stairs) Yeah?
Anne: (Calls, puts water to boil) You want some orange in yogurt?
Beth: (Leaving the bird, starts down stairs) Sure. Anything.
Dave: Look. When SDS split I decided to stop being bossed by all you hot-headed egotists. I might as well be Nixon's bombardier over Cambodia.
(Dave begins playing "The Times, They Are A-Changing)
Anne: Didn’t Psych teach you hot-heads are a corollary to action? What's the alternative? You – lone egotist consulting his navel? What have you dug out of that grimy crevice?
Dave: I have comrades.
Anne: Marshmallow liberals with half-assed "improvement" projects and carpeted bathrooms. People are dying in our name every minute. What are you doing to stop it? (Beat) You need our grit.
Dave: (Strums defiantly The best minds, the most grit?
Anne: The best. That's why we want you.
Beth: (Arriving in kitchen) Maya’s first word to me was "bird."
Anne: Maya...in Guatemala?
Beth: I found her crouching over a chick that had fallen. Her little face was so intent, she forgot to be afraid. She had responsibility. She looked up in a motherly conspiracy, and whispered: “Ave."
Dave: (Hand out to Beth) Ease on over here, sweet bird. This Mama's coming down hard on me.
Beth: (Sliding next to Dave) Don't stop. Sing it.
(Simultaneously, Anne sets out herb tea and yogurt, while Dave plays, sings, and dialogue continues)
Beth: That's good. Thanks.
Dave: (Sings) Come gather round people wherever you roam. And admit that the waters around you have grown...
Anne: Want some honey?
Dave ...And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin'...
Beth: No. Thanks.