More Monologues and Scenes For Lesbian Actors

More Monologues and Scenes
for Lesbian Actors

More Monologues and Scenes
for Lesbian Actors
By Carolyn Gage
More Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2018 Carolyn Gage
V1.0
ISBN: 978-1-387-81985-0
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means,
including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the
publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that all of the plays excerpted herein,
being protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British
Commonwealth countries, including Canada, and the other countries of the Copyright Union, are
subject to a royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public
reading, radio, television and cable broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign
languages, are strictly reserved. Permissions for all plays should be directed to the playwright at
www.carolyngage.com.
El Bobo is a loose adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Ninny.”
Thanks to Brenda Mendoza for her advice on El Bobo and thanks to Chris Courchene for his
dialogue editing on Little Sister.
The cover photo is Nance O’Neil as the Biblical widow Judith who beheads the Assyrian general
threatening her people. She commissioned the play for herself.
Praise for Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors:
“No playwright has created as amazing a pantheon of historical lesbian

characters as Carolyn Gage. Her book, Monologues and Scenes for
Lesbian Actors, provides a sumptuous feast of possibilities for both
seasoned and budding lesbian performers to use portraying a full range
of emotion and political perspectives. Carolyn Gage is a national
lesbian treasure.” —Rosemary Keefe Curb, editor of Amazon All
Stars: 13 Lesbian Plays.
“Her dozens of strong, funny, determined characters are a gift to

lesbian actors everywhere... She also has a wicked sense of humor… ”
--Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco.
“… remarkable strength and universality… moving and courageous…

the collection will appeal to a readership beyond lesbian actors,
because through careful research and deliberation Gage has created
many stories of women’s lives. In her writing, she makes one face
truths one might normally try to avoid.” --Lambda Book Report,
Washington, DC.
“Gage’s imagination and her richness of dialogue are a wonderful

offering to a theatre community that could certainly use a push in the
direction of representing us all on the stage.” --On the Purple Circuit,
Los Angeles.
“Strong contributions such as Gage’s should indeed help alleviate the

long-standing situation of lesbians having to learn the craft of acting
by impersonating heterosexuals… recommended for libraries
supporting drama programs (schools as well as academic) and public
libraries in towns and cities with community theatre.” --Newsletter of
the Theatre Library Association, NYC.
“… a diversity of roles to stimulate the most adventurous lesbian

performer… this text enables the reader to see the impressive range of
her work as well as to supply a needed sourcebook for auditions and
scene work in one volume.” --The Lesbian Review of Books, Hilo, HI.
Other Books by Carolyn Gage
Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors
The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays
The Spindle and Other Lesbian Fairy Tales

Nine Short Plays
Black Eye and Other Short Plays
The Triple Goddess: Three Plays
Three Comedies
Starting From Zero: One-Act Plays About Lesbians In Love
The Very Short Plays

Take Stage! How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play
Like There’s No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving

Patriarchy
Table of Contents
Character Index ….....……………………….…………… 10
Introduction ……………………………………………… 11
Monologues
Easter Sunday
Marty Mann ……………………………………………… 1
Flora ……………………………………………………… 2
Del ……...…………………………………...…………… 4
Marty Mann ……...………………………………………. 5
Black Star
Henrietta Vinton Davis ………………….………………. 6
Henrietta Vinton Davis …………….……………………. 7
Planchette
Jude ………………………………………………………. 9
The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived
Nance O’Neil …………………………………………... 10
Virginia …………………………………………………. 11
Nance O’Neil ……………………………………..……. 12
Lace Curtain Irish
Bridget Sullivan ………………………………………… 13
Crossing the Rapelands
Hitchhiker ……………………………………………….. 18
Little Sister
Jess …………….………………………………..………. 19
The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-Diggers
Yamashita ……………………………………………….. 21
Yamashita ……………………………………………..… 22
vii
MORE MONOLOGUES AND SCENES FOR LESBIAN ACTORS
Lighting Martha
Jean Rosenthal ……………………….…………………. 24
Miki Kinsella …………………..…….…………………. 25
Jean Rosenthal ……………………….…………………. 26
Female Nude Seated

Mainie Jellett ……...………………….…………………. 28
Evie Hone ……..………………..…….…………………. 30
Mainie Jellett …...…………………….…………………. 31
Scenes
Easter Sunday
Flora, Del ……………………………………………….. 37
Del, Marty …………………………...………………….. 40
Female Nude Seated

Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone …………….…………………. 44
Black Star
Young Henrietta Vinton Davis, Powatan Beaty ….…… 46
Young Henrietta Vinton Davis, Thomas Symmons …... 50
Young Henrietta Vinton Davis, Miss Taylor ……...….. 53
Planchette
Jude, Mollie ……………………………………………. 55
Jude, Mollie ……….…………………………………… 58
Jude, Reverend Lehee ………………..………………… 61
Nance, Virginia …………………………………...……. 63
Nance, Virginia ………………………………………… 66
52 Pickup
Janiya, Cil ……………………………..……………….. 68
Janiya, Cil …………………………………..………….. 72
viii
The Clarity of Pizza

Miranda, Jordy …………………………..…………….. 74
At Sea
Micky, Lee …………………………………………….. 78
Micky, Lee ………………………………….…………. 81
The Great Fire
Miriam, Laura …………………………………………. 84
Little Sister
Marie, Theresa ………………………………...……….. 87
Jess, Onawah …………….….….……………………… 90
Jess, Theresa ……………..….…………………………. 92
‘Til the Fat Lady Sings
Sara, Gillian ………………………………..………….. 95
Sara, Gillian …………………………………………… 98
El Bobo
William, Julietta ……………………………………….. 102
William, Julietta …………………..…………………… 104
Radicals
Ginny, Margo ………………………………..………… 106
Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
Rosalie, Dawn …………………………...…………… 109
ix
Character Index
(This index only applies to roles where information about a
character’s background has been specified in the play, because
that aspect of their identity is central to the story. Obviously, any
actor can perform any role, but some actors might be looking for
roles specific to these identities..)
Ethnic Background
African American: Black Star (6, 7, 46, 50, 53), The Great Fire
(84)
Irish: Lace Curtain Irish (13, 15, 16) Female Nude Seated (28,
30, 31, 44)
Latina: El Bobo (102,104)
N’dee (Apache): Little Sister (19, 87, 90, 90)
Age
Child: The Great Fire (84), Little Sister (76)
Over 60: At Sea (78, 81), Black Star (6, 7), Lace Curtain Irish
(13, 15, 17)
Teenaged: Black Star (53), Planchette (9, 55, 58, 61)
Butch/ Gender-Non-Conforming/Non-Binary
At Sea (78, 81), Easter Sunday (1, 4, 5, 37,40), Little Sister (19,
90, 92), Planchette (9, 55, 58, 61), Lighting Martha (25), Female
Nude Seated (30, 44)
Lesbian
Easter Sunday (1,2, 4, 5, 37, 40), Planchette (9, 55, 58, 61), The
Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived (10,12, 63,66), Crossing the
Rapelands (18), Little Sister (19, 89, 90, 92), Lighting Martha
(25), 52 Pickup (68,72), The Clarity of Pizza (74), At Sea (78,
81), ‘Til the Fat Lady Sings (95, 98), Radicals (106), Female
Nude Seated (28, 30, 31, 44)
x
Introduction
Twenty years ago, Odd Girls Press published my first book of

monologues and scenes. It was 1998, and the title I chose was
“Monologues and Scenes for Lesbian Actors.” Why that title?
Because in 1998 nearly all of the professional lesbian actors
were closeted, and because in 1998, most “obvious” lesbians
would not be cast in heterosexual roles… which meant, they
would not be cast at all, because in 1998 almost no community
theatres, or university theatres, or commercial theatres would
produce plays with even minor lesbian roles, must less major
ones.
My title was controversial. The only major drama press to

express any interest in publishing the book asked me if I would
consider changing the word “lesbian” to “feminist.” I would not;
although it was cute that they considered the words synonymous.
Some felt that the title was patronizing and marginalizing—as if

lesbian actors could or should only perform roles written for
them. Still others wondered why these roles couldn’t or
shouldn’t be available to all actors, regardless of orientation.
My position was this: I wanted to empower lesbian actors. I

wanted us to have an entire book of scenes and monologues by a
member of our tribe, about our tribe. For many of us performers,
we do our best work when we are playing roles that are close to
our heart and our experience. Because of this, historically,
lesbian actors have been at a disadvantage at auditions and in
classes where all the scene work a presumes heterosexual
orientation, usually presuming a feminine persona.
So that was then. What about now? Twenty years later, there has
been an explosion of diversity in theatre. Women at all levels of
theatre are speaking out about the discrimination we experience
as actors, directors, designers, technicians, and playwrights.
xi
And yet, oddly enough, I see fewer lesbian actors today than I
did in 1998. I see lots of folks identifying as queer, bi, and gay…
but very, very few willing to own the word “lesbian.” Younger
women explain to me that the “l-word” has a stigma. Do they
think they are telling me something I don’t know? That stigma,
then and now, is that it is not inclusive of men. It’s not an
umbrella term we share with our gay brothers. It’s not a term that
means we are also intimate with men. And, because of this—
then and now—it is perceived as divisive, threatening, even
hostile. As Ellen Degeneres so famously declared on the cover of
Time Magazine in 1997, “Yep, I’m gay.” According to her, the
word “lesbian” was political.
Umbrellas and closets share something: They shield us from the

light. I am titling this second collection “More Monologues and
Scenes for Lesbian Actors,” because I want to lesbians and
lesbain work in the spotlight.
Are all the roles in this lesbian? No, and some of the scenes
between lesbians are not about their lesbianism. But all of these
roles are about resistance, about women refusing to negotiate and
resisting cooptation.
xii
Monologues
for Lesbian Actors
Easter Sunday
Marty Mann: A lesbian butch, 56. She is the upper-middle-

class founder of the National Council on Alcoholism and an
international figurehead for the recovery movement. She is
badly hungover and in the middle of a relapse.
Setting: The living room of an expensive Greenwich Village

apartment on West 9th. Noon, April 10, 1960.
Marty is speaking to an uninvited visitor, a working-class,

recovering alcoholic who has come to ask Marty’s help with
a housing discrimination situation in the exclusive Cherry
Grove lesbian summer colony, where Marty owns a home.
Marty is defensive about her relapse.
MARTY: 1939… 1939! Went to my first meeting. There were

only two of them then… one in Brooklyn… and one in Akron…
O-hi-o. Nothing but men. Oh, goody! And they were not happy
to see me, either… Told me I was too young, and too classy—
and besides women couldn’t be drunks. I had to prove it to them.
You want to know what I did? I told them my story. Well… it
was the Fourth of July and it was a party. In England. I was
drinking, of course… two quarts of scotch on a good day. And
apparently I had developed the blind staggers, because someone
had walked me upstairs to my room... my room with a balcony
overlooking the terrace where the party was. And I may have
fallen, or I may have jumped… I don’t remember which… but
one way or the other, I made quite a splash on that stone terrace.
Bit off both sides of my tongue, smashed all my lower teeth, and
fractured both hinges of my jaw. Oh, and I also broke my leg and
my hip. (Pointing.) Here… and here… and here… After I got
out of surgery, I had the student nurses smuggle whiskey in for
me. Had to drink it through a straw because they’d wired my jaw
shut! And then, after I got out of the hospital, I booked my
passage back to the States on the Queen Mary. It was going to be
1
my little floating rehab. My mother and my sister came to meet

the boat in New York… freezing cold. It was December.
Shivering together on that pier, they watched every single
passenger get off that boat… and finally, after the whole kit-and-
caboodle was empty and everybody was gone, they saw two
stewards carrying something down the gangplank… a
stretcher—with me on it! I was too drunk to even walk off the
boat… (Pause.) So that’s the story I told the men, and it shut ‘em
right up.
Easter Sunday
Flora: A working-class, femme lesbian from the Bronx, 33.
Setting: A stoop outside a brownstone apartment in

Greenwich Village. Noon, April 10, 1960.
Flora is attempting to explain to her lesbian partner, Del,

what it was that transformed her into the tough lesbian she is
today.
FLORA: So, I had this teacher. (She stops.) Yeah, he was a

teacher all right. (She stops again.) Del, I can’t talk about this.
(Long pause. She resumes.) So he’s a doctor… you know… a
doctor teachin’ anatomy to us nursing students. And he starts
askin’ me out. I’m still a kid. Seventeen. So he comes over and
meets Ma, and she goes ape over him… And he’s takin’ me to
the movies and he’s takin’ me dancin’. And Ma… she’s tellin’
everybody how her daughter’s goin’ with a doctor. She’s
warnin’ me all the time to play my cards right, so things will
“work out.” And I don’t know what cards she’s talkin’ about, so
she tells me not to make myself “disagreeable.” See, you don’t
want to hear this… (Pause.) So while I’m all busy tryin’ not to
be disagreeable, I end up bein’ pregnant. (Long pause.) Yeah.
(Another long pause.) And I don’t know what to do, you know…
2
‘cause I’m seventeen… so I tell Ma. And she tells me not to do

anything. She says not to tell the doctor, because he’s gonna
want to make me… you know—get rid of it. She says I gotta
wait. So I wait. I wait a month and then another month and then
another month and I’m not sayin’ anything, but I am growing a
baby inside me, Del. I mean, there are definitely two of us. I can
feel it. And all this time, he’s takin’ me sailin’ with his friends,
and we’re havin’ parties at his club, and he’s drivin’ me out to
Montauk in his car. And Ma keeps tellin’ me to play my cards
right… play my cards right… But I guess I must have played the
wrong one, because he finally figures out I’m pregnant, and it’s
too late—you know… so he says it’s not his, and that I been
sleepin’ with other guys, and he puts on this big show of bein’
mad at me… and he says I’m tryin’ to trap him… and then all his
friends won’t have anything to do with me… and I drop outta
college on account of the way they’re all talkin’ about me. And
Ma’s—she’s tellin’ me it’s all my fault. Like I did something
awful to her, too. (FLORA stops. Long pause.) I had a baby, Del.
I had a beautiful, little baby girl. And I gave her away, because
that’s what Ma told me I had to do. Because I hadn’t played my
cards right. (Pause.) Del, I gave away my baby. My own baby.
And the day after I did it, I knew it was the worst thing I had
ever done—the worst thing I could ever do, because I wanted
that baby and I let her talk me into giving her up. Don’t look at
me like that, Del! I did it. I signed those papers. I took my hand,
my own hand… (She holds up her hand, angry with herself.) …
and I signed them. And I was eighteen by then. I wasn’t a kid. I
did it. (Pause.) But it was the last time I ever let anybody tell me
what to do. I moved right out and I got a job in the Village, and I
got a room in a building with a lot of single girls… and that
suited me fine, because I’d had enough of men. And then I found
out most of the girls were lesbian. And not one of them ever let
anybody tell them what to do, and that’s when I realized that was
what I wanted to be. One of them. (Pause.) I’m never goin’ to be
agreeable again.
3
Easter Sunday
Del: A working-class, Italian American, lesbian butch from

Brooklyn, 40.
Setting: A stoop outside a brownstone apartment in

Greenwich Village. Noon, April 10, 1960.
Del is explaining to her partner Flora why she is so

motivated to buy a cottage in Cherry Grove.
DEL: “Toughies” and “greasers” and “bull dykes?” No, baby,

that’s not what they call “people like us.” That’s what they call
people like me. It’s me—me!—they’re callin’ the names! I got
the duck’s ass, and the chinos, and the motorcycle boots… They
look at you and they see the dress and heels—okay, maybe not
from Saks—but still respectable. This… (Indicating herself.) …
this is not respectable. And you only get dragged into it, when
they see you walkin’ next to me. And don’t you think it kills me
to see you getting’ disrespected on account of me? (FLORA tries
to interrupt.) No, Flora. This is my turn. This is why I’m sittin’
on this damn stoop on Easter morning. You remember that book
Well of Loneliness…? Yeah, I know… kinda cheeseball, but that
part where Stephen is pushin’ her girlfriend away—pushin’ away
the woman she loves—tellin’ her how she doesn’t love her ,
tellin’ her to go be with some man… I get that. I do. I live it. It
kills me to see how people look at you when they figure out
you’re my girl. I can’t go by the school where you work without
gettin’ you fired, and you know that. You know it, Flor. You
know I’m talking straight now. But, see, I got some options that
Stephen didn’t have thirty years ago, because now there’s this
island… this village on an island that’s all filled with people like
us. I can buy you a cottage on that island, Flora. I can buy it and
put it in your name, and you can be a member of the Cherry
Grove Homeowners Association. You won’t have to be a renter
or a day-tripper anymore. You’ll be a homeowner, and nobody
4
can ever evict you, or refuse to rent to you, again. You can spend
the whole damn summer out there, if you want to… Queen of
your own island. Baby, I wanna give you that… (Pause.) I owe it
to you.
Easter Sunday


Marty, badly hungover and on the defensive, is explaining

to Del what it was like in Cherry Grove back in the day.
MARTY: So you and your girlfriend started coming to Cherry

Grove three years ago… (She lights a cigarette.) 1957. Ah…
(She exhales.) The summer after Duffy’s burned down…
Duffy’s was the hotel on the island. That was when everything
changed… the last summer that Cherry Grove was really Cherry
Grove. (Watching the smoke from her cigarette.) You know, that
year the entire chorus of My Fair Lady came down… The whole
summer was like one big Broadway musical… (Singing
seductively.) “We could have danced all night, we could have
danced all night…” (Failing to get a response, MARTY rolls the
tip of her cigarette in the ashtray.) In the 30’s and 40’s, we used
to get all the theatre people… Hermione Gingold and Cheryl
Crawford…and the writers… Carson McCullers, Patricia
Highsmith, Jane Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote…
Who needed electricity when we had all that brilliance? The
parties… My god… the parties… They all had these ridiculous
themes… and the boys would spend weeks—months!—on their
5
costumes… We would see them coming across on the ferry,

hauling over these enormous feather boas, and hoop skirts, and
fairy wings. And the biggest social event of the year was the
Easter Sunday Hat Party at Duffy’s. The boys would be wearing
these magnificent creations… Us girls, of course… we would
just slap on a golf visor and call it good. (She laughs.) It was like
one big family… like a country club… and Duffy’s was our
clubhouse. (Shaking her head.) After the fire nothing was the
same.
Black Star
Henrietta Vinton Davis: African American woman, 64.
Setting: A backstage dressing room in Liberty Hall, Harlem,

August 24, 1924.
Henrietta is engaged in a heated debate with the ghost of

Robert Poston over the legitimacy of Marcus Garvey’s Black
nationalist organization, UNIA (Universal Negro
Improvement Association). Disillusioned and bitter, Poston
died on the voyage back from Liberia, where he and Davis
were part of a UNIA delegation sent to make arrangements
for a mass migration of African Americans to Africa.
Henrietta is continuing to raise money for a steamship line
for this migration which Robert argues is a scam.
HENRIETTA: I appreciate Mr. Garvey in ways that you cannot,

because I also am a performer. (Pause.) You didn’t know it was
theatre? What did you think it was? (Pause.) Now you disappoint
me, Robert. All those pageants and parades through Harlem…
the Universal African Legion honor guard, and the Black Cross
nurses, and the African Motor Corps, and the choirs, and the
marching bands… and all that regalia… my god!—the
ceremonial swords, and the sashes, and the epaulets, and the
6
bandoliers… oh, and the hat… the hat with the cockade and the
plumes—like he was Napoleon! Tell me you didn’t think that hat
was a costume! (ROBERT tries to break in, but she cuts him off.)
And the titles! “Provincial President of Africa.” He named
himself president of a whole continent. President. The man
never even set foot there. And he knighted me … Do you
remember that? “Lady Commander of the Sublime Order of the
Nile.” How the hell did you not know it was theatre…? You ask
me if I believe him? Well, no, Robert, I don’t. But I believe in
him. Which is a different thing. I have spent my career
attempting to create a world on the stage, and, if I was good… I
mean, if I was really good, I might be able to bring my audiences
into my reality for an hour or two—for the duration of the play.
But what Mr. Garvey is doing is creating a world without a
stage—without a stage!… right up here in Harlem… and he is
bringing the Blacks of the world, of the whole world—
millions—into that world and he is schooling us, rehearsing us
on how to live there. (Pause.) Here’s the thing about theatre… It
looks real. It feels real. It has a taste… a taste of freedom, of
dignity… a taste of grandeur. And so when that curtain comes
down and the “real world,” as you call it, comes to take us
back… well, see, we’re not so docile now. We’ve had that taste
and it makes us want to fight. I have been Lady Macbeth. I have
been Cleopatra, Empress of Africa. Yes, only for an hour or two
and, yes, on a stage. But it changed me.
Black Star
Henrietta Vinton Davis: African American woman, 64.
Setting: A backstage dressing room in Liberty Hall, Harlem,

August 24, 1924.
Henrietta is engaged in a heated debate with the ghost of

Robert Poston over the legitimacy of Marcus Garvey’s Black
7
nationalist organization, UNIA (Universal Negro

Improvement Association). Disillusioned and bitter, Poston
died on the voyage back from Liberia, where he and Davis
were part of a UNIA delegation sent to make arrangements
for a mass migration of African Americans to Africa. This is
Henrietta’s final attempt to banish the ghost from her
conscience and defend her decision to continue working for
Garvey.
HENRIETTA: Robert, you have a daughter... She was born a

month ago. Her name is “Roberta.” (Pause.) After her daddy.
Augusta didn’t know she was pregnant until after you sailed, and
her letters never caught up. No, I can’t tell her anything about
your legacy, because she’s as dead as you are. She didn’t survive
her crossing either. It was a hard pregnancy for Augusta. First
you were gone, and then she found out you were dead. She was
struggling with grief and fear about money… it was too much.
Too much for her, and way too much for little Roberta. You see,
Robert, a baby doesn’t care about legacies. She only knows the
hands that pick her up and the arms that hold her. She only
knows the body that will feed her. She can’t read. She can’t even
understand words. But she knows the sounds of her mother. She
smells the smell of her body; she feels the warmth. That’s a
baby’s truth. Presence. That’s what has meaning. That’s the only
thing that has meaning: presence. And you didn’t give her that.
You didn’t make the crossing back from your disillusionment.
You didn’t do whatever you had to do, you didn’t tell yourself
whatever you had to tell yourself, to keep your spirit alive for
today, and then the day after, and the day after… so that you
could come back and be present for that child. Men have all
these funny ideas about honor, and they usually involve dying or
killing. We women can’t afford those expensive notions about
honor. We just worry about showing up, because that’s the
business of living. Now, maybe a white person can look reality
square in the face and keep going. But we have to pick and
choose. We pick and choose what we can bear. We recognize a
life-sustaining dream when we see one, and we grab it as it floats
8
by, and we hold on for dear life. That’s a skill. That’s an

achievement. And every single member of UNIA, every single
follower of the Provisional President of Africa, Marcus Garvey,
has earned the right to our dream.
Planchette
Jude: A female teen with masculine gender presentation, 14.

Jude is wearing boys’ clothing from Denver.
Setting: A classmate’s bedroom, upstairs in a middle-class,

Victorian house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The
bedroom overlooks the ocean. The first “nor’easter” of the
season is raging. Nighttime, early fall, 1879.
Jude is spending the night with a classmate, Mollie. Mollie’s

father, a minister, has just left after delivering a lecture on
the sinfulness of Jude’s wearing boys’ clothing. He has made
Mollie agree to give Jude one of her dresses.
JUDE: (Exploding in fury.) It’s an abomination to wear a dress!

How would he like it if someone told him he had to wear one?
(JUDE begins to cry with rage during this rant.) Men taking care
of women? (Pacing.) My pa went off to Denver and left us in
that… shack! … For weeks—sometimes a whole month! Just me
and my mother…And if it hadn’t been for me bucking wood and
doing all the cooking, we would have frozen and starved to
death! She couldn’t do anything… just sit there and talk to
herself and cry all day. And then she tried to burn down the
house… nine times! (Sobbing and nearly incoherent.) She tried
to burn it down nine times… with us in it! I couldn’t let her alone
for a minute… I had to stay up at night, watching her… What
was I supposed to do? Tie my mother up like an animal…? What
was I supposed to do? But sometimes I just couldn’t keep awake,
no matter how much coffee I drank. So one night last summer, I
9
fell asleep and she did it. She lit a fire in every room. When I
woke up, the whole house was on fire, and there she was…
standing there in her nightgown, laughing. If it hadn’t been for
me, she would have burned up! She didn’t care. She didn’t care
if I died, either. She was just standing there laughing. Wouldn’t
even help me pump water, when I was running back and forth,
working my legs off trying to put it out… By morning, it was all
burned up. Everything we owned. Burned to cinders… (JUDE is
crying.) And then folks said it was my fault. They said I should
have done something. What was I supposed to do? What the hell
was I supposed to do?
Nance O’Neil: A bisexual American actress, 58.
Setting: Interior of a dressing room at RKO’s movie ranch in

Encino, California, 1930.
Nance is dressing down a rude and homophobic tabloid

reporter.
NANCE: How would you like to give your editor a story on the
greatest actress who ever lived? It’s a name your readers will all
recognize, I promise. And it’s a story the world has never heard,
and I’m the only one who knows it. But there’s a condition. (A
pause.) You have to tell me your story… Why? Because I study
character. That’s what I use when I perform. Someday I might be
called on to play a hostile woman who doesn’t know who she is
or what she wants, and it would be important for me to
understand how she got to be that way. (Pause.) Oh, no! Stop!
No! (Pounding the table.) Do not flounce! Do not ever flounce!
There is nothing that says “amateur” to an audience more than
the flounce! You walk out on someone, you must to do it with
power. Like this… (What follows is a lesson on 19th century
10
acting technique.) You look your enemy in the eye… Right in

the eye. You burn a hole through them… And then you start to
say something… You try—you really try—because you are a
tolerant person—but you realize they are too unaware of
themselves to waste words on… You stand there for a moment,
struggling to discover a single, empathic quality to which you
might appeal… but you cannot find one. And so then you turn—
but not too fast! (Turning.) You turn with exquisite sadness—
tenderness, even—away from this lost, embittered creature…
(She crosses to the door, speaking very quietly.) And then you
make your exit, Mrs. Houlton. You make your exit, very slowly,
with eloquent dignity—sorrowfully and gently—with reluctant
acquiescence to that damning, final verdict… (Turning for a
brief, final look.) Closing the door forever on this sorry spectacle
of a woman who does not know who she is… and who is going
to lose her precious life… the only one she will ever have! (With
a sweep of her hand, she makes a final, dramatic exit.)
Virginia Houlton: A tabloid reporter in her early or mid-

30’s. Married to a man and mother of a young girl, she is
deeply closeted and terrified of her attraction to women.
Setting: Interior of a dressing room at RKO’s movie ranch

in Encino, California, 1930.
Virginia has been interviewing film star Nance O’Neil,

notorious for her lesbian affairs. Virginia has insulted Nance,
and, in return, Nance has toyed with Virginia giving her a
seductive kiss and then attempting to dismiss her.
VIRGINIA. No! (Pause.) No! (She slams down her purse and
gloves.) When you are being left—when a woman is walking out
on you—a woman you have kissed!—nothing says “amateur”
11
more than pretending you don’t care! Because if it meant nothing

to you, it may still have meant something to her. It may have
changed her life forever—or it may have meant nothing to her
either… But you can’t know which it is, and so you mustn’t
assume. It would be unchivalrous to maintain an attitude of
callous indifference. You may even have to put on an act, but,
then, we’re all so good at that, aren’t we? So you pretend to care.
You touch her. Because you didn’t really touch her when you
kissed her. So you touch her now… But where? (Pause.) It’s
easier to kiss her than to touch her, isn’t it? But you have to
choose something, so let’s say you touch her face. (Touching her
face.) You didn’t expect it to be so human, did you? And you
look into her eyes. And maybe they are mocking you… they
probably are, but you tell yourself you are looking through that,
looking behind the mask. (Pause.) Even if there isn’t any mask.
Even if she has become the mask… You look anyway, because
you kissed her. And, then, if you see something… even if you
just think you see something… You kiss her… (Kissing her.)
And that, Miss Nance O’Neil… with an “i” and one “l”… is how
it’s done. (She crosses quickly to the door, exiting without
turning.)
Setting: Interior of a dressing room at RKO’s movie ranch in

Encino, California, 1930.
Nance is being interviewed by an aggressively homophobic

tabloid reporter. She gives as good as she gets.
NANCE: You must be referring to my relationships with

women… yes? But you see, my reputation was ruined long
before that. And do you know why? Because of these…
12
(Indicating her feet.) These are what ruined my reputation.

Caused a riot, actually. It was 1893, San Francisco. I made my
entrance onto the stage without wearing shoes. The audience had
never seen an actress barefoot before. They had to shut down the
theatre… Do they look pretty to you…? Feminine…? I don’t
think so either. In fact, they’re rather big. If you didn’t know
they were attached to a woman’s body, you might even mistake
them for a man’s. And that is what caused the riot. Not that I
showed my ankles, but that I showed my humanity. Because a
woman can’t be human. That spoils the illusion. That’s the
problem with women who kill. They’re not really stageworthy…
If they knew how to perform, they probably could have figured
out a less conspicuous way to solve their problem. No, the
women who kill lack imagination—at least the ones who get
caught. Garden-variety, the women who kill. Garden-variety,
ordinary, dull, everyday women. Women who just can’t take any
more. (Pointedly.) Garden-variety, my dear… Which is why the
films always make them exotic… Demonic, demented—devil-
women, monsters! Because nobody wants to believe that any
woman, and especially the woman who never complains, never
raises her voice, never asks for anything—especially her—could
be a killer. (Pause.) So, you see, whenever I’m asked to play a
woman who kills, I always take my shoes off and do it barefoot.
Not literally, I mean. I take my shoes off in terms of making the
audience see the woman as a human being, a person just like
themselves. A person who can’t take anymore. That breaks a
huge taboo. Why? Because every woman on the face of this
earth has more than enough reasons to kill, and many times over,
and that scares the hell out of an audience.
Lace Curtain Irish

Bridget Sullivan: A working-class, Irish immigrant, 61.
13
Setting: The kitchen of her home in Anaconda, Montana.

June 1927.
Bridget has just read in the newspaper of the death of her

former employer, Lizzie Borden. She is reminiscing about
her years of working in the Borden home before the
infamous ax murders.
BRIGDGET: Oh, she was a clever one... Had them all fooled…
whole town. (Pointing to the article.) Listen to this… “Teachin’
the Sunday school for the Chinese who were workin’ at the mill!
And volunteerin’ for the hospital… Joinin’ up with the
Temperance Union… Temperance Union… ha! Well, a touch of
whiskey might have done her some good… (She takes a drink.)
And that minister of hers, makin’ a holy show of himself…
sittin’ next to her every day of the trial… A holy show, it was…
She fooled ‘em all! Fooled her sister. Fooled the bleedin’ jury,
but you don’t fool me, Lizzie Borden. You don’t fool me.
There’s many a red apple that’s rotten to the core. (She pours
more whiskey into the cup.) I’ve got a throat on me today…
(Taking a drink.) She was a tommy… Lizzie Borden was a
tommy. Fancied other women. She was a tommy, and she was
courtin’ me. Courtin’ me like a sweetheart. There was never a
man in Fall River who courted a woman half so keen as Miss
Lizzie Borden courted the poor Irish girl hired to clean her
father’s house… and I would have gone to my grave a spinster,
and gone gladly, if only for the privilege of makin’ up her bed in
the mornin’ and washin’ out her linens at night. Would have
done it without pay… would have done it for love. Worshipped
the bleedin’ ground she walked on, I did... Loved her more than
my own kin…! Fourteen brothers and sisters, and it was her—
her!— that I loved. Her… the bloodiest murderer on the
continent! Well. (She takes a drink.) And why wouldn’t I? She
was the first person to treat me like I was a decent human bein’!
Listenin’ to my stories about Ireland… stories of my drunken pa
and my martyr of a mother… stories of the crossin’… Comin’
over when I was barely eighteen, still a girl. Comin’ over with
14
another girl. Just the two of us… two Irish girls not knowin’ a
soul. Listened to my dreams, too… And she understood them.
There’s girls dreamin’ of a prince in a castle comin’ to rescue
them. Not me. No prince for me. No babies, neither. Hadn’t I
had enough of that, growin’ up? Watchin’ my mother give birth
to a dozen… her screamin’ and clawin’ the air like she’s bein’
murdered… and the blood! Blood everywhere, and myself
havin’ to clean it up, just a girl… Miss Lizzie wasn’t wantin’
babies neither. What’d she know about bein’ a mother? She was
only two when her ma died. Useless… she was useless around
the little ones! (She laughs remembering.) No, Miss Lizzie was
wantin’ the same thing I was… a hearth we could call our own.
(Pause.) I didn’t know she was a tommy, and, to tell you the
truth—I don’t know that I would have cared.
Lace Curtain Irish

June 1927.
Bridget is remembering the specifics of the day of the

murders.
It was the fourth of August, 1892—the hottest day of the

summer. My room was at the top of the house, up under the
eaves… One tiny window no bigger than a pocket
handkerchief… It was an oven… Not fit for human habitation—
but good enough for the Irish girl! (Bitterly.) “Good enough for
the Irish girl…” (Shaking her head.) The heat was fierce that
day… I hadn’t slept all night… How could I in that inferno? My
head was ragin’—poundin’ so fierce I could hardly stand… Pure
murder to be climbin’ down those stairs, and then—out to the
yard to split the kindlin’ for the cookstove… Shattered, I was…
15
shattered! Couldn’t eat a thing, but didn’t I boil the coffee and
didn’t I heat up the mutton for the family? —and then the next
thing I knew, I was outside the door, on my knees like a feckin’
animal and heavin’ my insides out. Now, wouldn’t you think,
seein’ a body with a bad dose like that, that the Christian thing to
do would be to show a bit of kindness? “Here—Bridget, you
poor girl! Why don’t you come in an’ lie down a bit, and I’ll
bring you a cup of tea.” “Bridget, take the rest of the day, girl…
You’re not fit enough to be doin’ chores.” You’d think that,
wouldn’t you? But Abigail Borden—seein’ me wrecked like
that, she starts in with her grand altogether—about the windows
bein’ a disgrace to Mr. Borden’s good name… and how they’ll
be needin’ a good scrubbin’… and not just on the inside, mind
you, but the outside as well… so now, it’s not just the washin’
then, is it? It’s the trottin’ back and forth to the bloody pump on
the hottest feckin’ day of the year, and the climbin’ up and down
on the ladder with the bleedin’ bucket of water, with myself so
faint I can barely stand… Of course, I’m thinking, “You bloody,
feckin’ bitch… Why don’t you go home and tell your mother to
get married!” But I can’t very well be sayin’ that, can I? so
instead I say, “Em, Mrs. Borden, now would you mind if I
waited just a few hours… ‘til the sun wasn’t quite so
blisterin’…?” But instead of givin’ me an answer, she just stands
there. Stands there like a bleedin’ statue, and then suddenly her
top lip starts to curl up, peelin’ back off her teeth… I’m thinkin’,
“Mother of God, she’s goin’ to bite me!” But then her lower lip
starts stretchin’ out to the corners of her mouth, and I’m thinkin’
“Jaysus, she’s after swallowin’ her own head!” (Shaking her
head.) And that woman had teeth on her like a Donegal
graveyard! Turnin’ to stone I am, just lookin’ at her. And then it
comes to me… She’s smiling! For the first time in her miserable
life, that wretched creature is smiling. (She shakes her head and
says matter-of-factly:) Not a half hour later, she’s layin’ on the
floor, her face in a puddle of her brains.
16
Lace Curtain Irish

June 1927.
Bridget is retrieving the repressed, traumatic memory of

her actions on the day of the ax murders.
I drop the bucket! I drop the bucket right there, full of water… I
climb down that ladder and go into the house. It must have been
to tell her… to tell Abby that I hadn’t left Ireland, and I hadn’t
survived all the horrors of the crossin’ to be treated like—
(Confused.) But she was dead… How could I tell her?
(Pausing.) But, she couldn’t be, because she’s makin’ up the
bed… Abigail Borden is makin’ up the bed… I’m in the
doorway, and she’s got her back to me, bendin’ over to tuck the
sheet… (Confused.) But she’s dead… No! I see her turnin’ now.
She’s heard me. And… her face… she’s startin’ to smile again…
No! No! She’s dead…! She has to be! (Pausing.) How could
I…? (She stops abruptly.) What? She stops! She’s lookin’…
where? She’s lookin’… No! (She puts her hands behind her back
and begins to back upstage.) What’s she lookin’ at…? What’s
she lookin’ at? She’s dead! She must be dead! She can’t be
lookin’ at my hand! What’s in my hand? No! But it’s a mistake!
I must have picked it up with the kindlin’. I thought it was the
brush… (She stops abruptly.) What’s a hatchet doin’ in my
hand—? Because I only went to tell her that it wasn’t right… not
right to be speakin’ to me that way—me so sick and her thinkin’
up chores for me to do on the hottest day of the year! And me
sleepin’ in that feckin’ oven… not fit for—What? That you can
kill a woman with work—treatin’ her inhuman like that. Hadn’t I
seen it? (With sudden fury.) Hadn’t I seen it? The blood all over
the sheets, on the floor. Slick… the floor slick with blood, and
the babies screamin’—My own mother, murdered in front of my
17
eyes… (She begins hammering her words out.) Day after day,
blow after blow, baby after feckin’ baby… And it wasn’t right! It
wasn’t right! (Suddenly she looks up with childish glee.) Look!
She’s afraid of me! Mrs. Borden is afraid of me! She’s got the
eyes, now—my mother’s eyes! (Suddenly terrified, she breaks
away from the sight of Abby’s ghost with an animal scream.) I…
it’s… I… No… No… No… No… It’s a dream… Miss Lizzie…
No! I… no… no… (She becomes suddenly calm. She takes a
long pause before speaking.) Why, I’m covered in blood… (She
touches her dress with fresh amazement, rubbing her fingers
together.) It’s blood… I have to change my dress. I have to
work… (She looks up with a quiet realization.) They’ll hang me.
(She looks down at her dress again.) They’ll hang me. The old
man will see to that… (Slowly she looks up, an idea forming in
her head.) No… No, they won’t hang me, because he will be
dead, too. They will both be dead… (Stating a fact.) They’ll both
be dead.
Crossing the Rapelands
Hitchhiker: A old woman.
Setting: A stage.
The Hitchhiker is telling the story of a hitchhiking adventure

with the first woman she ever loved, in the summer of 1975.
HITCHHIKER: So, then you climb in. Or, if it’s an eighteen-

wheeler, you climb up and then climb in. [Climbing up onto the
back of the passenger chair.] So now you’re in a metal box,
traveling somewhere between seventy and ninety miles an hour
with this total stranger. You are trapped in this metal box. And
it’s like the opening few minutes of a play. You don’t have much
time to establish what’s going on. It’s a small window and when
it closes, it closes. I would have about two minutes to come up
18
with something to trump the fact that it was their vehicle, they
had the keys, they were doing the driving… and that they were
the male in charge and I was the female with no visible systems
of support. What I came up with is what I call “The Who’s Boss
Routine.” So, they would be checking me out: long hair, yep…
bell-bottom blue jeans, yep… Vietnam-issue army jacket, yep.
Bra, nope… makeup, nope… girly shoes, nope… So then they
add that all up. It’s not rocket science. Obviously I’m a hippie
chick, and I obviously don’t have a boyfriend, because if I did,
he would never let me be doing anything this dangerous. So I
must be a slut or a bimbo—or, if they’re lucky—both. So they‘re
thinking, “Looks about twenty, but might be eighteen…
Probably old enough so it won’t be statutory rape, but hard to tell
these days…” This is what I had to turn around immediately. I
had to take that and turn it around, like in aikido where you use
your assailant’s own momentum to throw him. I had to work
with their expectations. So, I’d be all flirty and perky: “Hey,
wanna know Who’s Boss…? Well… do you? “ And so they’re
thinking, “Man, I just got lucky.” So they’re all “Sure, honey,
why don’t you just show me who’s boss.” So then I take the
knife out, flip open the blade… and wave it right up in their face,
still all friendly-like… and I say, “This is Who’s Boss. The name
of my knife is ‘Who’s Boss’…Get it? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” I look at
him, and I keep looking at him until I see what I need to see.
And what I need to see is fear. It would flit across their faces,
kind of like the way a bat crosses your field of vision at twilight.
You don’t actually see the bat, but you see the motion of it. You
see the disturbance in the field. That’s what I was looking for.
That moment when they understood that there was someone in
their passenger seat who was batshit crazy, a potential serial
killer. And then I could relax, because I knew he was more afraid
of me than I was of him.
Little Sister
19
Jess: An N’dee (Apache) Two Spirit, 35.

Setting: A mesa on an N’dee reservation in Arizona. Night,
2010.
Jess is describing what she is seeing in her head to her

partner, another N’dee lesbian. Jess has been struggling with
her post-traumatic responses to a violent episode in her
youth. Startled by her young niece and not realizing who she
was, Jess has almost just harmed her. Jess is an artist, and
she has been working on a graphic novel about the great
Chiricahua warrior Lozen, who may have been Two Spirit.
Jess is on the verge of a breakdown.
JESS: I see the canyon… stars in the sky, like tonight. Lozen and
her girlfriend together, like us. They got a fire. Coyotes… and
they got their horses. And Geronimo has told them all they have
to surrender in the morning. But they don’t know what’s going to
happen. The soldiers could just kill them all. They did it before.
Nobody knows… (Pause.) But, see they didn’t have to
surrender. They weren’t surrounded… they weren’t starving.
They didn’t have to. That night, Lozen and Dahtoste… they
could have just taken the horses… In the morning, they would be
miles away from Skeleton Canyon. Free… (Pause.) They let
themselves be prisoners. They let someone else tell them who
they are. (Pause.) I’m still a prisoner you know. I’m always a
prisoner. When somebody moves too suddenly, or the door
slams, or just the way the light comes through a curtain… Bam!
I’m right back there. Right back where they want me! Forever! It
never stops. It never stops. (Pause.) They won! They fucking
won! They win every fucking day. I’m like some fucking dog on
a leash who thinks he’s free until he goes too far, and then…
(She yanks.) I feel that yank again… that chain. I feel that
fucking chain. Rez dogs have it fuckin better! (A long silence.)
You know how Lozen died? (Pause.) Tuberculosis. She died of
tuberculosis! A prisoner in a Florida swamp. A high desert
warrior in a fucking swamp. (Turning violently, she yells into the
20
night.) Why didn’t they go? (Suddenly, she collapses, holding her
head.) Something… is happening…
The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-

Diggers
Yamashita: A female magician, any age.
Setting: A cabaret theater space.
Yamashita is performing a magic show where she promises

to escort her audience through “the secret tunnels and
nubiferous passageways of a post-colonialist, post-
structuralist, global economic maze.” Here she has selected a
woman from the audience whom she will levitate.
YAMASHITA: You! Yes, you! Do you want to levitate? No…?

You don’t want to levitate? (Pause.) You don’t think it would be
pleasant to experience yourself rising above the cares and
worries that chain us all to this mortal coil? Oh, come on. It’s
easy. Twenty dollars…? Thirty…? One hundred dollars? Ladies
and gentlemen, she has turned down the hundred dollars! Are
you the boyfriend? Your girlfriend has just turned down one
hundred dollars to help me out. What do you think of that? How
about five hundred dollars! Five hundred dollars if your
girlfriend volunteers! You’ll do it? You’ll do it if I give him five
hundred dollars? Ladies, and gentlemen—five hundred dollars
for her first trick! Not bad. Now—if you’ll just step up here… I
need you to lie down on the Imperial Palanquin of the Odalisque.
You do know what an odalisque is, don’t you...? A female slave
in charge of other women in the harem. Can you say it...?
“Odalisque.” Let’s all say it... “Odalisque” (Pause.) Now, lie
down… She wants to know what’s going to happen to her! Five
hundred dollars for ten minutes of work, and she still wants a job
description! Ladies and gentlemen, please. I need your absolute
21
concentration for this. We are going to levitate this woman. But

don’t worry… it’s very safe. Listen to me! You will feel yourself
rising, floating... up, up, up... higher and higher until you can
look down on all your problems and all your cares, and they will
seem so tiny, like little specks, because you are so high… Now,
close your eyes... and think of clouds. (Pause.) Are you thinking
of clouds? Not thunderclouds... White, fluffy, puffy clouds... are
you thinking of them? All of you—think of clouds—Now! Are
you all thinking of clouds? I don’t understand. She’s still not
levitating... There must be something wrong... Something I’ve
overlooked... Wait! I know! She is depressed! Aren’t you? You
have taken five hundred dollars of my money to levitate, and you
did not tell me that you were depressed. Do you think we are
depressing you? Well! What are we going to do? I’ve given your
boyfriend five hundred dollars of my money—Yamashita’s own
money!—for you to levitate… but, I’ll tell you what—I’m going
to let your boyfriend keep the money, because you are going to
take a little pill for this depression. A little anti-gravity pill. Do
you want us all to be depressed, just because you don’t think you
are?
The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millenial Gold-

Diggers
Yamashita: A female magician, any age.
Setting: A cabaret theater space.
Yamashita is performing a magic show where she promises

to escort her audience through “the secret tunnels and
nubiferous passageways of a post-colonialist, post-
structuralist, global economic maze.” Here she is
introducing her final and greatest trick.
22
YAMASHITA: Some of you are very uncomfortable, aren’t

you…? I know you are, but we are going to fix that… aren’t we?
I’m going to hypnotize you. That’s right. The A-Mazing
Yamashita is going to put all of you into a trance—Not just one,
or even two of you… or even a dozen!—but the entire theatre at
the same time! And this will not be a party trick! No! The A-
Mazing Yamashita is not going make you believe that you are a
chicken! She is not going to make you believe that you have
been burned by the touch of an ice cube! No, the A-Mazing
Yamashita is going to put you into a trance that will transform
your life! Now, I know some of you are thinking, “How can that
be? How can a mere magician on a stage change my life?”
Because this is not just magic. It’s science! Yamashita is going
to work with your brain chemistry! Your brain will be doing the
magic all by itself. You will be the magic! And this is possible,
because of science… ladies and gentlemen… neurophysiology.
When two neurons fire at the same time, they connect. That’s it.
That’s all it takes. It’s called an “association.” Your brain is
going to make the associations for you, and all you have do is
call up the images and you will re-experience the trance. And
these will not be just ordinary associations, like when you look
out the window and see that it’s raining so you reach for an
umbrella. You don’t need any help with associations like those.
No, the A-Mazing Yamashita is going to take two entirely
opposite things, things that, without magic, your brain would
never learn to associate, and Yamashita is going to give your
brain an opportunity to forge a permanent synaptic link between
them. Ladies and gentlemen… picture this! What if every time
you began to feel the pain of humiliation, you could convert that
to a delicious sense of mounting excitement? What if every time
you started to suffer empathetically with the agony of another,
you could convert that to an intense sensation of exquisite
pleasure? What if… instead of that helpless sense of
overwhelming rage and frustration in the face of tyranny, you
could transform it instantly to an overwhelmingly intoxicating
awareness of personal empowerment? And what if these linkages
would remain with you, structurally and neurochemically,
23
forever? Forever, ladies and gentlemen… because, tonight, for

my final and greatest feat of magic, the A-Mazing Yamashita is
going to… (She imitates a drum roll.)… make inequality sexy!
Lighting Martha
Jean Rosenthal: The legendary lighting designer, 55, a

ghost.
Setting: The empty stage at the City Center, NYC. It’s late at
night, April 30, 1969, after the final dress rehearsal for
Martha Graham’s premiere of The Archaic Hours. The stage
is lit only by a ghost light.
The ghost of Jean Rosenthal has appeared to her grieving life

partner and assistant, Miki Kinsella. Jean, who designed
lights for Martha Graham for thirty-five years is attempting
to explain to Miki what Martha has meant to her.
JEAN: But you should have seen us… Really! There we were,
all us teenaged girls… with our chic, little, bobbed haircuts and
our shapeless, little sack-dresses… thinking we were the cat’s
pajamas… so sophisticated… and then… then… (At a loss.)
Martha. She opened that classroom door, took one look at us,
and just stood there. God knows what she was thinking. She had
that long, black hair down around her shoulders, and she was
wearing something with yards and yards of fabric… It didn’t
look like anything anyone else was wearing. She had sewn it
herself. And she had this kind of electricity… You know what it
was? She was feral. That’s what it was. She had not been
domesticated. She was outside of everything we believed was
important. Suddenly all of us girls were just little paper dolls
lying flat in a box, waiting for someone to pick us up and play
with us. Imagine meeting Martha Graham when you were
young! She told us that we were not here to please the audience.
24
Imagine a young girl hearing those words in 1929… “We are not
here to please the audience.” She said that ugliness, if it had a
powerful voice, was beautiful. She was so incredibly strong. I
remember that first day she commanded us to take off our shoes
and lie down on our backs. “Contract!” She was shouting it…
“Contract!” And then, “Release!” And we did. Twenty-five girls
lying on the floor, all contracting and releasing at the same time,
over and over… and meanwhile Martha is pacing around,
lecturing us about “the house of pelvic truth:” “Movement
should always begin in the house of pelvic truth.” I thought I had
died and gone to heaven. (A smile.) There’s no going back from
that house of pelvic truth.
Lighting Martha
Miki (Marion) Kinsella: Jean’s life partner and lighting

assistant, 45, butch, aggressively devoted to Jean.
is lit only by a ghost light.
Miki is confronting the ghost of Jean, accusing her of loving

her work more she loved her.
MIKI: Me? Me “don’t be cruel?” How about you making all the
doctors talk to me? I’m the one who has to hear about the tumors
and the blood tests and where it’s metastasized to and how sick
the radiation is going to make you and how long you have to
live. You don’t want to hear any of it, so you make me hear it…
You know how long you have to live? How long…? Two weeks.
(Screaming.) Two weeks! And maybe less than that after
tonight—all that goddam drama around the rehearsal. (JEAN has
retreated. For MIKI, a dam has broken.) I’m not sorry! I’m sorry
25
I didn’t say it sooner! Jean, we’ve been living a goddam lie…

Pretending I’m your roommate, pretending I’m just your
assistant… pretending you don’t have cancer, pretending you’re
not dying! I don’t care! You know what it’s like? It’s like the
time you were hired to light the tour of those Russian ballet
dancers… Nijinsky’s sister… remember? You told me her
choreography was all in the first ten feet of the stage, because
that’s how they lit dancers in Europe, because of the gas
footlights. First pipe and two booms…That’s what they asked
for. But you… you wanted to light behind them and around
them and above them, because Martha had taught you that no
part of the stage was more important than another. She taught
you that wherever she was on the stage, that was center stage.
But what would be the point with these Russian dancers, because
they couldn’t dance where you wanted to light them? And in the
end, you got your ass kicked out of the theatre! And now you’ve
lit just this narrow, little strip of your life—what’s left of it—and
you’ve made both of us dance in that strip. Jean, you are dying!
You are leaving! There is so much space—so much space—
behind us and around us and above us, and we can’t move in it!
This flat little dance of denial right out in front of everybody…
that’s all you want to light! I can’t do it anymore! I have things
to say and do that are all over the place! All over the place, Jean!
I can’t do the goddam footlights dance anymore, and you won’t
move the booms for me!
Lighting Martha
Jean Rosenthal: The legendary lighting designer, 55, a

ghost.
is dark, the only light coming from the exit signs.
26
The ghost of Jean Rosenthal has appeared to her grieving life

partner and assistant, Miki Kinsella. Jean is trying to get
Miki to understand that she expresses love through her
lighting.
JEAN: Well… you know my parents were immigrants. They

came over from Romania as children. And they had to learn
English, and they had to work the whole time they went to
school, and they both were doctors… And then they had us kids.
And I know they loved us… They really wanted us to have a
childhood, because they never did… but… (Long silence.) Miki,
they were wonderful people. So smart, and so devoted…
(Pause.) But there just wasn’t any room. You had to be helpful,
or else you had to get out of their way. Nobody could take up
space, or draw attention to themselves, or confront anything.
Nobody could have feelings or opinions except them. So that’s
how I learned to make myself invisible. And that’s why they sent
me to the henhouse, and that’s how I was able to make it in the
union. And I’ve pretty much done that all my life. Miki, I
learned to be so invisible, I didn’t even cast a shadow… But,
Martha… Martha taught me, even if I didn’t cast any shadows, I
could still cast a light. And, in fact, being invisible made my
light-casting even more powerful, more magical… because
people can’t see where it’s coming from. They don’t even realize
that someone is controlling what they see and even how they see
it. In fact, the most brilliant work is the least noticeable. When I
started working for Martha as her assistant, nobody—nobody—
took her seriously. Nobody could see what she was doing in
dance. They made fun of her: She wasn’t pretty. She was too old.
Her movements weren’t graceful. That’s what they saw. And
Martha was in so much pain, because she was giving so much,
and nobody could see it! And I was just aching to let her know
that I saw her, and that I saw what she was doing and how
important it was. Miki, I loved her so much I thought I would
explode. And then she asked me to light her, and even though I
was back in the shadows, I was able to take that love and just
27
pour it all over her! I covered her with light; I caressed her with
light… I tickled her and I teased her with light! I studied Martha
so intimately, I could anticipate her movements, so that the light
would be there just a split second before she needed it. And,
Miki, she received it. She danced with my light, not just in it.
She would tell me how she wanted to be seen, and I would give
her what she asked. I remember she told me she wanted this
long, diagonal light that would start from the back of the stage
and cross down to the front… And I designed it for her. She
named it “the Finger of God,” and Martha flirted with my
Finger of God. At first, she would avoid it. She would work
around it. And then she built it into the dance, into her character.
My lighting became part of her struggle and search… and
always, always, after approaching it and avoiding it… edging
toward it, edging away… always, by the end of the dance, she
would land right in the heart of it. You call this my work, but it’s
love.
Female Nude Seated
Mainie Jellett: An upper-middle-class, Irish lesbian, 21. She

is away from her family for the first time, studying in
London at the Westminster School of Art.
Setting: The interior of a room in a student rooming house,

London. It is a late September night, 1917.
Mainie is speaking to Evie Hone, a new friend and fellow art

student. Both of them have been studying under Walter
Sickert, about whom several contemporary books have been
written identifying him as the notorious murderer Jack the
Ripper. In this speech Mainie is recounting a deeply
traumatic encounter with Sickert.
28
MAINIE: Professor Sickert asked me if I would like to see some

real paintings—paintings that were “pages torn from the book of
life.” Actually, he wanted me to accompany him to his studio.
He had a studio. It was an actual studio… I followed him up
these broken stairs, and down this filthy hall, and he took out a
key and opened a door. And there was a bed… I remember it had
an iron bedstead. And he saw me take a step back, and said, “It’s
for the models. I paint them on the bed.” He had this revolting
smile on his face. I’d never seen him look like that in class. I’d
never seen him smile. In fact, he appeared to have become
another person entirely. I just stood there. I couldn’t move. He
brought out some paintings to show me… I think he wanted to
prove that he painted the models lying on the bed. They were
absolutely the ugliest, the most grotesque, absolutely the most
vile things I have ever seen! They weren’t nudes… They were
more like cadavers. That had been left in the sun. The women’s
bodies were purple and yellow, and you couldn’t see their
faces… they were all blurry. Meat. That’s what they were… the
women were carrion. And there were men in the pictures, men
with all their clothes on, sitting on the bed or hovering over the
naked women. And I said, “I want to go back.” And he laughed
at me. He said, “You’ve come all this way, and now you don’t
even want to see the rest of my paintings?” He was mocking me.
I just stood there in the hall. He asked me if I thought Jack the
Ripper might have lived there. I didn’t say anything, and he
asked me if I knew who Jack the Ripper was. And then he said
that it was rumored that the murderer lived in this neighborhood,
and that—(Imitating Sickert.) “—who knows?—perhaps this was
his very room… imagine…Jack the Ripper’s room!” But he said
I had nothing to fear, because the Ripper only murdered
prostitutes—women who “deserved it.” I felt like my feet were
welded to the floor. I couldn’t move. It was as if we were in a
painting ourselves… Frozen in time. I don’t know how long it
lasted—him standing by that open door and me standing in the
hall. As if we had stood like that for centuries… And I feel as if
some part of me is standing there still, waiting for something
inevitable and terrifying to happen.
29
Female Nude Seated
Evie Hone: An Irish lesbian, 23. She is a member of the

landed gentry, studying at the Westminster School of Art in
London. Orphaned young and a survivor of polio, Evie has
suffered tremendous loss and pain as a child, and she has
developed a tough persona to cope with her disability.

Evie has been awakened by the screams of a fellow boarder

in her student rooming house. The boarder, Mainie Jellett,
was experiencing a nightmare that is cauing her to question
her sanity. Evie is attempting to contextualize her new
friend’s fears, referencing the horrors of the Great War that
are daily traumatizing the citizens of London.
EVIE: Of course you feel you’re going mad. You and half of
London… What have you got to eat? Ah, biscuits…! Huntley
and Palmers… Excellent. May I…? You know they’re
manufacturing these with honey now instead of sugar… Bloody
war rations… Last week I was in Victoria Tower Gardens, and
would you believe the police have actually begun writing up
citations for feeding the pigeons! Who’s going mad? You mean,
other than the pigeons and the London police…? Well, there are
the boys who were at the Somme—the ones unfortunate enough
to make it back. And the boys who are now at Passchendaele, if
they haven’t already suffocated in the mud. And their mothers.
And their sisters. And their aunties. And their sweethearts.
Flocks of women descending on the railway station to collect
their returning heroes—to press their darling boys to their breasts
again… the nightmare finally over! (Dramatizing.) But they
30
can’t make sense of it…! Here they are, at the very station, at the
very hour designated in the telegram… but yet, no son, no
brother, no nephew, no sweetheart! The train has come and gone,
the passengers have all been met by their various parties and
departed… and now the station is empty—oh, except for some
dreadful, crippled, blind boy slumped over a crutch—his leg
amputated and missing a nose, but this cannot be their son, their
brother, their nephew, their sweetheart! Half of London is
waking from a hideous nightmare and lifting the cover of the
canvas, only to discover that it hasn’t been a dream at all… but
of course, it’s not polite to scream.

London at the Westminster School of Art. Her father is a
staunch Protestant Unionist.

Mainie is in the process of creating a nude painting of her

new friend Evie Hone, a fellow art school student. Evie, a
survivor of polio with badly scarred and bent legs, is self-
conscious as a model, and Mainie is telling her story partly to
distract Evie and also partly to communicate to her about
her own recent spiritual awakening, because Evie has
disclosed that she is planning to leave school to join a
convent.
MAINIE: I was home in Dublin in June. That was when they

released the prisoners from the Easter Rebellion. They put them
all on a boat at Holyhead, and then, when they got to Dublin
Port, they put them on a train to Westland Row Station. I went to
see them… My family, of course, didn’t know where I was
going… I walked from Fitzwilliam Square, because the station
31
was only a half mile from my home. But I couldn’t have hired a
car anyway, the streets were so crowded. It took me an hour to
get to the train. There were thousands and thousands of people.
I’d never seen crowds like that in my life… And then, when I got
to the station, I heard that the prisoners had already disembarked,
and that there was a parade forming, but I couldn’t get close
enough to see it. There was a band somewhere and it was
playing “A Nation Once Again.” Everyone was singing—
everyone… the men in topcoats, the laborers, the schoolchildren,
the women with their babies, the girls waving their green
handkerchiefs. I lived my entire life in Dublin, and I had never
really seen it until that moment. (She pauses.) I looked up and
saw a woman above the heads of the crowd. She was dressed in
black and standing tall like a statue. She began moving forward
slowly, as if she were an icon being carried in a religious
procession… It was Countess Markievicz. She was standing in a
motor car… just standing—not smiling, not waving—just
standing like the masthead of some massive ship, parting the
waters of Great Brunswick Street. And I felt this overwhelming
urge to kneel in the street. The crowd was pressing forward to
follow her, but I couldn’t move. Tears were running down my
face. People began pushing past me, hundreds and hundreds of
them, but I couldn’t move. I never felt anything like that in any
church. I kept thinking about how, after her arrest, she had to
listen to the executions of her comrades, as they took them out,
one-by-one, day-after-day, and shot them in the prison courtyard.
My father calls her a cowardly traitor. He says, “Sex be damned,
she should have been shot with the others.” I couldn’t go home
after the parade. I walked down to the river and then over to the
General Post Office. I hadn’t seen the GPO since the British
shelled it a year ago. I had been afraid to see it. But it was just an
empty facade… the pillars, the portico, the statues, all perfectly
intact… but the entire building behind it was completely gone.
Standing before it, I could watch the clouds passing through the
windows. It was oddly peaceful, like a gateway or a picture
frame to an unconquered country. And then I walked to St.
Stephen’s Green, where the Countess had fought and where she
32
had surrendered. And I kept thinking how everything had

changed… the grass and the leaves were shimmering and
radiating. It was like in a dream, except that I felt as if the Dublin
of my childhood had been the dream, and that now I was being
initiated into the world of spirit underneath the skin of the city…
behind the facade. And I was having this experience of my own
being at the same time. I sat there until the sun set, shivering
with these sensations that I couldn’t name. Something like love.
An intense sense of belonging to something magnificent. I didn’t
want to go home. I have never really been home again.
33
34
Scenes
for Lesbian Actors
35
36
Easter Sunday
Flora: A working-class, femme lesbian from the Bronx, 33.

Brooklyn, 40.
Setting: A bench in Morningside Park, New York, around

noon on April 10, 1960.
Flora and Del have just come from the Easter morning
service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. They are
comparing their memories of the church and their
experiences during World War II.
FLORA: I’m so happy today…! Everything is so beautiful! The

sky, the grass, the park… and that service…! Wasn’t it
beautiful? (DEL looks at her.) Come on, Del… wasn’t it?
DEL: It was church.
FLORA: Yeah, I know, but the big arches, and the choir, and the
chimes, and—
DEL: And the hypocrites and the bigots.
FLORA: Well, I didn’t notice any.
DEL: Baby, that’s because you don’t look like me.
FLORA: (Sitting down, serious.) Thanks for comin’ with me. I

know you didn’t want to.
DEL: (Shrugging.) Whatever blows your skirt up.
FLORA: (Swatting her.) Del!
37
DEL: What?
FLORA: Hey, I haven’t been inside that cathedral since I was

sixteen years old and livin’ in the Bronx.
DEL: The damn thing was always under construction when I was
a kid. I’d ride my bicycle past it… Traffic was always gettin’
blocked up.
FLORA: Yeah… that’s how come my mother made us go. She

read in the paper that they finally finished it, and they were
going to open it—the whole thing, not just part of it, but the
whole thing—for the first time in a hundred years. She told my
dad she always wanted to know what it looked like. (Pausing.) I
remember she made us get all dressed up, and she bought one of
those new floppy hats… big as an umbrella… It was right after
Thanksgiving. Must have been the last time all of us were
together, because a week after that, they bombed Pearl Harbor,
and then everything changed. (FLORA gets quiet. DEL watches
her.)
DEL: Yeah… Everything sure changed.
FLORA: How old were you?
DEL: When the war broke out? Twenty-one. Twenty-one and

goin’ crazy. My brothers and the guys in the shop all went out
and joined up, leavin’ me just sittin’ on my hands.
FLORA: My dad joined up, too… I think he was looking for an

excuse to leave. He and Ma had a big fight before he shipped
out. She was terrified of being alone… I think she knew that if
he left, he was never coming back… even if he wasn’t killed.
DEL: (Lost in her own thoughts, she shakes her head.) Thank
God for the WACs.
38
FLORA: (In her own memories, nodding.) Everything
changed…
DEL: (Remembering.) Man, when I heard they were starting a

women’s army corps, I couldn’t wait. I must have been the first
one through the door.
FLORA: Ma went back to work, and I got a job after school.
DEL: All those women… nothing but women… Flora, you

never saw so many women in one place without men. Fort Des
Moines was like a whole village of women. (Nudging her.) You
woulda loved it.
FLORA: What? Are you kidding? I would have been scared to

death!
DEL: No…
FLORA: Oh, yeah!
DEL: Really?
FLORA: When I was at Hunter, they leased out part of the

school for the women’s navy auxiliary… It was a big training
center for the WAVES. Those girls were all over the place… in
the dormitories and in the dining halls. They were sending in two
thousand new ones every week!
DEL: (Nudging her.) Musta had to work fast.
FLORA: (Shaking her head.) They scared me to death.
DEL: Why?
39
FLORA: Because they all wore these uniforms, and they
marched around in formations, and they weren’t just from New
York. I mean, they were coming in from Florida, and Texas, and
all over the place… all by themselves—a million miles from
their families and their boyfriends. And they didn’t know where
they were going, and they didn’t care! They were playing
records and smuggling in booze, and dancing with each other—
like it was one big adventure! And here was mousy, little me,
still living at home with Ma, scared of my own shadow…
thinking it was some kind of big expedition just taking the
subway by myself to the Bronx!
DEL: Well, you’re one of us now, baby.
Easter Sunday
Brooklyn, 40.


Del is attempting to persuade Marty to help her purchase a

cottage in the deeply exclusionarys lesbian community of
Cherry Grove. Marty, threatened by an “out” butch and by
the fact she has been caught in the middle of a relapse, is
countering with classist arguments.
DEL: Today’s Easter.
40
MARTY: Is it?
DEL: I took my girl to the service at St. John’s.
MARTY: The girl I met?
DEL: Yeah, Flora’s her name.
MARTY: Where is she?
DEL: She didn’t want to stay. She didn’t think I ought to bother
you.
MARTY: Smart girl, that Flora.
DEL: Yeah, she is. Real smart. But she’s wrong about this.
MARTY: About what?
DEL: Me comin’ to see you.
MARTY: I told you I don’t own that cottage.
DEL: Yeah, but you know the lady who does. You live next door
to her. You’re in the Cherry Grove Homeowners Association
with her. (MARTY looks at her. This is the showdown.) Yeah,
Flora’s smart. She’s had to be, because you see, she’s my girl.
And that little country club thing you just told me about…?
Yeah, Flora already knew that was goin’ on with your
homeowners thing. ‘Cause she’s real smart about stuff like that.
But, see, here’s where she’s wrong. She doesn’t believe things
ever change. But I see them changin’ every day. And I think you
do, too, with all those miles you got on you. People are changin’
all over this country. And the Grove is changin,’ too. And I
know you know that… but Flora, she doesn’t believe in it. I told
her that you were gonna recommend us to your neighbor… That
you were gonna tell Miss Perkins how she ought to sell to us,
41
because we’re a nice couple—sober, with good jobs… Flora’s a
teacher’s aide and I own my own business. And I fix things. Was
a carpenter in the Women’s Army Corps. I’d keep the place up.
Yeah, but see, Flora, she doesn’t believe you’d do that for us. I
told her she was wrong
MARTY: (A long silence. MARTY looks up at the painting. This

is an aggressive, intentionally patronizing demonstration of class
privilege.) A Jackson Pollack painting is not a drop cloth. Do
you know why? Because every pigment on the canvas was put
there intentionally. He chose his colors. He chose where he was
going to fling them and how often and when to stop. He was
looking for a dynamic but harmonious composition. That’s all
any of us can ask of life. He didn’t invite his friends to come
over and fling. He didn’t put on a blindfold and pick his colors
indiscriminately. There was intentionality in his community of
design, however random it may appear to the untrained eye.
DEL: (Getting hot under the collar.) The Grove isn’t a painting.
It’s a bunch of houses where lesbians don’t have to hide.
MARTY: But where did that safety come from?
DEL: Numbers. Numbers like me and Flora.
MARTY: But originally… where did it come from originally? It

was people who knew each other coming together to create a
little village of like-minded souls. People with a vision and with
initiative, and, of course, capital. And we created the Grove to
reflect the world in which we wanted to live. A world that was
bright and gay, colorful, light-hearted, and filled with tasteful art
and music and theatre. Cherry Grove has an aesthetic that is like
the Pollack painting… a spattering of many different colors, but
all harmonious and representing the whole. But what would
happen to that very carefully crafted design, those intentional
patterns, if everybody got to, at random, fling themselves onto
our canvas?
42
DEL: You gotta be kiddin’ me.
MARTY: You have your community and we have ours.
DEL: No, see… “our…” “our” community. Us. Women who

love women… Our community.
MARTY: Let me ask you something… Do you see anybody in

“our” community at Cherry Grove who looks like you?
DEL: Not yet.
MARTY: Well, why do you think that is?
DEL: Not handsome enough?
MARTY: Try again. (Pause. DEL waits. MARTY gets angry.)

No…? Well, maybe it’s because we happen to have good jobs,
good jobs that we worked our ass off to get. Jobs that pay us a lot
of money, and jobs that, in return, expect our loyalty. They
expect us to uphold their reputations, not get ourselves involved
in any scandals or gossip, not do anything that would embarrass
them. That’s the price we pay for being effective in the world.
That’s why I can’t call Bill. That’s the price.
DEL: Yeah? And how’s that workin’ for you?
MARTY: That’s none of your business, is it? But you’re

whining to me about why Shelly Perkins says she has a buyer
when her sign is still up… It’s because she wants to be sure that
whoever buys that house is going to keep the neighborhood safe
by protecting our anonymity, if you will. By not signaling to the
whole world who we are and how we live our lives.
DEL: Oh, please.
43
MARTY: Not all of us own a bar where we can go to work
dressed like a man—
DEL: (Rising, angry.) Hey, I dress like me! And you know
something? You and your “blazer girls” with your lipstick and
your high heels… You look ridiculous. You’re not foolin’
anybody. Signaling? You’re all walkin’ down the boardwalk
holdin’ up a giant sign that says, “I hate who I am.”
MARTY: (Smiling.) But you think I should recommend you as a

good neighbor…?
DEL: (A beat.) So you’re not gonna do it…? Flora’s right.

You’re not gonna help us, are you?
Female Nude Seated

London at the Westminster School of Art.
Evie Hone: An Irish lesbian, 23. She is a member of the

landed gentry, studying at the Westminster School of Art in
London. Orphaned young and a survivor of polio, Evie has
suffered tremendous loss and pain as a child, and she has
developed a tough persona to cope with her disability.

The two young women have just kissed, when Evie discloses
to Mainie that she is intending to leave the art school to join
a convent. Evie has just attempted to explain how the
convent, far from being a prison, will be a place where she
44
will have the freedom to live on a higher plane of spiritual
contemplation.
MAINIE: Well, I think that’s the most selfish thing I ever heard!
Joining a convent… To just go off—to fly off—to some private
little kingdom of contemplative bliss, leaving everyone and
everything behind… hoarding your happiness all for yourself,
not even attempting to share it with the rest of us flightless dodo
birds!
EVIE: From the girl who drinks turpentine.
MAINIE: I didn’t drink it! And I was just considering drinking

it! You don’t know anything about me or about my life! You
don’t know anything about anything! And did it ever occur to
you that my popularity, which seems to be such a source of envy
for you… did it ever occur to you that it might come at a very
high price? That the second I stop doing or saying or believing
what other people expect, it all just evaporates like water? You
don’t know anything about anything! You don’t understand
anything about what happened tonight!
EVIE: (Stung deeply.) Clearly. (She turns to go.)
MAINIE: Oh, don’t you dare! Don’t you dare go out that door,
Evie Hone! You have barged in here, because you needed
someone to rescue, and then you have painted me as a spoiled,
ignorant, narcissistic, silly, little girl! And now that you are done
with your noble mission, you think you can just stack your little
canvas over in the corner with all your other studies of people
who failed to measure up to your vast experience of life and your
exalted spiritual vision! If you walk out, you take that picture
with you! Don’t you dare leave it here, because it’s not mine!
It’s not who I am! It’s a portrait of your own arrogance! Take it
with you!
45
EVIE: And what about your picture of me?
MAINIE: Oh, it’s accurate.
EVIE: Not, it’s not! It’s cliché! It’s storytelling! It’s the work of
a cheap voyeur!
MAINIE: Get out!
EVIE: (A long stalemate.) Why don’t you test your theories of

art tonight?
MAINIE: What do you mean?
EVIE: Paint me!
MAINIE: Why should I?
EVIE: Because I am the perfect subject for your study. Paint a

female nude who has survived polio, quarantined away from
family for years. Paint a female nude who has spent her
childhood in bed, encased in a plaster-of-paris straitjacket, her
legs shackled to splints. Paint a female nude whose limbs are
deformed by disease and scarred by the butchery of a hundred
worthless surgeries. Paint a female nude whose body has been
the object of curiosity and experiment by scores of doctors, a
body that has been fetishized by professional men who by day
pose as the saints who dedicate their lives to relieving the
suffering of afflicted children, and who, by night, raid the wards
for victims too immobilized to resist, too young to understand,
too isolated to be rescued, and too traumatized to remember!
(After a moment, MAINIE reaches for a fresh canvas.)
Black Star
46
Young Henrietta Vinton Davis: African American woman,
30’s.
Powhatan Beaty: African American man, 40’s, celebrated

soldier and actor.
Setting: A backstage dressing room at the Ford Theatre,

Washington, DC, April 1884.
Henrietta has just locked herself in her dressing room at the

Ford Theatre. She is the producer of an all-Black production
of Macbeth, and, outraged by hecklers, she has decided to
shut down in mid-show. Her co-star, a far more experienced
actor, changes her mind.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I said go away! I don’t care!
POWHATAN: (Offstage.) Henrietta…
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Go away!
POWHATAN BEATY: (Offstage.) It’s Powhatan Beaty…
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Jumping up and opening the door.)

I’m sorry, Mr. Beaty… I thought you were the stage manager.
(POWHATAN BEATY enters. He wears the costume of Macbeth
and speaks with a trained, stentorian voice.)
POWHATAN: What’s this about cancelling the show?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I’m sorry, but I’ve made up my mind.
POWHATAN: Because…
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Because I am the producer and I can.

(He waits.) Because I am not going to allow my actors to
perform under these conditions. (He waits. She explodes.) You
47
heard the audience out there! Hooting and whistling and making
noises like chimpanzees…
POWHATAN: Not all of them… Henrietta, there’s eleven

hundred people out there.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Angry.) If I wanted to make a fool of

myself on the stage, I would have joined a minstrel show! I
wouldn’t have hired Powhatan Beaty to play Macbeth and I
wouldn’t have leased Ford’s Theatre! (Turning to him.) This is
the theatre where Lincoln was shot!
POWHATAN: (Smiling.) Yes, and imagine how he felt about

that…
YOUNG HENRIETTA: You know who is out there? Frederick

Douglass! Frederick Douglass… I used to work for him at the
copyright office. He was the one who told me to go and live my
dream of being a performer. He was the one who pushed me…
On my first night, he invited his friends and he got up on the
stage and introduced me… I can’t let him see me humiliated like
this.
POWHATAN: Do you think you’re the first Black actor who

ever got harassed?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I don’t care! Maybe I’m the first who

won’t put up with it. (POWHATAN shakes his head. This
infuriates her.) I wasn’t born in slavery!
POWHATAN: (Turning to face her.) I see… (There is a long

and awkward silence.)
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Embarrassed.) I just mean that—
48
POWHATAN: (Speaking slowly, with deliberation.) Oh, I
understand what you mean, and I think, Miss Davis, you had
better go back to your copyright office. (He turns to leave.)
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Mr. Beaty—
POWHATAN: (Turning back.) You know something,

Henrietta… If you had been born in slavery, you would “screw
your courage to the sticking place” right now, instead of quitting.
(A pause.) You know what that means, don’t you? (Silence.) You
don’t? (He shakes his head in disbelief.) People pay you their
good money to hear you speak those lines as Lady Macbeth, and
you don’t even know what they mean… mmm. (Shaking his
head, he turns to exit.)
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Mr. Beaty, wait… Please. I’m sorry…

I’m sorry. (A long pause.) Tell me… about the “sticking place.”
POWHATAN: (He considers before he turns to answer her.)

The sticking place is part of a crossbow. You do know what a
crossbow is? (Ashamed, she nods.) Well, the sticking place holds
the peg that holds the bowstring. You pull that string as far back
as you possibly can… (Miming the action.)… and then you
screw the peg down to the sticking place. So, you see, now
you’re all loaded up and ready to go. All you have to do is aim
and release. Because it’s pretty hard to aim at the same time
you’re holding all that tension in your arm. (Pause.) Well, that’s
what Lady Macbeth is saying… That if she and her husband just
pull up and screw their courage to the sticking place, they can’t
fail. You see, the crossbow really switched up the odds in a
battle. Before the crossbow, it took a lot of skill, a lot of muscle
to be any good with a bow and arrow. But then the crossbow
came along, and pretty much anybody could be dangerous…
even you, Henrietta Davis.
49
Black Star

30’s.
Thomas Symmons: African American male, late 30’s.

Cheap, natty dresser.
Setting: A backstage dressing room in a theatre in Cincinatti,

Ohio, 1893.
Henrietta is preparing to go onstage when her drunken

husband of ten years stumbles into the dressing room. This is
a showdown.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Startled.) Oh, my god! Tommy, you

scared me to death… (Realizing his condition.) What do you
want?
THOMAS: Can’t a man visit his own wife?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Exasperated.) I have a show in fifteen

minutes—
THOMAS: (Cutting her off, with an edge.) I know that! I got you
this booking, didn’t I? I’m your manager, or did you forget…?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I need to get dressed now. (Crossing to

the dress on the chair. Turning pointedly to him.) I’ll see you
after the show.
THOMAS: (Pointing to the dress.) Go ahead, darlin’. I don’t

mind. Ain’t nothin’ I haven’t seen—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Cutting him off.) Is it money? Is that

what you want? (She takes out her purse.)
50
THOMAS: Just hand me over the whole thing.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I can’t do that.
THOMAS: Yes, you can.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: No, I can’t.
THOMAS: Why not?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Look, here’s five dollars. (Offering it to

him.)
THOMAS: (Not taking it.) Why not? I’m your manager. I should
manage the money. I used to do that.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (A wry smile.) You used to do a lot of

things.
THOMAS: (Suddenly angry, he shoves her.) Yeah, and you used

to do a lot of things, too. Remember that!
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Quietly.) I do remember.
THOMAS: (Belligerently.) What? What do you remember?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Appeasing.) Well… I remember that

you used to sing. You were a singer—
THOMAS: And I gave it up for you! I gave up everything for

you. (He reaches for the purse. She moves it away. He
escalates.) Everything! So I could build you into a star. I made
you, woman! I made you! Do you remember that? How I had to
call in all my favors for you… They would shake their heads and
say, “Shakespeare, Tommy…? I dunno… I dunno. Does she
sing?” And I would say, “Man, she’s does better than sing. She
51
makes you sing… and not just with your mouth. She’s gonna
make you sing with every bone in your body… sing with pride
and hope and glory.” And they would shake their heads, “I
dunno, Tommy.” But I made ‘em. Didn’t I make ‘em? Didn’t I
make ‘em bring you in?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Yes, that you did.
THOMAS: Don’t you forget it.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I don’t.
THOMAS: And didn’t I get you this booking in Cincinnati? And

the one in Chicago before that… and Buffalo?
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Rising and leading him gently toward

the door.) Go on.
THOMAS: (Shoving her.) No!
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Tommy, I have to get dressed. (He

grabs the gown out of her hand and rips it. She responds with
weariness.) Well, that was not smart. I’m going to have to pay
for that now, and I’m going to take it out of your liquor money.
THOMAS: It’s all my money! I’m your manager.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Really angry.) No, it’s not! And you’re

not. And you haven’t been for years.
THOMAS: Years? (Ticking them off on his fingers.) Chicago,

Detroit, Buffalo—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Thomas, listen to me! I have been

getting those bookings. (He looks confused.) Yes… (Ticking
them off on her fingers) “Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo”… and
52
before that (More finger-ticking.) Washington, and
Philadelphia—
THOMAS: Liar! They come to me!
YOUNG HENRIETTA: They come to you, because I send them

to you. (He is stunned.) I send them to you so you can pretend to
be a manager. So you can pretend to be a man! (He punches her,
grabs her purse, and starts to exit.)
THOMAS: (Turning back.) You see how far you get… a Black
woman out on the road all by herself! (He laughs.) You just see
how far you get without me… You see what kind of reputation
you’re going to have! Bitch! (He exits. Wearily, she turns to the
mirror to repair the damage.)
Black Star

40’s.
Miss Taylor: Bi-racial, former chorus girl, 16.
Setting: A backstage dressing room in a theatre in Chicago,

1893.
Henrietta is backstage in her new, rented theatre when a

young woman appears at the door.
MISS TAYLOR: Oh, Miss Davis, I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to

bother you, but I didn’t know where else to go. I have to have a
job. I haven’t got any money, and he won’t pay me my wages.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Who won’t pay you?
53
MISS TAYLOR: Mr. Jack. He said—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Sam T. Jack?
MISS TAYLOR: Yes, he said—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: You’re with The Creole Show?
MISS TAYLOR: I was, but I quit. Or maybe I was fired…
YOUNG HENRIETTA: You don’t know?
MISS TAYLOR: Well, it was confusing. Mr. Jack asked me to

do something, and he said he it was part of the show, but he says
everything’s part of the show… like his “rehearsals”… that’s
what he calls them… (Embarrassed.) So I just walked out, and
when I went to collect my money, the manager said Mr. Jack
told him not to pay me… And now I can’t pay the rooming
house—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: I don’t need any dancers.
MISS TAYLOR: I can sing.
YOUNG HENRIETTA: A classical repertoire? (Silence.) I’m

afraid I can’t help you. I’m not producing any minstrel shows, or
vaudeville, or burlesque…
MISS TAYLOR: I’ll do anything. I can take care of the

costumes or sell tickets, or sweep the floor. I can be your
assistant. Just let me do anything—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: How old are you, Miss Taylor?
MISS TAYLOR: Twenty. (Silence.) Eighteen. (Silence.) Almost

sixteen.
54
YOUNG HENRIETTA: Can you act?
MISS TAYLOR: Oh, yes, ma’am. When I was younger, I was

Topsy in Uncle Tom’s—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Cutting her off.) Read this for me…

(Handing her a script.) It’s Shakespeare… In this scene Queen
Cleopatra is explaining to her ladies what’s going to happen to
them if they surrender to the Romans… (Pointedly.) … how
they—the African women—will be paraded through the streets
and put on display, and how the Romans will ridicule them, and
grope them, and treat them as if they are whores… (MISS
TAYLOR holds the script for a long time, and then slowly she
puts it down, tears welling up in her eyes. YOUNG HENRIETTA
watches her.)
MISS TAYLOR: (Looking at the floor.) I know what you think I

am, Miss Davis. But I am a proud woman. I hired on with Mr.
Jack in New York, because he said I wouldn’t have to “black up”
to play for white audiences… He said he wanted the audience to
see us girls as we were—without blackface… to see how
beautiful we were—you know—without—
YOUNG HENRIETTA: (Cutting her off.) Without your clothes.

(Long silence.)
MISS TAYLOR: (Looking up.) You know he’s got a bar over
there attached to the theatre, and he makes us girls walk
through that bar before the show… squeeze by all those men.
And they’re just waiting for us, too… (YOUNG HENRIETTA
nods.) Please, Miss Davis…
Planchette
55
Jude: A female teen with masculine gender presentation,
14. Jude has been living a rough life on the frontier.
Mollie: A female teen with feminine gender presentation,

14.
Setting: Mollie’s bedroom, upstairs in a middle-class,

bedroom is on the ocean. The first “nor’easter” of the season
is raging. Early fall, 1879.
Jude is coming to spend the night with Mollie, at the request
of Jude’s grandparent-guardians. Mollie is not happy about
having to host Jude.
MOLLIE: (Entering, she turns with exasperation and calls

behind her.) It’s up here… (Pause. She turns toward the door.)
Judith…? (Louder.) Judith…! Are you coming? My bedroom is
up here! (JUDE enters, also fourteen.)
JUDE: (Surly.) “Jude.” My name is “Jude.”
MOLLIE: Well, everyone in school calls you “Judith.”
JUDE: They’re wrong.
MOLLIE: Your grandparents call you “Judith.”
JUDE: Yeah, and I never even met them until a month ago. So I
think I know my own name better than they do. It’s “Jude.” (She
dumps the bag and crosses to the windows.)
MOLLIE: (Uncomfortable.) Well, I don’t care what your name

is. It wasn’t my idea for you to spend the night, so you’re just
going to have to entertain yourself.
JUDE: (Angry.) If you didn’t want me to stay over, then why did
you invite me?
56
MOLLIE: Because my father told me I had to.
JUDE: Why is that any of his funeral?
MOLLIE: Your grandparents go to our church, and they told him

they were going to Dover for the night, but they didn’t want you
staying by yourself while they were gone.
JUDE: Yeah, well, I’m used to it.
MOLLIE: They said you didn’t have any friends.
JUDE: I’ve got lots of friends back in Denver! I’ve only been in
Portsmouth for a month. What about you?
MOLLIE: I have friends.
JUDE: No, you don’t. I see you in school. Nobody ever talks to
you.
MOLLIE: (Stung.) Actually, I prefer my own company. (She

opens her book and starts to read. The sound of rising wind.
JUDE crosses to the window.)
JUDE: Big storm… A real gully-washer.
MOLLIE: (Not looking up.) It’s called a nor’easter.
JUDE: (Another pause.) If this was my room, I’d haul that bed
over here, so I could stay up and watch the ocean all night.
MOLLIE: (Not looking up.) I grew up on an island. I’ve seen the

ocean.
57
JUDE: (Staring out the window.) Out in Denver, water’s scarce
as hen’s teeth. Hardly even any lakes. Instead of ocean, we got a
hundred miles of prairie.
MOLLIE: (Not looking up.) Denver sounds pretty dry and ugly.
JUDE: (Looking pointedly at her.) Plenty of dry and ugly right

here in New Hampshire.
Planchette

Mollie: A female teen with feminine gender presentation,

14.

Mollie and Jude are getting to know each other.
MOLLIE: (Noticing with alarm that JUDE is drinking something

from a flask.) What’s that?
JUDE: “Old Orchard…” (MOLLIE does not understand the

slang.) Whiskey. (Offering it to her.)
MOLLIE: You can’t drink that here!
JUDE: I could drink whenever I wanted in Denver. My daddy

used to take me in the saloons with him. Told everyone I was his
son.
58
MOLLIE: Well, my father’s a minister, and he doesn’t allow
spirits in the house.
JUDE: (Tucking the flask back in the jacket, JUDE mutters.)

New Hampshire…
MOLLIE: If you liked it so much in Denver, why didn’t you stay

there?
JUDE: Oh, believe me, I wanted to. If our house hadn’t burned
down, I’d still be there.
MOLLIE: Your house burned down? (A crack of thunder.)
JUDE: Isn’t that what I just said? (MOLLIE waits. JUDE turns
away.) Prairie fire. That’s how my mother died. (She pauses.
MOLLIE looks shocked.) My pa wanted me to stay in Denver
with him, but her parents got all worked up about it… made him
put me on the train back East. He didn’t want to… (Pause.) My
pa’s goin’ to send for me as soon as he gets settled.
MOLLIE: (Long pause.) I’m sorry about your mother. (JUDE

doesn’t say anything, but takes out the flask again.) You still
can’t drink here.
JUDE: (Exploding.) Folks can’t do nothing in Portsmouth!

Whole town so high-falutin’ they got nothing better to do than
tell other people how to live! Out in the Territories, nobody’s got
time to worry about what anybody else is doing.
MOLLIE: Nobody tells me what to do in Portsmouth.
JUDE: That’s because you’re already doing everything like

you’re supposed to.
MOLLIE: What do you mean?
59
JUDE: Clothes. Take clothes. Out there, it’s the frontier.
Everybody’s doing everybody’s work. People just wear what
they feel like and nobody cares. And Denver’s full of saloons
and brothels. I’ve been to both.
MOLLIE: I wouldn’t brag about that.
JUDE: Why? Nobody cares. Nobody goes to church in Denver.
MOLLIE: I don’t believe that.
JUDE: Yeah, well, go see for yourself. After you’ve seen the
elephant, not much point in praying.
MOLLIE: (Exasperated.) Okay, what does that mean?
JUDE: It’s hard to explain to someone like you… from the East.
MOLLIE: Well, try.
JUDE: (Long sigh. MOLLIE waits.) Folks go west to see

something they’ve never seen before, something they can’t
tame… something wild, bigger than life, busting out with
magnificence… something there aren’t any words for, so they
say they’re going to see the elephant. And then they pack up
everything in a wagon and they head out. But then there’s
these storms on the plains… hailstones as big as bricks, and
there’s flooding and prairie fires and fever… bad roads and no
grass… The wagon wheels bust, the cattle die, the babies
die… Folks run out of food; then they run out of water… And
that’s when they know they’ve seen the elephant. You can’t
never forget it once you’ve seen it, and you can’t describe it
neither. You’ve seen it or you haven’t. (MOLLIE becomes
very quiet and JUDE takes out the flask again. This time
MOLLIE does not stop her.)
60
Planchette

Reverend Lehee: A large, traditionally masculine man,

40’s. He is Mollie’s father, and this is his house.

Reverend Lehee has come to check on his daughter and her

overnight guest. He lectures Jude about her clothing choices.
REV. LEHEE: Sorry to interrupt you girls… (Turning to JUDE.)

Hello, Judith… (Turning back to MOLLIE.) I heard that tree in
the front blow down… (JUDE shoots a look at MOLLIE.
MOLLIE looks away.) … and I wanted to come up here and
survey the damage. (He crosses to the window. MOLLIE and
JUDE follow him.) Well, it missed the house, but it’s blocking
the street.
JUDE: (Eager for his approval.) I can help you buck the tree, sir.
(REV. LEHEE turns to JUDE.) I used to cut our firewood in
Denver.
REV. LEHEE: (Laying a hand on JUDE’s shoulder, he speaks

indulgently.) Well, I think that’s going to be a job for the
menfolk… I’ll ask your grandfather to give me a hand. Bucking
and hauling wood is dangerous work. I’m surprised your parents
let you do it.
61
JUDE: My pa taught me to build, too. So I could take care of my
mother.
REV. LEHEE: (Smiling gently at JUDE.) That’s a husband’s

job… taking care of the women.
JUDE: What if a woman doesn’t have a husband?
REV. LEHEE: Then the men of her family will care for her.
JUDE: What if they die?
REV. LEHEE: Then the men of the church will step in. (JUDE
looks down.) Judith, I understand from your grandfather that you
weren’t raised in the church, and I was sorry to hear that.
JUDE: I don’t mind.
REV. LEHEE: Life can be pretty tough without the Lord to

guide us. God knows a lot more than we do… He sees the road
ahead, as well as the road behind. And that’s why He’s given us
rules… so we don’t get lost or take any wrong turns. But we
have to follow His rules. (Turning abruptly to MOLLIE.) Moll,
honey, I want you to pick out a couple of your dresses to give to
Judith.
JUDE: (Alarmed.) Oh, that’s okay, Reverend Lehee. I don’t need

them.
REV. LEHEE: Looks to me like you do.
JUDE: My grandparents said I could wear what I want.
REV. LEHEE: (Smiling gently.) They told me they really want

you to start wearing dresses.
JUDE: But they said—
62
REV. LEHEE: (Cutting her off.) I know what they said, but,
Judith, put yourself in their shoes. They feel like their only
daughter was taken away from them, and now they are terrified
of losing their only granddaughter. I can’t believe that a girl as
sensitive as yourself would want to keep doing something that is
causing them so much pain, after everything they’ve been
through.
JUDE: (Frustrated.) But what I wear doesn’t have anything to

do with them…!
REV. LEHEE: (Gently cutting her off.) Stop… Judith. Do you

know what Deuteronomy is? (Silence.) It’s the fifth book of the
Holy Bible. And it contains the word of God that he gave to
Moses, to lead his people out of the wilderness. It’s the rules,
Judith. The rules we were talking about. (He quotes.) “The
woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither
shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are
abomination unto the Lord thy God.” (He puts a hand on
JUDE’s shoulder again.) Now, I want you to tell me that you’ll
wear the dresses that Mollie gives you. (Long silence. JUDE
looks away.) All right. (REVEREND LEHEE turns to his
daughter.) Mollie, don’t let her go home without them. (A long
sigh. The Reverend exits.)

63
Virginia has come to interview Irene Dunne, but she was not
available. She is unhappy about interviewing Nance.
NANCE: (Shouting.) Just let yourself in… I’ll be out in a

minute! (VIRGINIA enters cautiously. She is aware of the
rumors about O’Neil’s sexual orientation, and it both fascinates
and repels her. NANCE continues to speak from offstage.) Make
yourself comfortable, hon… The studio moved up the shoot for
my scene, so I’m running a little behind. (VIRGINIA crosses to
the costume rack. Intrigued by NANCE’s undergarments, she
removes one of her slips from the rack and holds it up against
her face.) There’s a scrapbook on the table... Thought the movie
fans might be interested to know that “Nance O’Neil” was a big
star, back before there even was any Hollywood… New York,
San Francisco, Boston, Honolulu, New Zealand, South Africa—
(NANCE has entered quietly from the bathroom and stands
upstage of VIRGINIA, observing her caressing of the lingerie.
NANCE wears a loose kimono over a plain camiknicker or
teddy, with her hair up in a turban.) …Egypt. (VIRGINIA,
caught off-guard, responds with hostility. She wads the slip up
and tosses it into one of the chairs. NANCE smiles, retrieving the
slip and restoring it to the costume rack.) You won’t mind if I
get dressed while we do the interview, will you? (Crossing
seductively to VIRGINIA.) People are so much more candid
without their clothes on—don’t you think?
VIRGINIA: (Attempting to stare her down.) I wouldn’t know.
NANCE: (Looking her up and down.) Apparently.
VIRGINIA: (Formally extending her hand.) Virginia Houlton.
NANCE: (Ignoring the hand, NANCE crosses to the makeup

table and begins to open various jars.) So which one are you…?
64
(Pause.) Photoplay, Screen Play, Screen Romances, Modern
Screen… or… what’s the new one…? Movie Story?
VIRGINIA: Photoplay.
NANCE: Well… the big-time! Good for you.
VIRGINIA: (Dismissive.) Pffff…
NANCE: No…? Isn’t Photoplay the grand-daddy of all the

movie magazines?
VIRGINIA: (Disdainfully.) I wouldn’t know. (NANCE looks at

her.) It was the only job I could get.
NANCE: Not your cup of tea, then?
VIRGINIA: It pays the bills.
NANCE: Ah, yes… paying the bills. You know my scene in this
film is all of five minutes… but it pays the bills… No small
thing during a depression. Well… (Returning to her makeup.) I
could write a book about the things I’ve done to pay the bills.
VIRGINIA: (Nasty.) I’m sure you could. (NANCE, surprised,

turns and sizes her up. VIRGINIA meets her gaze defiantly. After
a moment, she turns back to the mirror.)
NANCE: I always do my own makeup. (She takes out a tin of

base.) Not a makeup man in Hollywood with half the experience
I’ve got. (Applying the makeup vigorously.) I was putting on the
greasepaint before motion pictures were even invented. D.W.
Griffith…? You know who he is…?
VIRGINIA: Of course. Birth of a Nation...
65
NANCE. (Cutting her off, pointedly.) Intolerance. (A beat.)
Well, he was picking hops in Ukiah when I met him. That’s
right… We were in a depression then, too. 1895. He was picking
hops (Rubbing on her base vigorously.)… sleeping in flophouses
(More rubbing.)… and riding freight cars. (She puts down the
base.) Ten years… That’s how long he was with the Nance
O’Neil Company. (Turning to VIRGINIA.) That’s “O’Neil”—e-i-
l. With an “i” and one “l.”
VIRGINIA: (Bristling.) I know how to spell your name.
NANCE: (Touching up her face.) He learned everything he knew

from us, but he won’t admit it. Won’t admit he even worked for
me! Ten years! You know what they call them…? “The lost
years of D. W. Griffith…” Lost! Well, I knew exactly where he
was. (Turning pointedly to VIRGINIA.) Why do you suppose Mr.
Griffith is so forgetful about that decade of his apprenticeship
with me? (VIRGINIA, embarrassed, looks away. After a long
silence, NANCE turns back to the mirror, painting her lips.) I
never allow anyone from “Makeup” to touch me. I’ve been
painting this face for forty years, and I expect I’ll be painting it
the next forty. You’d never guess I was fifty-seven, would you?
VIRGINIA: Actually, I would.
NANCE: (Pleasantly.) Virginia Houlton, you’ve got a lot to

learn about interviewing actresses.

66
Virginia, a deeply-closeted tabloid reporter, is antagonized

by Nance’s indifference to public opinion about her lesbian
relationships. She is attempting to put Nance on the spot, but
Nance turns the tables.
VIRGINIA: Maybe having a ruined reputation is why people

paid to see you… You think you’re so free, but what do you
have? You have a pretend life! You never stay in one place. You
have a pretend husband. You don’t have anything but make-
believe, but you think you’re better than women who are holding
onto something real… who have to live in the real world!
NANCE: And they use me to do it! Why do you think women

came to see me? Because I was living the life they couldn’t. So
they could watch me play the fallen woman, the woman, as you
say, with the ruined reputation… the woman who kills. And they
would weep and they would rage and they would suffer… and
then they could bear to go home and pretend. These marriages,
these lives? What I do on the stage on a bad night is more real
than what these women get up to with their best effort! You
know that’s true! And I do pay for it! I pay dearly! No, I never
had a home. No, I don’t have family. I gave them up so that
women like you could have your vicarious thrills. (Suddenly.)
Tell me, Virginia Houlton, who is it you would like to kill?
VIRGINIA: (Without hesitation.) My husband.
NANCE: Well, why don’t you?
VIRGINIA: I don’t know where he is.
NANCE: But if you did?
67
VIRGINIA: (Sudden rage.) I would shoot him! (Overwhelmed
by this explosion of long-repressed anger, VIRGINIA begins to
cry. NANCE regards her for a moment.)
NANCE: I think about killing… It’s my job… Lady Macbeth…

What made her kill? Well, what if Lady Macbeth didn’t feel like
“Lady Macbeth?” What if she felt more like a man than a
woman? It happens. It probably happens more often than you
think. So let’s say she wants to go out and fight battles, and kill
her enemies, and win all kinds of recognition for her courage.
But instead, because she’s a woman, she’s stuck in her husband’s
castle year after year organizing dinner parties and doing
needlework. And her husband, who’s not half the man she is,
gets to be the warrior. Have you ever done needlework?
Personally, I like it. I find it relaxing, because it’s mindless, but
if I had to do it all day long, I’d probably kill someone, too.
52 Pickup
Janiya: A woman, any age.
Cil: Janiya’s ex.
Setting: A patient’s room on a psych ward or in a psych

hospital.
Janiya’s ex has come to visit her after Janiya’s third suicide

attempt. Their relationship is characterized by intimacy and
wariness.
JANIYA: (Dropping the magazine, she looks up.) Carly… ? Is

that you…? Carly?
68
CIL: (Offstage.) Not Carly. (Long silence. JANIYA picks up her
magazine.) Can I come in? (Silence.) Okay. I’m comin’ in. (CIL
enters. She is carrying a small paper bag.)
JANIYA: (Not looking up.) I didn’t say you could come in.
CIL: You didn’t say I couldn’t.
JANIYA: (Lowering the paper.) I thought you were Carly.
CIL: Yeah, I heard that. You just be glad anybody came to see
you. (JANIYA picks up her magazine again.) You’re not really
expecting your girlfriend to come see you after what you just
did? (Pause.) What you just did for the third time…?
JANIYA: (Tossing the magazine to the side.) I’m in a hospital.

That’s what girlfriends are supposed to do… They come see
their partners when they’re in the hospital.
CIL: And how many times you expect them to do that. (JANIYA
doesn’t say anything.) Yeah. And, you didn’t have to go and get
yourself locked up.
JANIYA: Yes, I did.
CIL: They asked you in the ER, after you woke up, if you were
going to try to kill yourself again and you said you were thinking
about it.
JANIYA: Thinking about it.
CIL: Well, you know they gotta lock you up when you say shit
like that. You know that and don’t act like you don’t. I know
you, Janiya… Remember? You used to live with me.
JANIYA: I was thinking about it.
69
CIL: Well, if you don’t want to be here, the next time they ask
you that, just lie. And don’t act like you don’t know how to do
that. You lied all the time with me.
JANIYA: No I didn’t.
CIL: There you go.
JANIYA: Not all the time.
CIL: I asked you if you were seeing Carly and you said no.
JANIYA: I didn’t want to hurt you.
CIL: No, you just wanted to keep your options open before you
made up your mind. And what makes you think Carly would
want to come see you?
JANIYA: Well, you did.
CIL: That’s because you already left me. I had two years to get
over that. Carly, she’s just learning.
JANIYA: You’re not making me feel any better.
CIL: Yeah, well, you’re not making any of us feel better either,
so we’re even.
JANIYA: Is that why you came here? To make me feel bad?
CIL: Yeah, that’s why I came here. That’s why I went to the
store and got you some candy bars and some smoked almonds
and a deck of cards. To make you feel bad. (She hands her the
bag.)
JANIYA: Thanks. (She goes through the candy bars.) Oh,

yeah… You remember what I like.
70
CIL: I’m good like that.
JANIYA: So who told you?
CIL: Carly did. (JANIYA looks up, surprised.) Yeah. Right after
the ambulance came. Called me first. You going to get some
help here?
JANIYA: Here? No. They send a doctor in to see you. That’s all.
CIL: Has she seen you?
JANIYA: Yeah.
CIL: What’s she say?
JANIYA: She said it was PTSD. I coulda told her that.
CIL: She give you pills?
JANIYA: Not this time. Put me down for “cognitive-something

therapy.” Reframe my negative thinking….
CIL: Good luck with that.
JANIYA: I don’t have negative thoughts. (She opens the deck.)
CIL: Third time you’ve tried to kill yourself in six months and
you don’t have negative thoughts? (Pause.) Well, if you don’t, I
sure as hell do.
JANIYA: Come on, let’s play… (She holds the deck out for CIL
to cut. CIL cuts.)
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52 Pickup
Janiya: A woman, any age.
Cil: Janiya’s ex.
Setting: A patient’s room on a psych ward or in a psych

hospital.
Janiya’s ex has come to visit her after Janiya’s third suicide

attempt. They attempted to play a game of cards during the
visit, but Cil became frustrated by Janiya’s refusal to accept
any help and she has just thrown her hand, and then the
entire deck, at Janiya.
JANIYA: Didn’t that feel good? Tell the truth, Cil. Didn’t that
feel good? You sittin’ there tryin’ so hard to get me to say
something you want to hear, and me not sayin’ it no matter
what… And you just tryin’ harder and harder… and then you
just be like “Fuck it! Just take the whole game and just ‘fuck
it!’” Didn’t that feel good?
CIL: (Considering.) Yeah… I guess it did.
JANIYA: Well…?
CIL: Well, what?
JANIYA: Well, that’s what it’s like. That’s what it’s like taking
that whole bottle of pills. That’s just what it’s like. Just fuck this
shit. Fuck this game I can’t win. Whole new game…
CIL: It’s not a game.
JANIYA: Yeah, it is. “52 Pickup.” That’s what it is.
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CIL: 52 Pickup is a joke. It’s not a game.
JANIYA: Oh, yeah it is. It’s a game on my terms. Suicide is 52

Pickup. (There’s a long silence.)
CIL: Okay. But if that’s true, then you can’t even play your own
game.
JANIYA: What do you mean?
CIL: Well it’s not “52 Fuck Shit Up.” It’s “52 Pickup.” Like the
cards have to get picked up. You don’t stick around for that
when you kill yourself. There’s Carly coming home from work,
all “honey-I’m-home…” and then that silence. And your car in
the driveway, and you’ve already tried twice… and so that’s
messing with her head right there, like a horror movie… So then
she goes to the bedroom… and she has to open that door and
wonder if you’re in there. And you are, and then she has to
wonder if you’re sleeping or not. And so she has to yell at you
and shake you… so now she knows you’re not sleeping, so she
has to figure out if you’re dead… so now she has to take your
pulse—
JANIYA: (Cutting her off.) Is this supposed to help me with my

positive thinking?
CIL: (Escalating.) No, this is the game, the damn game. Your 52
Damn Pickup. This is the pickup part. Yeah… and so then the
ambulance comes and she has to watch them do all that stuff
with you…
JANIYA: Okay, okay. I get it.
CIL: Yeah. Well… so, it’s your turn.
JANIYA: What’s my turn?
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CIL: I threw the fifty-two. Your turn to do the pickup. Go on.
Cause I’m here for this damn game. I am so here for this
motherfucking game. Go on. Get your fuckin’ ass off this bed
and pick up those goddam cards. Pick ‘em up! (Screaming.)
Goddam it, you fuckin’ pick up those goddam, motherfuckin’
cards! (Frightened, JANIYA gets off the bed and on the floor. She
starts to pick up the cards.) And I’m gonna count ‘em and they
better all be there. All fifty-two of them. Because that’s how you
play… I throw the cards and you clean ‘em up. (JANIYA turns to
her.) No, goddam it! You pick ‘em up! Because that’s the game.
That’s the game you want to play…? You fuckin’ play it! You
pick ‘em up now…! There’s one over there…
JANIYA: I’m sorry…
CIL: Oh, yeah, that’s the game, too. You don’t think Carly’s
sorry? You don’t think I’m sorry? You don’t think all the
ambulance people and all the doctors and all the nurses out
here… you don’t think they’re sorry? Oh, trust me, all of us
picking up your shit for you…? Yeah, we are sorry. So you be
feelin’ sorry now. That’s the game. (JANIYA, still on the floor,
starts to cry.) Yeah. You cry. Carly’s cryin’. I’m too pissed to
cry, but I have, I will. Oh, I will. That’s the picking up. (Long
silence as JANIYA sobs.) Oh, shit. Girl, you can’t even play
cards. (CIL gets on the floor and starts to pick up the cards.)
Here… here… Count ‘em. (She hands the cards to JANIYA,
who just cries louder.) Damn. (More crying.) Goddam it, Janiya.
Goddam it! (The crying continues. Finally, CIL, shaking her
head, reaches out and pulls JANIYA into her arms, rocking her
like a baby. ) Baby, it’s all right… It’s all right…
The Clarity of Pizza
Miranda: A woman in her early 20’s. Insecure.
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Jordy: Another woman in her early 20’s. Charismatic and
self-confident.
Setting: A table in a pizza joint.
Jordy is teasing her best friend Miranda about how she looks
when eating a pizza, and she shares an observation that
Miranda is practicing “impression management” in her
relationship with her fiancé. The friendship is at risk as class
privilege and sexual orientation get dragged into the
argument.
MIRANDA: Ooooo… Napkin! Napkin…! (JORDY has taken

out her phone and is taking a picture.) No! Jordy, don’t you
dare!
JORDY: There! (She hands MIRANDA the napkins and then

looks at the photo and starts laughing.)
MIRANDA: Let me see! (She grabs the phone.) Oh, my god!

(JORDY grabs it back.) You delete that!
JORDY: Hell no. It’s going on Facebook.
MIRANDA: You wouldn’t!
JORDY: Wanna bet?
MIRANDA: Don’t! (JORDY is fiddling with the phone.) Oh, my

god, you’re serious. Jordy! No! What if Michael sees it?
JORDY: (Focused on the phone.) That’s the whole point.
MIRANDA: No! Jordy! Don’t!
75
JORDY: (A realization.) He’s never seen you eat pizza… has
he? (MIRANDA doesn’t say anything.) Your fiancé has never
seen you eat pizza!
MIRANDA: Delete it! Please, Jordy…
JORDY: What? Were you going to wait until after you’re

married to eat pizza with him?
MIRANDA: Give it here…
JORDY: Isn’t that some kind of fraud or entrapment or

something. You’re the law school student.
MIRANDA: (Desperate.) Come on, Jordy… I’ll pay for dessert!
JORDY: What? Now you want to bribe me?
MIRANDA: (Serious.) I just really want you to delete that

picture. (JORDY looks at her for a moment and then deletes it.
She shows the phone to MIRANDA to prove it.) Thank you.
(MIRANDA unrolls the knife and fork that are in the napkin.
JORDY just watches her. MIRANDA ignores her.)
JORDY: Do you let him see you without makeup? (MIRANDA

pretends not to hear. She begins to cut the pizza into pieces with
the knife.) Do you fart in front of him?
MIRANDA: I don’t think that’s any of your business. (JORDY

picks up her pizza.) Do you eat pizza in front of your girlfriends?
JORDY: (With her mouth full.) Apparently.
MIRANDA: I mean your girlfriend-girlfriends. The ones you

date.
JORDY: Yeah.
76
MIRANDA: (Rationalizing.) Well, it’s different between
women.
JORDY: Duh.
MIRANDA: (Setting down the knife and fork.) You know, Jordy,
this isn’t fair.
JORDY: What?
MIRANDA: You judging me. You’re all cute and sassy and your
family has a ton of money and you’re all why-aren’t-you-like-
me-all-spontaneous-and-authentic, but there’s actually a lot of
privilege behind your free-to-be crap. (JORDY is digesting this.)
What?
JORDY: (Defensive.) I’m thinking.
MIRANDA: Well…?
JORDY: Well, that’s probably true. (MIRANDA waits. A beat.)

Objection sustained. (They eat pizza in silence for a moment.)
But what if it’s like the glass slipper?
MIRANDA: What?
JORDY: The pizza thing. It’s like Cinderella and the glass
slipper. It’s the test. Maybe you eat pizza in front of all kinds of
people, and maybe most of them who see you with food on your
face think it’s disgusting, but then there’s going to be somebody
someday who sees you with double cheese on your chin and
thinks it’s absolutely charming.
MIRANDA: Nobody’s going to think that.
77
JORDY: I do. (MIRANDA goes quickly back to her pizza.
JORDY watches her.) Ouch…
MIRANDA: (Defensive.) I’m not lesbian.
JORDY: Didn’t say you were. Just said I enjoy watching you eat
pizza.
MIRANDA: (Putting down the fork.) I’m sorry, Jordy. If I was a

lesbian, I’d go for you in a heartbeat.
JORDY: Actually, I don’t think you would. I think you’d be all

weird with me like you are with Michael, because you’re afraid
of intimacy. Yeah. If you can just pretend to be someone you’re
not, then it’s kind of like a buffer. You can slip away anytime
and then console yourself with the fact they never saw the real
you anyway. You know what? I’m closer to you as a friend than
you would ever let me get as a lover.
MIRANDA: (Awkward pause. MIRANDA is at the end of her

skill set for communicating. She tries to make a joke.) Yeah.
Way to ruin a pizza, Jordy.
At Sea
Micky: An old butch, 80’s.
Lee: An old butch, 80’s
Setting: On the deck of a 14-foot daysailer (sailboat). It’s

close to dawn on a summer night.
Mickey and Lee, longtime buddies, have run away from

their nursing home, broken into a marina, and stolen a
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sailboat. The plan is to commit suicide together in the
middle of the night in the middle of the ocean.
LEE is just finishing a long pull on a joint. She passes it to

MICKY with a loud exhale. MICKY takes a pull. Suddenly both
of the women explode into laughter. Just as one of them begins
to collect herself, the other explodes again.
MICKY: (Laughing.) I’m going to… (Laughing.) I’m… (More

laughing.) Stop…! (Laughing.) Piss myself! (Laughing, she
passes the joint to LEE.)
LEE: (Recovering herself, she looks around.) Where’s the rest of

the champagne?
MICKY: I think we finished it…
LEE: (She takes a pull and speaks while holding her breath.) No,
we didn’t. (Passing the joint, still holding her breath.) Where is
it?
MICKY: (Takes long drag and speaks while holding her breath.)
I’m telling you we finished it.
LEE: (Expelling her breath, she rummages in the bottom of the

boat, retrieving an empty champagne bottle. She holds it upside
down.) Micky, you are so full of shit!
MICKY: (Expelling smoke.) I told you we finished it.
LEE: You finished it. (MICKY looks at her and then explodes
into laughter. LEE, annoyed, watches her for a minute and then
turns suddenly and leans over the tiller, very serious.) Oh,
fuck…
MICKY: What? (LEE doesn’t say anything.) Lee, what is it…?
79
LEE: Something caught on the rudder…
MICKY: What?
LEE: Oh, my god… Oh, my fucking god, Micky… It looks

like… It’s… (Turning to MICKY.) It’s a dead man…
MICKY: What?
LEE: (Leaning way out.) Oh, my god…
MICKY: What…? Lee! What?
LEE: Shit! (She turns suddenly and tosses a wet strand of

seaweed at MICKY. MICKY starts screaming as she frantically
claws at it. LEE watches with satisfaction.) Gotcha! That’s for
the champagne. (MICKY pauses and then explodes into laughter
again. LEE pulls on the joint.) It feels good to be on the water
again.
MICKY: Yeah, it does.
LEE: You’re a pretty good sailor. (Passing it to MICKY.)
MICKY: You’re not too bad, yourself.
LEE: It’s kinda like riding a bicycle. Some things you never
forget…
MICKY: (Needling her.) And some things you do.
LEE: (Touchy.) Like what?
MICKY: Like where you stowed your shit on the boat.
80
LEE: (Turning to look at MICKY.) What makes you think this is
my boat?
MICKY: What?
LEE: This isn’t my boat. (MICKY is speechless.) So… pretty

good job of sailing a boat I never saw before, right…?
MICKY: Wait… If this isn’t your boat, whose is it?
LEE: Does it matter?
MICKY: Does it matter? We broke out of a nursing home in the

middle of the night, talked our way into a gated marina, and now
we just stole somebody’s fucking sailboat?
LEE: So what are they going to do to us? (A pause. They both

explode into laughter again.)
At Sea
Micky: An old butch, 80’s.
Lee: An old butch, 80’s
Setting: On the deck of a 14-foot daysailer (sailboat). It’s

close to dawn on a summer night.
Mickey and Lee, longtime buddies, have run away from their
nursing home, broken into a marina, and stolen a sailboat.
The plan is to commit suicide together in the middle of the
night in the middle of the ocean. Micky has been struggling
to get the top off a jar of stolen caviar.
MICKY: What time is it?
81
LEE: (Still watching.) I’d say between three and four.
MICKY: (Turning away so that LEE can’t see that she can’t get
the lid off.) They’re going to find out we’re gone in a few hours.
LEE: Yep.
MICKY: We’ll be gone all right. (More laughter. After a

moment.) Got any regrets?
LEE: (Pulling on the joint.) Do I have any regrets…? Yeah, I

think so. I think I regret that I didn’t leave the party sooner…
before the band packed up and the guests all went home.
MICKY: (Hurt.) Not all of them. (LEE grunts.) I think I regret…

what I regret…. I can’t think of anything. Well… the caviar.
LEE: But now it’s not a regret.
MICKY: If I can get the son-of-a-bitching lid off.
LEE: Here… (Reaches out her hand.)
MICKY: (Offended, she pulls away.) I got it. (Distracting LEE,

who is watching her struggle with the lid.) So what if, after we
take the pills… what if they find us before… you know… before
we’re dead?
LEE: You can’t get it, can you? (She reaches her hand out
again. MICKY puts the tin behind her back, and stares at LEE.)
Look, I can tie the anchor rope around our ankles and then just as
we’re starting to fade—as our last conscious act—we heave the
anchor overboard… (LEE, defensive about this aspect of the
plan, watches for MICKY’s reaction. MICKY stares at her for a
long moment.)
82
MICKY: How’s that going to get the lid off? (LEE continues to
stare.) Gotcha! (MICKY explodes into laughter. Recovering, she
turns to LEE. ) That poor little bastard trying to get his stolen
sailboat back to the marina, and when he pulls up the anchor,
there’s two old, dead dykes…! (She explodes again. LEE shakes
her head.)
LEE: (After a moment.) So… Micky… Can we get serious for a

minute?
MICKY: Can we? (She explodes again. LEE looks at the tiller
MICKY tries to sober up.) Yes. (With real effort.) Yes, we can.
LEE: Because I want to know if you’re just doing this because

it’s my idea and because you know I need some of your meds to
pull it off.
MICKY: (Offended.) No…
LEE: Yeah, but, see, you always say what you think I want to
hear.
MICKY: Okay, then, yes.
LEE: You’re just going along with me?
MICKY: (Firm.) Yes.
LEE: And now you think that’s what I want to hear?
MICKY: (Even more firm.) Yes. (LEE looks at her, shaking her
head.) No…? (LEE stares at the tiller. MICKY gets serious.) I
have always thought people ought to decide when they’re had
enough. I never understood why more people don’t.
LEE: They’re in irons. (She turns to look at MICKY.) Sailing

term for when your boat gets pointed straight into the wind.
83
Can’t go forward. Can’t go right or left. Trapped. People usually
have some kind of wind behind them, but then old age gets to
them, and they find themselves in irons, and then they’re just
stuck.
MICKY: So what do you do to get out of the irons?
LEE: (Thoughtfully.) Well… you have to backwind.
MICKY: Oh. You mean like this? (MICKY rotates her rear to
face LEE and cuts a noisy fart. They both explode into laughter.)
I just pissed myself. (More laughter.) How come we never had
this much fun in the nursing home?
The Great Fire

Miriam Smith: Chambermaid for the Randalls, a wealthy
family, African American, early twenties.
Laura Randall: Daughter of the Randall family, 13, white.
Setting: The beach at Bar Harbor, Maine. October 23,

1947, evening.
The Great Fire of 1947 is raging over Mount Desert Island.

This fire destroyed many of the mansions and changed a way
of life on the island forever. Bar Harbor is on fire, cutting off
roads, and the townspeople are gathered on the beach,
waiting to be rescued by boat. The Randalls have hurried
onto a boat. Miriam and Laura are lingering.
MIRIAM: The war has always been here. Even here on the
island. Mr. Rockerfeller built his beautiful roads here for the
summer people to ride in their fancy carriages. He got the
legislature to ban the use of cars on the island in 1908… so the
84
summer people could live out their fantasies of escape for the
month of August. Then they would go back to Manhattan and
their cars and their modern lives, while the people who waited on
their tables all summer and washed their linen had to struggle
with getting from one side of the island to the other. Finally,
there was a little girl with a burst appendix who died in
Southwest Harbor… That’s right… a burst appendix. Because
there were no cars in the town to take her to the hospital in Bar
Harbor… and people were so angry, the legislature finally lifted
the ban. That was 1915. And the irony was, of course, that Mr.
Rockerfeller made all his money from petroleum. Oh, he wanted
cars all right… he just didn’t want them on his little island,
disturbing his fantasy. You know fewer than a quarter of the
roles on New York stages are cast with actors of color. It’s kind
of like the cars on the island. It apparently disturbs the fantasies
of white people to see people of color on their stages. Because it
is their story. It’s always their story.
LAURA: Why aren’t you coming?
MIRIAM: Why aren’t you going?
LAURA: Because I didn’t want to leave without you. Why

aren’t you with the family?
MIRIAM: Because I didn’t have any lines when I was with your
family. Didn’t you ever notice that?
LAURA: No. I thought you were just a quiet person.
MIRIAM: Listen. You can hear the fire… (Together the two of
them listen to the sound of a roaring forest fire. After a long
pause, MIRIAM speaks.) Does it scare you?
LAURA: It did when we were trying to leave and figure out

what to take and what to leave behind. But down here on the
85
beach, I feel safe because there’s nothing that can burn. Are you
coming?
MIRIAM: No.
LAURA: Then I’m going to stay.
MIRIAM: It’s going to be a different play, if you stay with me.

You know that. It’s not going to be about you or your family.
LAURA: That’s okay. I think it’s okay.
MIRIAM: What are you going to do with that doll?
LAURA: I don’t know. It’s not her fault I hate her.
MIRIAM: Yes, I know. It’s too easy to leave her in the sand.
Why don’t we tell her that this is a completely different world,
this island. That there has been a fire, a huge fire and that
everything she knows has been burned up and that she is going
to have to start over with just the things on this beach.
LAURA: No clothes or anything!
MIRIAM: That’s right. You can dress her in seaweed.
LAURA: And she can live in a house made of driftwood.
MIRIAM: (Speaking to the audience.) The world is changing.

Tomorrow, everyone will come back, and they will stand in the
ruins and cry about a way of life that they have lost. And then
some of them will move away, and some of them will rebuild,
and some will be sorry about the changes, and some will make a
lot of money.
LAURA: What will you do?
86
MIRIAM: (Still speaking to the audience.) I will come back to
see where the great houses and the grand hotels used to be. I will
spit on their ashes. And then I will write what I remember. It will
be an act of war. What about you?
LAURA: (Very slowly.) When I grow up, I think I will make

dresses of seaweed and houses of driftwood. Because nobody
can take them from me.
MIRIAM: That seems like a good place to start. (The sound of

the fire intensifies as the lights fade.)
Little Sister
Marie: Theresa’s sister, N’dee (Apache), 40.
Theresa: An N’dee (Apache) woman, Two Spirit, 35.
Setting: : Interior of the living room of Theresa and Jess’

home on an N’dee reservation in Arizona. 2010.
Marie is an alcoholic. Drunk and enraged, she has come to

confront her younger sister, a tribal police officer, for
arresting her husband on a disturbing-the-peace violation.
She considers her sister’s same-sex relationship sinful and
does not want the partner to have any contact with her
daughter.
MARIE: (Yelling after Theresa’s partner, who is leaving.) Hey,

you don’t even speak my daughter’s name—okay? Because
she’s got nothing to do with you! Theresa’s her aunt… but you…
nothing, no relation! Okay? (Shouting after her.) You got
nothing to say to my daughter! You hear? (MARIE turns to
THERESA.) And you—arresting Rick?
87
THERESA: Marie, I had to. Someone called the cops.
MARIE: Yeah, a call from the neighbors… that don’t even like
him, that’s all! Why didn’t you ask me? Ask me if there’s a
problem. Because I’ll tell you, there is. And it’s having
neighbors who want to butt into anyone’s business—
THERESA: He was shooting a gun—
MARIE: How do you even know? Maybe it was me, eh? Maybe
it was Onawah? Were you there? And did it hurt anybody? See
any blood? Maybe he was making a point.
THERESA: He was freaking people out.
MARIE: (Vindicated.) He made his point!
THERESA: What do you want?
MARIE: I want you to leave my family alone. I want you to stop

coming over and arresting Rick any time—
THERESA: (Interrupting.) Fine! You don’t want me to arrest

Rick, tell him to stop doing shit that’s illegal.
MARIE: Oh, listen to Miss Law-and-Order. Don’t go all “Miami

Vice” on me! Big-city cop! This is the rez! Locking up your own
brother-in-law! Where’s your sense of family?
THERESA: Where’s yours? Where’s your daughter?
MARIE: Don’t talk to me about Onawah! What do you know

about raising kids? And don’t forget I raised you! You think I’m
a lousy mother, look in the mirror! Don’t you lecture me about
family… you and that… that…
THERESA: Her name is Jess.
88
MARIE: That lesbian.
THERESA: I’m lesbian, too.
MARIE: No, you’re not. You’re my little sister, I raised you and
I can tell you—you’re not one of them. If you hadn’t gone off to
college and started spending time with all those white chicks—
THERESA: Stop it!
MARIE: And then you come back with this... lesbian, then you
think you’re all better than us, you want to lock up your own
family—
THERESA: It’s the law!
MARIE: Don’t talk to me about law—! How about the law of

God? What about that? What about breaking the law of God?
THERESA: Marie, go home.
MARIE: Don’t like hearing that, don’t you? Just because you
left the Church, you think that’s going to save you from God’s
law? Homosexuality is a sin—
THERESA: What about divorce? Isn’t Rick your second

husband? And what about abortion and birth control—?
MARIE: … a sin! Nevermind me! You and that lesbian—
THERESA: That’s it! That’s it—get out!
MARIE: You know you’re going to hell—
THERESA: Good-bye—(Shoving her sister out the door.)
89
MARIE: (The last word.) To hell! (THERESA slams the door
shut and locks it. MARIE is heard outside.) I will pray for you!
(THERESA leans her back against the door, exhausted.)
Little Sister
Jess: An N’dee (Apache) woman, Two Spirit, 35, butch.
Onawah: An N’Dee girl, 12, the niece of Jess’s partner.

Onawah is non-gender conforming, possibly Two Spirit.
Setting: The mesa outside Jess’ home on an N’dee

reservation in Arizona, sunset. 2010.
Jess, an artist, has been sketching. Onawah comes up silently

behind Jess, who lives with PTSD, spins around and knocks
her to the ground before she realizes who it is.
JESS: Oh, jeez, Onawah… Don’t do that! You gonna get hurt!
ONAWAH: Sorry… (She turns to leave.)
JESS. No, come back… (She’s already going.) Onawah! (She

turns back.) Just don’t sneak up on me okay? I’ve got… reflexes.
That’s all.
ONAWAH: Sorry.
JESS: Hey, sit down. (ONAWAH returns.) Heard about Rick…

he got arrested?
ONAWAH. Yeah.
JESS: You were there? (ONAWAH looks down in shame.) Hey…

It’s your step-dad. It’s not you. (Pause.) You should just come
90
stay with us when that stuff happens. You know that… right?
(Pause.)
ONAWAH: (Pointing with lips to the notepad.) What’s that?
JESS: A graphic novel. (A beat.) A comic book… about a

Chiricahua superhero. A woman. (She tips the tablet in
ONAWAH’s direction. ONAWAH studies the drawing.)
ONAWAH: That’s a man.
JESS: No, see… Breasts.
ONAWAH: That’s weird.
JESS: What’s weird?
ONAWAH: Looking like a guy with breasts. (JESS gives

ONAWAH a look. ONAWAH looks away in embarrassment.)
JESS: Her name is Lozen. Means “Little Sister” In Indian. And

that’s her girlfriend, Dahteste. [Pronounced “tah-DOST-eh.”]
ONAWAH: You should just turn her into a guy.
JESS: How come?
ONAWAH: It’s way better.
JESS: Why? (A long pause.)
ONAWAH: (Embarrassed.) Because… You know.
JESS: (After a moment.) Oh… Because we bleed when we are on

our time?
ONAWAH: (With vehement disgust.) Gross!
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JESS: (Serious.) Onawah. It’s a sacred power.
ONAWAH: No, it’s not!
JESS: What about the Sunrise Ceremony… What about that,

eh? Four whole days we celebrate for a girl when she starts her
time. What about that? She becomes the mother of the creator,
White Painted Woman? You don’t think that’s powerful?
ONAWAH: (Looking away.) It’s stupid.
JESS: Oh, yeah… stupid. (Pause.) Wanna know something

really stupid? In the old days, say even if the enemy was chasing
us down, if a girl started to bleed for the first time, the N’dees
would stop where they were and send some of the tribe off to
create a diversion, so they could still do the Sunrise Ceremony.
(ONAWAH shakes her head.) I know, stupid—eh? Who would
be dumb enough to think it was more powerful to create life than
to destroy it.
Little Sister
Jess: An N’dee (Apache) woman, Two Spirit, 35, butch.
Theresa: An N’dee (Apache) woman, Two Spirit, 35.
Setting: : Interior of the living room of Theresa and Jess’

home on an N’dee reservation in Arizona. 2010.
Theresa’s alcoholic sister has just left. Jess is returning from

a visit she had with the sister’s daughter Onawah. The
women have sat down for dinner.
THERESA: (Looking up.) She’s gone.
92
JESS: I know. I met her out on the mesa.
THERESA: I’m sorry… When Marie has been drinking—
JESS: (Cutting her off.) When she hasn’t, she’s just the same. I
saw Onawah.
THERESA: How was she?
JESS: She wouldn’t say. (A long pause.)
THERESA: Not surprised.
JESS: You think she’s being abused?
THERESA: Onawah? I don’t think my sister spends a lot of time

with her, but I wouldn’t say that she was being abused.
JESS: (Shaking her head.) It’s not right.
THERESA: Neither is taking a kid away from her family…

Onawah has her school friends, and she has us…
JESS: It’s not right!
THERESA: Here… Have some of your chili—
JESS: There should be a place the children can go…
THERESA: They’re called foster homes. Sometimes white foster

homes.
JESS: You know what I mean. (THERESA shakes her head.)

What…? What?
93
THERESA: There’s this place in your head where you go, where
the good guys have all these superpowers, and the bad guys
always get punished… but most of us don’t have that magic
place, and you can’t understand that.
JESS: I don’t understand you?
THERESA: No. (JESS waits.) I complain about my job and you

tell me to quit. Or my sister… Why doesn’t she just stop
drinking? Or Onawah… Just send her off to that safe place for
kids… wherever that is. You see these other endings for people,
but we’re just trying to play the cards in our hand.
JESS: (Angry) Cards? Okay… How about this then…? How

about the deck is bad? How about you’re so focused on how to
play those cards in your hand, you don’t even notice it’s a bad
deck and a crooked dealer… So what’s the point—
THERESA: (Cutting her off.) Jeez, it’s what we have! That’s the
point. It’s what we have. No, Onawah doesn’t have a happy
family. She has the family that she has. She’s learning some
things… some good, some bad. Because that’s life. And, no, it’s
not like that magic place in your head, so you think we’re losers!
JESS: No, I didn’t even say that! (THERESA looks at her. JESS
looks away. There’s a long pause.) Marie told Onawah she can’t
come here anymore.
THERESA: I know. (Pause.) So we’re going to have to respect

that.
JESS: “The rules?”
THERESA: The law.
JESS: Yeah. (She reaches for the bowl of chili.)
94
Sara: A woman in her early 30’s who weighs more than

250 pounds, a soprano with a trained voice.
Gillian: Her partner, a young woman in her 30’s, a

contralto with a trained voice.
Setting: A hospital room.
Sara is in the hospital awaiting bariatic surgery. An opera

singer, she has been frustrated by the discrimination she has
experienced as a women of size in the opera world. Her
partner Gillian disapproves of the surgery.
GILLIAN: Sara…? Sara…? (Entering the room. Sara is

listening to a recording of Maria Callas singing “Vissi d’arte”
from Tosca.) Are you awake?
SARA: Shh… (She begins to sing along with the recording.

GILLIAN listens for a few seconds.)
GILLIAN: Callas? (SARA continues to sing. GILLIAN nods to

herself, her question apparently answered.) Callas. (A pause.)
Before or after? (SARA continues singing, possibly louder.) I
said, “Before or after?”
SARA: (Turning off the CD player, she recites dramatically

from the libretto.)“I lived for art, I lived for love;/ Never did I
harm a living creature!...”
GILLIAN: Was this before or after the tapeworms. (SARA turns

and looks at her.) Well…?
95
SARA: Maria Callas never had a tapeworm! That’s a vicious
rumor.
GILLIAN: Then how did she lose all that weight? (SARA turns
away from her.) You told me she went from 210 to 144 in six
months. And she liked to eat…
SARA: (Singing in serious imitation of Callas.) VISSI D'ARTE,

VISSI D'AMORE . . .
GILLIAN: I’m serious, Sara. They didn’t have gastric bypasses

back then. How did she do it?
SARA: (Sighing, she turns to face GILLIAN.) Iodine.
GILLIAN: Iodine?
SARA: According to the president of the International Maria

Callas Association.
GILLIAN: Why don’t you do iodine, then?
SARA: Shock, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, delirium, damage to the

nervous system… oh, and you can’t pee. (A pause.) It’s very
dangerous.
GILLIAN: Unlike the gastric bypass.
SARA: Gillian, they’re coming to get me for surgery in thirty

minutes. I was taking your advice and doing a guided
visualization exercise in order to put myself in a positive state of
mind—
GILLIAN: What were you visualizing?
SARA: I was visualizing myself singing Tosca, at the Met.
96
GILLIAN: Weighing 144 pounds?
SARA: (Responding with real anger for the first time.) Weighing
whatever it takes to sing at the Met!
GILLIAN: Even if it kills you.
SARA: I’ll tell you what kills me…! It kills me not to sing! It
kills me to know that all my years of training, all my years of
private lessons, all my years of learning languages, all my years
of graduate school, all my thousands of dollars of student
loans—are for nothing… nothing! And not because I didn’t
work hard enough, not because I don’t have good vocal chords,
not because I can’t act—because I’m fat! Because of something
as stupid, as brainless, as… as… fat—lard, lipids, fat! That’s my
enemy—an organic carbon chain.
GILLIAN: No! Sara, your enemy is a culture that thinks all

women should be thin… and white, and blonde and able-
bodied—and heterosexual, for that matter!
SARA: Gillian, I’m thirty-two years old. My knees hurt already.

I’m probably going to be crippled by forty, and then I’ll need
double knee-replacement surgery. And that’s dangerous, too.
GILLIAN: Can’t you just lose the weight…?
SARA: (A warning.) Don’t!
GILLIAN: Why can’t we talk about this?
SARA: (Really angry.) Because you don’t know what the hell
you’re talking about. You aren’t fat. You aren’t me. You don’t
know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what’s been done
to me. You don’t know what it’s like when your entire life is one
big obsession with calories—how many are in this, how many
are in that, if you eat this now, but you skip that later, if you just
97
drink a lot of water, if you just lose a lot of water, if you try a
grapefruit, if you take out the fats, if you put the fats back in, if
you just eat protein, if you just eat salads, if you just stop
thinking about food . . . No! If you just make a list of every,
single thing you eat all day long, if you weigh everything, if you
just divide everything into portions, if you weigh yourself, if you
don’t weigh yourself… No! No, Gillian! We can’t talk about
this! Because you can’t talk about it. You don’t know anything!
(A pause. SARA begins to cry.) Is this the way you think I should
go into surgery?
Sara: A woman in her early 30’s who weighs more than

250 pounds, a soprano with a trained voice.
Gillian: Her partner, a young woman in her 30’s, a

contralto with a trained voice.
Setting: A hospital room.
Sara is in the hospital awaiting bariatic surgery. An opera

singer, she has been frustrated by the discrimination she has
experienced as a women of size in the opera world. She has
been sedated and is waiting to be taken to the operating
room. She has been having wild dreams about various
operas. Gillian, who opposes the surgery, had left, but she
has come back.
GILLIAN: Sara…? Sara…?
SARA: (Still very drowsy, very drugged.) What…? Is it over?
GILLIAN: No… They haven’t operated yet, but they’re going to

be coming to get you any minute.
98
SARA: You came back…
GILLIAN: I came back. Now, listen…
SARA: You came back to get me?
GILLIAN: Sara, I have some things I need to say to you—
SARA: (Interrupting her, drugged.) You’re not supposed to be

looking at me!
GILLIAN: What?
SARA: You’re not supposed to look at me.
GILLIAN: Why?
SARA: Because that’s the only way Orfeo can lead Euridice out
of the underworld—by not looking at her… at me… her… me.
GILLIAN: You’re not making any sense…
SARA: I’m dead, but you’ve come to lead me back to life. Only
you can’t look at me.
GILLIAN: Sara—
SARA: Don’t look at me! I don’t want to die!

GILLIAN: I thought you said you were already dead…?
SARA: I am, but if you look at me, then there’s no hope of me

ever returning to life.
GILLIAN: I’m confused.
99
SARA: Weren’t you just singing Orfeo’s aria, “Che faró senza
Euridice?” Which you wouldn’t have had to do, if you hadn’t
been the doctor and turned me into Madama Butterfly so that I
would commit hari-kari—
GILLIAN: (Concerned.) Sara—
SARA: Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me until I’m out of hell!
GILLIAN: And when will that be?
SARA: (Starting to fall back asleep.) At the end of Act IV.
GILLIAN: Act IV? (A beat.) Sara—(SARA tenses and GILLIAN

remembers to look away.) I’m not looking! I promise… (SARA
relaxes again.) But I’m thinking that singing all those operas
might have affected your brain.
SARA: What are you saying?
GILLIAN: I’m saying that maybe spending so much time acting

out morbid male fantasies might… well, might have altered your
perception of reality.
SARA: (Her eyes closed.) Are you looking at me?
GILLIAN: Sara, I don’t know how to say this, but I think you’ve
learned some things backwards—(She takes SARA’s face in her
hands and looks at her.)
SARA: (Opening her eyes in horror.) No! No!
GILLIAN: Yes, Sara. What’s killing you is not the way I see
you. It’s the way they see you. That’s why you’re trapped in hell.
SARA: But in the opera—
100
GILLIAN: (Holding her firmly.) Wake up! We’re not in an
opera. This isn’t a dream. And your stomach isn’t some costume
piece you can have altered, or some prop you can ask them to
replace…
SARA: I thought you came back to support me.
GILLIAN: I came back because I realized it was wrong for me to

try to tell you what to do with your body. I’m sorry I did that.
And it was wrong for me to abandon you because I didn’t like
what you were doing. But I need to be heard. I need you to hear
me. So, please just let me speak, and then I’ll accept whatever
you decide to do. (SARA looks at her.) The body is old, Sara.
Older than we are. Older by centuries, by millennia, and it’s got
billions of things going on every second, and it’s keeping track
of them all, even when you’re asleep. It knows what it’s doing
better than we do—better than the doctors…
SARA: (Becoming focused.) But they, that famous “they” you’re

so fond of citing—they do guard the gates of the underworld.
And they don’t let fat women pass into the world above. If I see
myself the way you do, I will never sing professionally. That’s a
fact.
GILLIAN: Is it? What about Callas? Her voice was never the
same. And listen to the role she’s singing! Tosca is going to let
someone violate her body to save her love, but she’s going to
lose what she’s trying to save anyway, and that’s the way they
want the story to end for us.
SARA: What should I do?
GILLIAN: I can’t tell you that, but your body can.
SARA: How?
101
GILLIAN: Why don’t you give your body a voice, instead of
trying to give your voice a body?
El Bobo
William Bollocks: White adult male.
Julietta Martinez: Latina female.
Setting: Office in William Bollocks’ home.
This is an adaptation of Chekhov’s short story, “The Ninny.”

William is testing Julietta, who cleans his home
professionally, to see how much unfairness she will tolerate.
He is convinced that people are only exploited, because they
allow it.
WILLIAM: Now I am sure you are needing your money,

because I neglected to pay you last week… but you never
reminded me, did you? (She does not respond.) Well… let’s see
here… Now, what we agreed on was ten dollars an hour, did we
not?
JULIETTA: (Uncomfortable.) No sir. It was fifteen dollars.
WILLIAM: No, ten… I made a note of it. I always pay my

housecleaners ten. Now, let me see… You worked twenty hours
last week…
JULIETTA: No sir, I worked twenty-five. There was the party

on Saturday…
WILLIAM: Twenty hours exactly. I made a note of it. So you

have two hundred dollars coming to you. But then there is the
question of your lunches…
102
JULIETTA: I don’t count them on my time!
WILLIAM: Yes, I know that, but last week, you ate some of our
food…
JULIETTA: They were leftovers! Your wife said she was going
to throw them away…!
WILLIAM: … which does not change the fact that: You. Ate.
Our. Food. So I am going to have to take twenty dollars out…
(JULIETTA gazes out the window, shaking her head.)
WILLIAM: Now, that leaves us with one hundred and eighty…

And then there is the question of transportation—(JULIETTA
turns with alarm.) My wife picks you up and takes you home…
JULIETTA: I don’t have a car! There is no bus…!
WILLIAM: … which does not alter the fact that our gas is being
burned for your convenience… not to mention depreciation,
maintenance, and insurance. I’m afraid that is going to have to
be another twenty a week… So now we are at one hundred and
sixty… Correct? (JULIETTA turns back to the window in shock.)
And, yes, there was the dinner party on Friday night. You
mentioned it yourself. So… You broke a plate. The entire set is
now incomplete and devalued… and unfortunately the pattern
has been discontinued, so… there you are. But I’m only going to
deduct the cost of the plate… We will absorb the greater loss.
(He sighs.) So… forty dollars…
JULIETTA: Forty?
WILLIAM: Another matter. My wife tells me that her diamond-

stud earrings are gone—
JULIETTA: (More alarmed.) I didn’t take them!
103
WILLIAM: Well, now, I didn’t say you did. But they are gone...
JULIETTA: She lost them! She loses things all the time. I’m the
one who finds them… in the carpet, down the sink—
WILLIAM: Fortunately, they were only zircon. Of course, you

would have no way of knowing that—
JULIETTA: I didn’t take them!
WILLIAM: I could just as easily have told you they were actual
diamonds… but, you see, I don’t want to be unfair. So they only
cost twenty-five dollars, but let us say forty… because…
(Wagging a finger at her.) … remember, Julietta… They could
have been real diamonds!
El Bobo
William Bollocks: White adult male.
Julietta Martinez: Latina female.
Setting: Office in William Bollocks’ home.
This is an adaptation of Chekhov’s short story, “The Ninny.”

William is testing Julietta, who cleans his home
professionally, to see how much unfairness she will tolerate.
He is convinced that people are only exploited, because they
allow it. She turns the tables on him.
WILLIAM: … forty from one twenty… less another twenty.

There! Sixty dollars… (He takes out his wallet and produces the
bills one at a time, with flourishes.) Twenty… forty… sixty!
Make sure it’s all there…(He hands them to her. JULIETTA
104
stares at the bills. Shaking her head and looking out the window
again, she takes them and stuffs them into her pocket without
counting.)
JULIETTA: (Rising to leave.) Gracias.
WILLIAM: (Rising aggressively.) Why did you say “gracias?”

Sit down! Sit down! (JULIETTA sits.) Don’t you realize I’ve
been cheating you? I steal your money, and all you can say is
“gracias!”
JULIETTA: I’ve seen worse…
WILLIAM: “Worse…?” “Worse…?” Well, no wonder! I was

playing a trick on you—a dirty trick… I’ll give you your three
hundred and seventy-five dollars… It’s all here in an envelope
made out for you. (He picks up the envelope on the desk.) Is it
possible for anyone to be such a nitwit? Why didn’t you protest?
Why did you keep your mouth shut? It is possible that there is
anyone in this world who is so spineless? Why are you such a
ninny? (JULIETTA takes the envelope and exits. WILLIAM turns
to the audience.) Well… there you have it… “Gracias…”
“Gracias” for cheating her out of her money…! And I thought,
as I watched Julietta walk out of my office how easy it would
have been for her to stand up for herself… how easy it would
have been for her to just—
JULIETTA:(Yelling from offstage.) Don’t turn around!
WILLIAM: (Turning.) What? What? Who’s there…?
JULIETTA: (Still offstage.) Don’t turn around or I will shoot!

Put your head down on the desk! (WILLIAM puts his head down.
JULIETTA approaches him from behind his chair. Pretending to
wield a gun, she jams her fingers into WILLIAM’s back.)
105
JULIETTA: Now. You will take your wallet out and set it on the
desk. (Pause.) Now. (WILLIAM, his head still down, pulls out his
wallet and sets it on the desk.) And your watch… (WILLIAM
fumbles with his watch and sets it next to the wallet.) And your
cell phone. (He adds his cell phone to the pile.)
JULIETTA: (Jamming what appears to be a gun into his back.)

And now, if you do not want to die, you will say “Gracias.”
WILLIAM: (Quickly) Gracias! Gracias!
JULIETTA: (Stepping back and crossing in front of the desk, she

waves her hands in WILLIAM’s face.) Just kidding… No gun…
(WILLIAM, disoriented, sits up.) ¿Gracias? ¿Gracias? Es
posible que alguien sea tan idiota? Por qué ¿No protestaste? ¿Por
qué mantuviste la boca cerrada? ¿Es posible que haya alguien en
este mundo que sea tan cobarde? ¿Por qué eres tan imbécil?
(Shaking her head in amazement, she turns to exit. WILLIAM
watches her. Suddenly she whirls around and screams at him:)
Head down! (Terrified, WILLIAM drops his head to the desk
again. JULIETTA bursts out laughing.)
JULIETTA: ¡Qué bobo! (She exits, slamming the door.)
Radicals
Ginny: A young woman in her early 20’s, conservative in

taste, Margo’s roommate.
Margo: A charismatic young woman in her early 20’s, a

hippie and political activist, athletic and spontaneous.
Setting: The kitchen of Margo and Ginny’s one-bedroom

apartment near the university in Boulder, Colorado, 1972.
106
Ginny is a deeply closeted lesbian in love with her housemate
Margo. Margo is caught up in the anti-war movement and
she has brought home a man who is wanted for killing a
policeman during a riot.
GINNY: Yes, I want to talk. There is a man in the living room I

have never seen before who has two first names and comes from
Brooklyn, North Carolina. And he has a gun in his pack.
MARGO: How do you know?
GINNY: Because it fell out. Which brings me to my fourth

point. Is he staying here?
MARGO: I told him I’d have to ask you.
GINNY: Well, go ahead.
MARGO: Look, Ginny, you always say you don’t want to know
anything about what I’m doing…
GINNY: And I still don’t. Just ask me if he can stay.
MARGO: Look—he’s in trouble, but he’s a good man. He’s not

afraid to fight for what he believes in.
GINNY: Ask me.
MARGO: He hasn’t got much money and he needs a place to

stay.
GINNY: That’s two things you have in common.
MARGO: What do you mean by that?
107
GINNY: I mean, I pay all the bills around here. You’re always
between jobs. I do all the cooking. You’re always between
meals. I do all the cleaning and laundry because you’re always
between meetings. I’m tired of you pretending you share this
apartment with me. You don’t share it at all. But now you want
to share it with this murderer the police are out looking for.
MARGO: They are not.
GINNY: They came by tonight with his picture.
MARGO: What did you tell them?
GINNY: I told them I had never seen him, but now I have. And I
don’t want to see any more of him.
MARGO: All right, Ginny. I think I should tell you about him.
GINNY: And then you should ask me if he can stay.
MARGO: His name is Mark. He killed a policeman in the Miami

riots.
GINNY: What Miami riots?
MARGO: Anti-war.
GINNY: Oh, of course.
MARGO: Anyway, he didn’t mean to. It was just one of those

things, with tear gas and horses and nightsticks and everything
happening so fast… and he’s been on the run for four months —
no money, no ID—can’t see any of his friends. His family is
watched all the time… He’s a nervous wreck, but he tries not to
show it…
GINNY: How did he kill him?
108
MARGO: He hit him.
GINNY: With what?
MARGO: I don’t know. I don’t care.
GINNY: Well?
MARGO: Well, what?
GINNY: Ask me.
MARGO: (A tense pause.) Can he stay here?
GINNY: No.
MARGO: (A moment of shock before she rallies.) Good.

Because now I’ve got something I want to tell you. You say you
pay all the bills and I don’t share—Well, let me tell you, that’s
not the whole truth. You get your money’s worth. Don’t think I
don’t know you love the excitement of living with me. You get
to meet all my friends, listen to all our adventures, watch us go
from one crisis to the next—you love it. And you don’t have to
lift a finger. Nobody’s going to put you in jail. After all, you pay
the bills on time, don’t you? Well, big deal. It’s a small price to
pay to get someone else to live your life for you.
GINNY: Don’t make your speeches at me.
MARGO: Why not? You love my speeches. You pay me for

them.
Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
109
Rosalie: A woman, 30. She is an activist.
Dawn: A woman, 34. She is a social worker.
Setting: A bench on the lawn of Matteawan State Hospital

for the Criminally Insane, New York. An afternoon in late
August, 1968.
Rosalie has organized a group of radical feminists, and Dawn

is a new recruit. They have come to visit Valerie Solanas to
see if she will become their new figurehead.
DAWN: (Looking around.) This place gives me the creeps. It

looks like one of those mansions in an old horror film.
ROSALIE: It’s still a lot better than where she was.
DAWN: I don’t know about that… “Matteawan State Hospital

for the Criminally Insane?” Like a prison, except here they get to
drug you and electrocute your brain… because who’s going to
believe a person who is mentally ill?
ROSALIE: Valerie Solanas is not crazy!

DAWN: I said “mentally ill.” And she did shoot two people.
Actually, it would have been three, except the gun jammed.
ROSALIE: She’s dangerous, that’s all. The patriarchy wants
everyone to believe that dangerous women are are crazy.
DAWN: But Andy hadn’t done anything to her.
ROSALIE: He was stealing her work! He exploited her. He was
fucking with her head… Look, he took her play, told her he
would produce it, then told her he had lost it, and then he offered
her a job as a typist!
DAWN: Okay, but she shot him.
110
ROSALIE: It was symbolic. Like shooting a President. Andy
Warhol represents all of the misogyny of the Western art world,
all the ways that women’s art is stolen, and appropriated—
DAWN: But—
ROSALIE: If you think she’s crazy, why are you here?
DAWN: For support. Isn’t that why you founded the Brigade?
ROSALIE: Yes, but to support her as a hero, as a martyr, as one
of the greatest spokeswomen for the feminist movement…
DAWN: I guess I could see it more clearly if he had been a
rapist, or a batterer—
ROSALIE: (Crossing to the bench and sitting.) Listen, Dawn,
here’s the thing— Two months ago I was sitting in this
restaurant in Mexico City, trying to figure out how I was going
to get back into Cuba, and up on the wall there were all these old
sepia photographs of Zapata and Pancho Villa… I mean, I was
sitting there, right in the same room where all these
revolutionaries used to party. I could still feel the vibes… and
then this Mexican anarchist dude—
DAWN: (Distracted, she interrupts.) Is that her?
ROSALIE: (Looking.) No. She’s not that old... Are you

listening?
DAWN: Yeah, I just don’t want her to miss us. I mean, she
doesn’t know what we look like, or even why we’re here.
ROSALIE: Anyway, this anarchist poet dude was trying to put

together some kind of protest in time for the Mexico City
Olympics, and so he sits down next to me, and he starts talking
about how the CIA control the Mexican secret police—
DAWN: Shouldn’t we tell somebody we’re here?
111
ROSALIE: We already did… at the front gate.
DAWN: I mean somebody here on the grounds… Maybe they

think we’re inmates…
ROSALIE: And maybe we are. (A long pause.) Do you want to

hear why I want to see Valerie Solanas?
DAWN: Sorry.
ROSALIE: Anyway… This anarchist poet dude has this

newspaper in his hands, and it’s rolled up and he keeps smacking
his hand with it to make his points, and then suddenly it unrolls,
and I see that’s it’s in English. It’s this paper put out by the
American expatriate community in Mexico. And the headline
jumps out at me… I can remember every word… “New York
Super-Woman Power Advocate Shoots Andy Warhol.”
DAWN: “Super-woman power advocate…?”
ROSALIE: Yeah. And that’s when I made the connection. It’s

not in Cuba, it’s not happening in Mexico. This is the next
revolution. In fact, this is the revolution of revolutions! Women
are the ultimate proletariats! When Valerie shot Warhol, it was a
political assassination. That’s why this is different from women
who kill their rapists or their batterers. It was symbolic. This is
the shot that is going to trigger a movement for women’s
liberation all over the world!
DAWN: (Sincere.) That would be nice.
112

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