AppropriateAn Octoroon: Plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Author:Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

3

The cicadas? They just go on singing—singing loudly, singing incessantly—a long, enormously complicated, deeply layered, entirely improvised, ancient song, which is mostly about the morning, but also about the evening and the day but also the night and the sun but also the moon and about waking up and flying around and what it is like to fly around and about loving each other and hating each other and fucking each other and hurting each other but also about trying to find each other in order to hurt and/or fuck each other but also about falling asleep and then waking up again and the quiet and the noise that accompany each day and the sounds of each other’s voices and the occasional music but mostly about the noise and the grass and the sky and the air and the water but also the water in the air and the heat in the air and the dry in the air and the birds in the sky and the birds on the grass and the birds on the branches and always birds—birds always—but also the sap in the branches and the sweetness of the sap in the branches of the trees but also the trees themselves on the grass and the grass on the dirt but also the dirt itself and how they miss the dirt and how they miss their homes in the dirt, the places where they came from, and the feeling of missing the thing you can never go back to and the mystery of the way one moves away from it and through the present and the mystery of the present and the mystery of the movement itself and the leaves on the branches and the birds in the leaves on the branches and the branches on the trees and the trees on the grass and the grass on the dirt and dying.

And we can’t understand a word of it.

Meanwhile, lights immediately come up on the living room, some day—any day. A knocking is heard at the front door. Someone says, “Hello?” Beat. Then more knocking. But no one answers.

Sudden blackout and lights immediately come up on the living room, some day—any day—just as a part of the floor collapses beneath the sofa and one of the display tables. Everything on the table slides off in a waterfall of breakage.

Sudden blackout and lights immediately come up on the living room, some day—any day. Somewhere outside, giggles are heard. Someone is egging someone on. A rock comes flying through the window and shatters it.

Sudden blackout and lights immediately come up on the living room, some day—any day. A bookshelf collapses.

Sudden blackout and lights immediately come up on the living room. It’s some day—any day. A rodent of some sort darts across the space quickly. Or maybe racoons are heard fighting over scraps in the kitchen.

Sudden blackout and lights immediately come up on the living room, some day—any day. There is a thunderstorm. Lightning flashes. Wind howls. A tree branch is either seen or heard crashing through another window.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.