Lodestar Quarterly

Issue 4 • Winter 2002 • Featured Writer • Drama

Half-Light Dances

Brian Thorstenson

Walking one line

Walking one line

WINIFRED

writing

"One suggests a drink. The second agrees. They leave together." Alright then. Moving...

She looks up. She is alone.

Well!

writing

"As suddenly as he announced himself my guide has disappeared."
Hello?! Mr. Docent?
Hello? Oh, dear.
Hello?
Hello?
I don't know why I should expect some moment of courtesy all of a sudden.

She starts to call out again but reconsiders.

No. No time to beat the air. Right then, Winnie. A moment to recap, to check one's course.

referring back to her notebook

Hmm...A strange preoccupation with dancing. Some singing. An aversion to photography. And interruptions. Incoherent babbling about boys in trees, boys in blue, boys in bars. Formidable woman, extremely rude, prone to unprovoked outbursts.

DIAMOND enters unseen by WINIFRED.

An inability to remember one's own name. Very troubling that. Very troubling. Oh, my my my. This isn't adding up. Not at all. I don't see how I shall...

stopping herself

No. Remember the archipelago, Winnie, remember the archipelago. AH-HA! Oh, I feel as if I were walking on the thin edge of a wedge. A very thin...

DIAMOND
Silence!

WINIFRED
Oh, you/ startled...

DIAMOND
Quiet! Mute!

WINIFRED
I was/ only...

DIAMOND
Oh, shut up.

WINIFRED
How dare you speak to me like that.

DIAMOND
A woman does not speak till spoken to.

WINIFRED
Poppycock.

DIAMOND
Well it was worth a try. Jesus. Chat chat chat. I don't like chat. Chatter. Chattering. Bores me. It's tedious. It's tiresome. Just come out with it. Just say what you're thinking. Don't give me this chat chat chat. I'm not a chatterer. I don't chat.

WINIFRED
Well, that's perfectly clear.

DIAMOND
Be direct. That's what I say. Direct. One line. It's the only way.

Lights shift.

DIAMOND
Nothing is as charming as a woman walking on one line, coming down the stairs, one dainty toe appearing on each lower step, directly in the center of her weight. By walking on one line a woman will appear more graceful. Step, after step, after step. If there's soft drapery about her she will seem to float into a room; a festooned ship waiting to be christened by all manner of male admirers. And admirers she will have. This is a fact. This is eternal. Men. She will have men. Admiring. Her. Walking.

A one line walking woman will be the envy of all her friends, for only she can force her admiring men to walk that line with her. And walk they will, like puppies on rhinestoned leashes, lapping at the flowing folds of her draped legs and buttocks. Tongues wagging, hearts thumping, pants straining. Straining to be released for their one line walking woman. Pant pant. Pound pound. Throb, throb, throb. Walk woman, walk.

It behooves the one line walking woman to occasionally pause -- mid-step, turn her head -- slowly, face her admirers and shout: "Heel Puppies!" Her legion of male admirers will fall into each other, crotch into buttocks, buttocks into face, face into shoulders against crotch into buttocks into face against crotch.

She tosses back her head and laughs.

Pant, pant, pound, pound, throb, throb, throb. Walk woman walk.

Lights shift.

WINIFRED
I see.

making a note

Doesn't chat.

DIAMOND
Stop that. Scribbling, scribing. Notes!
Look. At them.

DARYL and DEREK enter and lean into each other as if sitting in a diner booth or talking in a crowded bar.

WINIFRED
And?

DIAMOND
Now make a note. Get that down. Before it's lost, before its shimmer dims.

WINIFRED

making a note

Two men talking.

DIAMOND
No no no. Correct that.

WINIFRED
Two men talking quietly.

DIAMOND
Facts. Nothing but facts. Be precise. Be rigorous.

WINIFRED
Two men talking quietly about... about... about what? What are they talking about?

DIAMOND
I don't know. I can't hear them.

WINIFRED
Then how am I to get it down?

DIAMOND
It doesn't matter what they're talking about.

WINIFRED
Well of course it does.

DIAMOND
Off the mark. Missed the trail head. No commuter lane for you.

WINIFRED
What are you talking about?

DIAMOND
The lean. That lean, into each other. Get that down.

WINIFRED
The lean?

DIAMOND
Walking by a bar, two men sitting in a window seat or glancing across a restaurant, two men in a diner booth leaning into each other, talking. Oh, that lean.

Lights shift.

***

Next Page:   A beginning: leaping and leaning   (page 8 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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