2020 VISION by Robert Patrick
For Kevin Ferguson, who typed it as fast as I could talk it.
Created for “Overnight Sensations,” Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia, At 8:30 pm on Friday, July 5, 2013, Lab Director Todd William Ristau gave six playwrights (1) a theme, (2) a setting, (3) a style, plus (4) an arbitrarily-picked five-person cast, and (5) a director.
We playwrights went off to write. That’s me searching for a word on the library balcony while Kevin Ferguson waits to type it.
(Above) My cast and director (Charlie Boswell, standing in glasses) receive scripts at noon.
Saturday—(Image above) Cast onstage 8 hours later for “Overnight Sensations,” in which six plays created thusly were performed as staged readings. L. to R.: Brian O’Sullivan (Newsman), Bayla Sussman (Amelia), Monique Ingram (Luz), John Bergman (Pastor), Stephen Glassbrenner (Jose).
THE PLAY
In a barbershop, Jose in a barber’s smock with a pushbroom stands beside a big-screen television.
JOSE (calls to someone offstage)
No, no. You guys go home. It’s all right, it’s all right, I stay here, I sweep up the hair, I close up the shop. You go home to your wives. I’ll watch the late news TV…. (to himself) Home ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, you’ll find out. (turns on TV)
NEWSMAN
Hi-yo, Austin! It’s Tell-all, all-around, round-up, update, dateline, line-feed or “Tellallaroundroundupdatelinefeed”. And tonight’s up-up-up update is that at midnight on this date exactly one year ago in 2019, Texas became the last state in the union to ratify gay marriage. From one-year ago, here’s what the lone star state’s all-star opponent of homos-on-the-range, ReverendMinisterClericPastorDoctor Booker Moses, had to say about this bill.
PASTOR
Doom and disaster are impending, are in verity upon us now. This satanic, Sapphic, Sodomaic abomination of same-gender de-gender-ation will bring upon us, has brought upon us, plagues and disasters.
NEWSMAN
But ReverendMinisterClericPastorDoctor Booker Moses, there have been plagues and disasters since the beginning of time.
PASTOR
That’s how long these deviates have been planning this scourge.
NEWSMAN
And here’s how God’s country’s first homo-philiac homebodies, Austen’s capital gay couple, Amelia Eversham and Luz Delamoray, responded.
AMELIA
We’re so gratified to be ratified.
LUZ
Honey, don’t make jokes.
AMELIA
Gratified to be ratified. As the last state in the union’s first union in sacred sisterhood.
LUZ
Yes, sweetheart. And now let’s us go home.
AMELIA
Yes, little light of my life. We’ll be going home after our connubial rights are cemented on the steps of the capital.
LUZ
I wanna be married at home.
NEWSMAN
And so the twain were entwined in the vision of all video viewers while the Reverend and his flock marched back and forth screaming “Bah Bah Bah”. And all these parties rejoin us tonight on Tell-all, all-around, round-up, update, dateline, line-feed or “Tellallaroundroundupdatelinefeed’s” up- up-up-update. Reverend?
PASTOR
Pollution, illegal immigration, epidemic over-population have followed this detestable détente.
NEWSMAN
How could overpopulation follow gay marriage?
AMELIA
Our happy homo-home-life has brought only bliss and beatification. Tell them, honey-lamb.
LUZ
You tell them, and let’s go home.
AMELIA
We’ll march home with our gay sisters and brothers who have joined us in wedded bliss.
LUZ
I don’t want to march anymore. I want to stay home. You said I could stay home.
AMELIA
Our brethren and sistren will come to our home for an historic celebration.
LUZ
It’s not our home. We don’t have a home. All we have is a headquarters.
AMELIA
Luz, lover…
LUZ
We don’t have a home. We don’t have privacy. All we have is you on the news, you on the street corner, you staying out all night demonstrating. I can’t stand it anymore. I want a divorce. (LUZ EXITS.)
PASTOR, NEWSMAN, & AMELIA
Divorce?
PASTOR (cackling madly)
Oh, sublime sanctified suffering saint, shrive your unworthy apostle of his sin, slash and lash his fetid flesh for having dully-doubted the power of your putrefaction. The serpentine sinners whose demoniac manipulations brought this infectious incarnation of vileness upon your vassals have festered, ruptured, and erupted the unspeakable intestines of their foul philosophy’s feverish fantasies and shone blindingly brightly that their joining in satirical simulation in sacred bonds cannot, shall not, will not, must not endure. (PASTOR EXITS.)
AMELIA
But de-what? Divorce? But I’ve got a grandstand set up in the backyard. I’ve rented microphones. Networks are coming. Cable networks. You can’t do this to me! (AMELIA EXITS.)
NEWSMAN
Well damas y caballeros, ninos y ninas, herders and hard-hats, and all the ships at sea, you heard it here. The heartland’s symbolic spokesperson’s first anniversary gal-gal gala will be held in Splitsville. Wait, the teleprompter is telling me promptly…whoops…it’s a slip-up. It’s a slip-up up-date exclusive. The county clerk’s office informs us that…and I’m quoting verbatim… (imitates corny country voice): ”Mr. Tell-all, all-around, round-up, update, dateline, line-feed or “Tellallaroundroundupdatelinefeed”, I’m sorry, ya’ll. I took a gander at the statutes, and we was in such a damn-fool hurry for Texas to be the last state to have a first union, we done went ’n’ give them homeosexuals ratification, but it looks like we didn’t provide no proviso for divorce for ‘em. No sireee, once them Ellas and Fellas got married one of them each to the other one, they’s plumb stuck! Shucks, I’m so sorry, y’all.”
PASTOR
What? No? No divorce? No. This divorce must be! This divorce was made in heaven to sever the bonds made from hell. This divorce must be the divine domino that topples the multiferous emulations of its original evil and unbinds the befouled bonds which by all rights, regiments, and rituals belong only to couplings with definite genital distinctions. They must be divorced!
LUZ (ENTERS)
I don’t believe what I just heard on Transit TV. Are you telling me our state legislature had the savvy to give us our rightful rights, but didn’t have the brains to include what any sensible state body would have realized was part and parcel of it?
PASTOR
Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha. Aroint thee, witch
AMELIA (ENTERS)
Luz Lacrimosa Delamoray Eversham.
LUZ
Don’t call me that.
AMELIA
Sweetheart, it’s your name.
LUZ
I don’t want to hear that.
AMELIA
And mine is Amelia Barker Eversham Delamoray forever more.
PASTOR
Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha. Claw and contaminate. Claw and contaminate.
LUZ
Did you hear what that pack of illiterate inconsiderate so-called legislators did? I mean didn’t do?
PASTOR
Law in the hands of the lord. Law in the hands of the lord. What have I done? What has your humble servant done that this overwhelming omission should be allowed? They must divorce. They must be dis-allowed.
AMELIA
Oh, shut up, you Billy Graham cracker.
LUZ
Oh, both of you shut up. (To Pastor) You and your eternity. (to Amelia) You and your “ever-mores”. It’s taken twenty years,since I was a little girl, for us to get this far- and Texas will never admit it’s wrong. Texas took twenty years to get abortion and twenty more to get rid of it. It’ll never go back and bite its tongue and say “no gay marriage” and I’ll be an old woman like you before it gets around to giving us divorce. We’re stuck together forever. (To Pastor) You wanted us in hell. Well, this is hell and we’re stuck in it.
AMELIA
My dearest darling doll-face dumpling.
LUZ
Don’t say that.
PASTOR
Yes. Writhe in hell. Repent in hell. Scream in hell. Sprawl and scrawl and scream in hell…. (realization) Wait! What?
LUZ
Oh you heard me- or you didn’t hear me- you never hear anything, either of you, but your own egos. I want out of this and I’ll never get out of this. I just want to be free and go back and cook at that dude ranch for the rest of my life.
AMELIA
Back. You want to go back. You want to go back there. You want to meet other women, don’t you? You want to meet other rich women.
LUZ
You don’t know what I want. You! You! You don’t care what I want. This is the utter end of my life. This is the beginning of death. I’m bound to you. Bound. Bound for permanent perdition.
PASTOR (Having a slow realization)
Bound. Bound, you say? Perdition, you say? Permanent?
NEWSMAN
You’re hearing all this exclusively. Are you hearing this? Am I hearing this? Are we actually experiencing this exclusively on Tell-all, all-around, round-up, update, dateline, line-feed or “Tellallaroundroundupdatelinefeed?”
PASTOR, LUZ, & AMELIA (to Newsman)
Oh, shut your blow hole.
PASTOR
Yes. Yes. Oui. Dah. Si. Yah. Yahvohl! Oh creator and curator of all confusion. Yes, they must be fused, used, abused. They shall not be divorced! Thou hast seen fit to elevate these arch-demons into thy consecrated connubial chaos and to condemn them therein unto the anguished end of their wretched, retching, wrenching pathetic passing existences ere they are interred in the Dantean depths of Abbadon to perpetuate their pain even beyond that which mere mortal married Methodists all know.
LUZ
What in the name of all ordinary rationality are you blathering about?
PASTOR
You cannot be divorced. You shall not be divorced.
AMELIA
Honey, we can work it out.
LUZ (To pastor)
We what?
AMELIA
We can work it out.
LUZ
(To Amelia) No, not you, him! (to Pastor) What are you saying?
PASTOR
You who thought to desecrate and destroy wedlock from within shall in its stead be thereby destroyed.
AMELIA
Don’t you see darling? It’s a sign we’re meant to be together.
LUZ
So you can be famous. So you can be first. So you can be foremost. So you can be on TV. So you can be on t-shirts. So you can demonstrate and deliberate and demand.
AMELIA
No, so I can be with you. Only you. Remember the things we said? Don’t you remember the things we did? Don’t you remember the day we wed?
LUZ
I remember believing you.
AMELIA
I remember beloving you.
LUZ
You never loved me. You loved the limelight.
AMELIA
You light up my life.
LUZ
Oh, you’re such a jukebox.
AMELIA
Darling, all I wanted was to make a world where we could be safe, where we could be strong, where we could be sweet to each other.
LUZ
You never thought of me, you thought of the whole world.
AMELIA
You are the whole world to me. You always will be.
LUZ
Then what did we need all these rights and ritual rigamarole for? We were together ever since that night under the dude ranch moon.
AMELIA
And I meant every word I said.
LUZ
Then let’s get free of all this.
AMELIA
What?
LUZ
Let’s get a divorce. We don’t need the law to tell us we can love each other.
AMELIA
Is that really what you want, sugar-pop?
LUZ
You’re all I want, Sugar Mom.
AMELIA
Then let’s go, honey.
LUZ
Let’s go where? Home?
AMELIA
No, honey. We’ve got to go march for the right to divorce.
LUZ
You’ll never change, will you?
AMELIA
I’d never change, darling. I’d never change you for anyone else, even without the law allowing it.
LUZ
Where did we put those placards? Where did we put those magic markers? Where did we put those bullhorns?
AMELIA
Well honey, you put them up.
LUZ
Oh, I always have to put everything up. You expect me to take care of everything, know where everything is.
AMELIA (as she and Luz exit hand-in-hand)
But heart of mine, mate of my soul, that’s because you are my everything.
NEWSMAN
And now-
PASTOR
No, the sacred summit of severance must never be allotted to the hordes of hell. We cannot prevent you from being married, but by God, you shall not sully the scared ceremony of divorce! Gays must be forced to marry and remain married! I must summon my flock. I must summon my followers. I must summon my fellow believers in the before and the beyond. These mythological monsters must never be allowed to desecrate divorce. Come, take me back to my microphone. Take me to my media conference. Take me to my make-up man. They must never be allowed to sever the sacred bond. Never, never, never-
AMELIA AND LUZ (Off)
We wanna sever.
PASTOR
Never! Never!
AMELIA AND LUZ (Off)
Sever!
PASTOR
Never! (PASTOR EXITS.)
(Ad lib “Sever!,” and “Never!” continues offstage until Jose “turns off” the TV.)
(Newsman looks one way, the other, then forward.)
NEWSMAN
What.. what… what? Oh, right-y. Please phone the number at the bottom of the screen and tell me if this really happened, for the love of existent-or-non- existent God. Please call Tell-all, all-around, round-up, update, dateline, line-feed or “Tellallaroundroundupdatelinefeed” and confirm what my senses are telling me.
(Jose turns off the TV. Newsman droops lieke a stuffed doll. Offstage shouting stops.)
(JOSE SWEEPS.)
JOSE
I don’t know what they want divorce for…divorce ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. They’ll find out. They’ll find out. They’ll find out.
(Jose repeats “They’ll find out, they’ll find out” until the lights fade.)
END PLAY
