Lodestar Quarterly

Issue 4 • Winter 2002 • Featured Writer • Drama

Half-Light Dances

Brian Thorstenson

Sorting it out

Sorting it out

WINIFRED
I arrived by foot. Through a door. And... and...

DEREK recedes into the darkness.

entered a strangeness... a strangeness typically met under conditions little calculated for. Previous writings were of little use, appearing vastly out of date. Early hostility was abundant. I feared for my very life until a native guide, a docent, interceded. He appeared well-versed in a variety of ritual dances leading me to ascertain that I had encountered a society that combined and recombined disparate elements. A society of synthesis. But what did these dances portend? What did they signify? Could they be likened to the rain dance of the Zuni? Would it introduce a dancing period intended for beauty magic similar to the Trobrianders? Was it the ballroom dancing of the debutante? No. None of these. No significance was found, no intrinsic necessity attached.

The jurisprudence system is minimal and highly arbitrary. One might even say annoyingly arbitrary. It is also easily circumvented. This leads an outside observer to conclude that group formation could be easily toppled from within or without portending an instability in all stratas of society.

I was led through a parade of days barely indistinguishable from each other. And likewise through a litany of nights. Within this repetition, names, usually seen as linguistic containers of personality, were freely assigned and reassigned. Group members seemed to enter a temporary trance state where they forgot who they were. Again this points to a dispensability, this time a dispensability of personality. With that comes an insufficiency of memory required by all cultural structures in creating a group identity and hence group history.

There was an intermittent spark, a gray obsession, a leaning into that acquired enormous significance. However the overriding observation, of the many thorough and detailed observations I made during my stay, and perhaps the most disturbing, was an odd need to begin. And return to a beginning. Was this some ritual of re-birth? Unlikely. Was it creation myth manifested over and over again? Highly doubtful. Was it all just a dirty little game of flimflam? Quite possibly, for I observed no formal marriage rituals, no set kinships systems, no organized religious structures. In short it is hard to imagine this grouping of people existing past tomorrow, hard to imagine they have existed at all, leaving me to ascertain that any further investigations would be fruitless. Entirely fruitless. I have captured a snapshot, the final snapshot, of a society dissolving.

pause

Well! Yes.

DARYL
That's your conclusion?

WINIFRED
Marvelous, isn't it. Now this is mine exclusively? Correct?

DARYL
Oh, yes, it's all yours.

WINIFRED
Good. Oh, I feel quite...

DIAMOND
Wait, wait, wait. What about me? You've completely left me out. That was all about them.

WINIFRED checks her notes.

WINIFRED
Oh, yes... um... let's see... ah... no...ah, no. Um... no. Ah, here. "Doesn't chat."

WINIFRED closes her pad.

DIAMOND
Doesn't chat! That's it?!

WINIFRED
Nothing else was of import.

DIAMOND
Look, lady. I walk into a room, it's important. I open my mouth, it's important.

WINIFRED
Well then, nothing else was relevant.

DIAMOND
I ooze relevance. I define relevance.

WINIFRED
Crucial then, to my work.

DIAMOND
Foul!! Over the line. You've gone too far. You've miscalculated. Oh, yes, I make it look easy. The glamour, the bass beat, the heartache. That's my job. These two? They'd be nowhere without me. Nowhere. They don't think that. They wouldn't admit it. But spend a Friday night outside their bedroom watching them dance alone in the window pane. That's my voice they're dancing to. My words, pounding down the lonely, hovering above their bed. And who do they take with them on those brighter days driving the coast or biking the park? Or those sparkling nights surrounded by friends and drinks and drugs? ME! ME! ME! What happens when it all comes crumbling down and they're curled up on a comforter that smells of the man that just walked out the door. For good. They run to me like dogs. Dogs! And I put out. Every time. Every fucking time. Not expecting anything back. Nothing. I don't have to. If the next day is better. Or worse. They'll be back. Lapping at my heels. It's inevitable.

DEREK
That's enough.

DIAMOND
Don't push me. I'll leave.

DEREK
Yeah, right.

DARYL
She could leave you know.

DEREK
And where would she go? Who else would put up with her? Huh?

DIAMOND
Plenty of other people.

DEREK
Don't fool yourself. You need us just as much as we need you.

DIAMOND
Ah-ha! So you admit it. I am crucial.

to DARYL

Tell her that. Make her write that down.

DARYL
Out of my hands. She'll do what she wants.

DIAMOND

to WINIFRED

Write it down! Write that I'm crucial!

DARYL

to WINIFRED

Won't you? Do what you want?

WINIFRED
Part of my job.

DIAMOND
Please! Please write down that I'm crucial. Please!

WINIFRED
There may have been something I missed about your... your position.

DIAMOND
Then you'll include me?

WINIFRED
I'll take it under consideration.

DIAMOND
Under consideration?! Oh, that's it. Under consideration! I don't need to be auditioning for some woman wearing sensible shoes.

DIAMOND storms off

DARYL
See. She's leaving.

DEREK
She'll be fine. She's prone/ to...

WINIFRED
"...to fits of outburst." Oh, yes, I got that down.

DARYL
You did? Then why...?

WINIFRED
Oh, I do love watching her fireworks. Not very professional of me, that, but she does get on one's nerves, doesn't she. Forgive me for my small moment of vindication.

DEREK
She's got a sense of humor.

WINIFRED
I have been sited, on occasion, for my wit.

DARYL
You do a good job of submerging that quality.

beat

Will you really say all that?

WINIFRED
Oh, yes. This will assure me a spot on the fall lecture tour. Well then, time for me to depart.

DARYL
What else is in your findings that you didn't tell us?

WINIFRED
About you two? Nothing else. It's all there.

DARYL
There must be something else. A sentence misplaced. A gesture ignored. Check your notes.

WINIFRED
All finished.

DARYL
A question then. Anything. Ask me anything.

WINIFRED
I have no other questions.

DARYL
Another day then. Let me show you one more day.

WINIFRED
I have had quite enough of your "days."

DARYL
A night then, /like many other...

WINIFRED
And of your "nights."

DARYL
But it's not right! That can't be right!

WINIFRED
Right? Wrong? What would you know about that? You're just a docent. Whereas I...

DARYL
You're tossing our lives aside just to save yourself from retirement.

WINIFRED
I hardly think that...

DARYL
Right? Wrong?

WINIFRED
This is the result of a thorough and detailed...

DARYL
You owe me.

WINIFRED
Owe you? I don't owe you...

DARYL
You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. Those two would have eaten you up.

beat

Well?

Silence

WINIFRED
Be quick about it.

DARYL
It's a day?

WINIFRED
Fine.

DARYL
Or a night?

WINIFRED
None of this will change my findings.

DARYL
A beginning.

WINIFRED
Of course. How could there not be.
A beginning. Hardly the way to sway my opinion.

***

Next Page:   A beginning: you decide   (page 12 of 13 pages)

All Pages:   See the entire play on one page

Table of Contents:   Half-Light Dances

Brian Thorstenson lives in San Francisco. His first play, Heading South, received a Bay Area Critics Circle Nomination and was part of the 1996 Berkeley Art Centers' performance series. His play Summerland was selected for the 2000 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2000 Z Festival of New Performance, and opened in New York City at Wings Theatre Company. The play is included in the anthology Plays and Playwrights 2002. His poetry has been published in Transfer and Six Thousand Five Hundred. Brian has received writing fellowships from the Djerassi Resident Arts Program and Blue Mountain Center. He currently is a lecturer in playwriting at San Francisco State University and Santa Clara University.

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