Challenge 3 – Due 04/02 at 09:59:59am GMT

Tap into your dreams… and put them on stage. And make it a fascinating piece of drama. Think not only of the visuals but also of the story. Oh, and make the production huge.

Author’s note:

This was weirdly enjoyable. As I sit here, crap Saturday night TV blaring and takeaway curry fumes tickling my streaming nostrils (enjoy that mental image), I feel delightfully empty. Apart from the Mutton Chukka and plain naan, that is. So, spiritually empty I suppose, or is that too desolate? Anyway, 3 days in and I’m actually really enjoying the challenge of writing every day. Amusingly, I know that in 2 weeks time, I know I’m going to be a gibbering wreck, which is always an interesting build on my perennial state of blithering idiot. Right, back to the curry. TTFN.

Cast:

Actor

Actor

Scene:

The stage is all sky and a pig at 100 times scale made of solid gold. Every member of the audience is sat in front of a 1970s tv set which shows nothing but static. The white noise is amplified by large speakers either side of their heads. They have their backs to the action. Every time an audience member moves they receive a tiny electric shock in their little toe. Each TV is equipped with a rear-view mirror.

The actors enter, wearing woven gold kimonos covered in pigs embroidered with red liquorice shoelaces, with sleeves so long the trail behind them for 35 meters, and collars so high that they hold their own lighting rigs.. Occasionally, if they are hungry, the actors may eat the shoelaces, but this will be deducted from their wages.

The each bring with them a chair made out of wheels. The chairs are designed to swivel while the actors stay still.

Actor sits with her head in his hands, while actor paces loudly in ballet slippers.

Actor: The stage is a bowl of gazpacho soup while everyone else is a sieve.

Actor: But every sieve has it’s place in the world, and the world has a place in each sieve.

Actor: Not if it fall through the crack!

Actor: Cracks? While does every subject turn to ass-holes with you?

Actor: The TV sets allowed us to moulder in the fetid tide of neo-populism devoid of emotional substance. We wasted.

Actor: We are all now identical! Happy in our Babylonian likeness.

Actor: Dislikeness. Harken how we are unwanted. Unsexed. We each have a giant tit growing out of our ass like Haemorrhoids. We play with ourselves, constantly, but feel no pleasure in the act.

Actor: Ah, there was no pleasure quite like the Mildred Pierce of existence, with you. You are all I knead to make bread and honey.

Actor: And what of the washing machines? Singing an unending drone of Taylor Swift while our buried dead emote the machinations of decades old Coronation Street?

Actor: We are royalist icing!

Actor: Royally fucked, more like? Have you looked out of the window recently?

Actor: Not since the advent of Advent.

Actor: The dissenting population of a dying planet are scratching at our Dortmund treaty.

Actor: Darling. Greet the new day with the downward dog, with me, for my, inside me…?

The Actor takes the Actor’s hand. It transforms into a bird and flies away.

Actor: The dog does not like to be upside down.

Actor: Now you are just being the Isles of Scilly.

Actor: It wants to break free.

Actor: Be free. Not BOGOF, discounted, disputed or impacted fecaly.

The Actor turns into a bowl of Chicken and Sweetcorn noodle soup.

Actor: The dog curls into a feotal ball and delivers a heartrending Haiku, devoid of hope, while the dish rejects the spoonerism. Malaprop believes this to be an act of cosmic idolatry, shattering the bowl in a fit of Tim Peake, before delivering a kamakaze stroke to her own tumour.

Black out.

It starts to snow on the audience.

Actor: Distinct layers begin to build up. Bulks and bulges, into the plains of existence you have so carefully shawed up with the limited convictions of your own distractions. Bones upon bones, bodies on bodies, skin and offal, seeping into each other with no adherence for the laws of physics or common decency. City bleeds into city. Chicken nuggets of wisdom are dripped like nice pearls into coral ears of the most potent potentate. All things beautiful must die. All hair dyes must fade, for that is the curds and wye of the whirled. But intrinsic to this belief system is the persistence of life in the face of all common sense.

Lights up. The Actors are now rainbows.

The snow turns to rain which gets harder and harder as the scene goes on.

Actor: This is horrible.

Actor: I agree.

Actor: Rain is dripping down my woven gold kimono.

Actor: I am watching the rain drip down your woven gold kimono.

Actor: Maybe we should take the woven gold kimonos off?

The both step put of their woven gold kimonos. The kimonos are freestanding. The Actors are both naked. There is the sound of laughter. On the screens in front of the audience is the single word “LAUGH.”

Actor: Are we back where we began?

Actor: I doubt it. We began in a Morley’s Chicken in Streatham.

Actor: Most excellent wonder.

The rain stops.

Black out.

The TVs go back to pure static.

The Actor becomes a beam of moonlight. The moonlight flickers with the sound of the Actor’s voice.

Actor: My mother used to tell me a story. Over and over again. She never knew when to shut up, that woman. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, On and and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Actor: And she always ended up back where she’d begun.

Actor: Yes.

Actor: I knew it. You always tell that story. It has the air of grim inevitablity about it.

Actor: Levity is the dover sole of wit.

Actor: At least she derrived pleasure from her own moral certitude.

Actor: I always thought Birmingham had a lot to answer for.

Actor: Oi.

Actor: I loathe you.

Actor: I loathe you too.

The Actors kiss and apply make up to each other.

Actor: Bloody Birmingham.

Black out.

Within the static of the TV a talking mouth can sometimes be seen.

Actor: Bloody Birmingham. The source of all human woes. But not as many as the one I left behind me after he left me behind to go over the top. Over he went, into the oil and barbed wire no-man’s land of nomadic egoism and self-declared genius. Armed with nothing but a green carnation and a rap sheet of his own convictions, he was infatuated by a smoke-stack who delivered nothing but still-born profligate, righteousness. Well, as long as you are right, that’s all that matters… right? Pressing down on impertinent breath, you find yourself dreaming of oxygen but given nothing save inert and ignoble gases. No mask to stop the blockage of stockings and suspenders as they block the valves into ventricles. No more for you, morbid obesity, you think. Getting fat on the toil of this common man is no longer an option.

Lights up.

The Actors are not on the stage. Only their kimonos. The kimonos walk towards each other. Circle each other like fighting animals. They charge towards each other. As the clash, their flowing momentum resolves into a rapid waltz. They dance together.

Actor: Top trumps fill the ear with sunshine.

Actor: We should bottle it with golden stoppers. Savour it for that time when it is rarefied and we are too old to remember.

Actor: Big pink chicken lickin’ dick pickin’ people fucking purple pickled people eater Easter feaster yester year they will be missed once they are up to the neck in zeitgeist artistic criticism and fedoras.

Actor: Why did you not…. why did you not tell me sooner?

Actor: Insertion martian spartan hearten parting casting sparkling harking auditory hallucinations sense constructed from inconstant emoticons motions forward as we approach the all-you-can-eat buffet cart where you just keep on running humming Colonel Bogey.

Actor: I never knew you felt that way. You should have said something.

Actor: The scant fuelled beaver is bright with hindsight which is a wonderful thing as you take your eyes off the prize fighter and take a solid punch to the patella for your trouble and strife.

Actor: How could you?

Actor: Wife, I love you. Simply to say, I wish I had said it before you walked out the door, turned around now, touched the ground now. Oh baby, you know what I like. Chantilly cream and seabream with a pony tail hanging down, saddled and ready to roll into the arctic expense of Iceland, between the freezer chests of delight, where I will lay me down between the line of vinyl light.

Actor: So this is it then?

Actor: Yes.

Black out.

The Actor enters the stage alone.

Actor: My lover used to tell me a story. Over and over again. Never knew when to shut up, that human. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 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on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, On and and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Black out.

Lights up.

The Giant Gold Pig: It has gone unremarked that there is a giant golden pig on stage. Not a sausage. It could be that you think I am savouring my bacon, but without a snout, I am just being trottered out to refute the porkies told through the mouth of an idiot. And while I do not wish to leave you of a sow-er note or throw pearls before swine, let me tell you it is so easy to make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. But let us not boar each other, but ring in the new day with squeals of delight. Let each and every porcine, be doused in the oinkment of life. For I am the piggy in the middle!

With that the pig opens it’s mouth fully, unrolling a tongue of red, which inflated into stairs. The Audience bounce and clamber into the pig’s mouth, they find themselves in a stage and the Actors are giving the audience a standing ovation. They exit stage left, pursued by a bear and into the bar.

Black out.