Episode 11: Circus (Libretto)
Vireo is presented to a medical convention in Sweden. She finally frees herself of Caroline’s evil influence.
Featuring
Deborah Voigt; Magik*Magik Orchestra; Minna Choi, Artistic Director; Matthias Bossi; Randall Matamoros; The San Francisco Girls Chorus; Lance Suzuki; Amateur Music Network
TRANSITION: Morphine.
(Massive bricolage. Raphael is an artist; he constructs a surgical theater out of shadows and paper scraps.)
CHORUS
Morphine light
The minus time
Something comes
To save her
But no
The voice, the snow
Stop. Elude -
Taking what they gave her
In the morphine light
The minus guides
Equation
The ice, the less
Shifts her through The arctic’s off
Subtraction. To surgery
Sweden, here she comes
Everything changes
(Transition complete.)
2. Circus.
(The Doctor, attired as a surgeon, stands in the amphitheater.)
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DOCTOR
Dear doctors...
(We barely see the Doctor reach behind himself for an instrument. A click.The cow, dressed as a lion, enters and rages. The Doctor rushes out.)
COW
Roar! Roar! Roar-moo! Mooarm! Roa-oo-ah-ohrmm!
(The Cow coughs. A phone comes out of its mouth. The phone rings. Raphael runs on and grabs it; but his frostbitten hands barely function.)
RAPHAEL
Morphine? Morphine?
(Raphael is dressed in a black mourning coat - too big for him. His face is made up clownishly, but only in shades of grey and black.)
VOICE
(Through the phone.)
The event at peak.
(The Cow slurps back the phone; Raphael rushes out. Caroline enters as a lion tamer, and hypnotizes the beast.)
CAROLINE
(To the audience.)
The king and queen of Sweden
Are the witches we have seen in
Our revelation dreaming
On the subject of evil
The subjects of these monarch
Are subject to two archons
Our god has charged with treason
For their hand in evil
(The Lion is asleep. Vireo faces it.)
Wake up, oh mighty lion, and do your trick.
(Down on one knee, arms wide out.)
Please? Please?
(The Lion wakes and stands. Caroline turns back out to the audience. Smiling.)
Our hosts are responsible for the plague! Hang them, please!
(She and the Lion exit. Pernette enters as ringmaster.)
PERNETTE
Mother laces her shoes, looking for an elephant
Raphael and the doctor are active, active
(Mother enters dressed in sequins; she laces high shoes. She stands in one ring. The Doctor and Raphael enter another ring, riding tricycles - they both look like undertaker Emmet Kellys.)
DOCTOR/RAPHAEL
I know I know I know I know
What do I know? That I know I know…
PERNETTE
Vireo is, at first, an aerialist –
DOCTOR/RAPHAEL
I know I know
What do I know? That I know What do I know?
PERNETTE
… then a subteraneanist –
DOCTOR/RAPHAEL
I know I know
What do I know?
PERNETTE
… burrowing into the earth.
(Vireo enters wearing a surgeon’s greens - but dragon scaled; the mirror she wears on a band on her head is painted as a third eye. She wears dragonfly wings; she carries a storybook. The afflicted Girls give her their attention.)
CHORUS
High, low, Vireo (multiple times)
High and low, Vireo
You are late in getting home.
VIREO
I fly high and low
I skate on heaven’s surface tension
When I hit the earth I burrow
CHORUS
High, low Vireo
Girl, you are expected
Home is where we hang you at
You are expected
Home begins when home you go
You are late in getting home
Girl, you are expected, expected
Please come back, please come back alive
We’re expecting you home.
The Afflicted Girls expect you home
(You, you are expected
You’re late in getting Home)
Please come back alive oh Vireo
High, low, Vireo
Please come back alive.
DOCTOR
Are you getting all this?
RAPHAEL
I’m out of room! It’s going into the footnotes and bibliography and
acknowledgements!
(Caroline enters and tries to draw the attention of the Afflicted Girls -)
CAROLINE
Oh mighty kings of the jungle-
Oh mighty kings -
Oh mighty -
(But she has no beast to tame.)
PERNETTE
Vireo’s stunts all
Extend from her
Reading
A story to the afflicted girls.
(Caroline, Mother, the Doctor and Raphael exit. Vireo reads a story to the afflicted girls.)
VIREO
Once upon a time a dragon
Instructed a virgin
By reading books out loud.
Because the dragon’s breath was fire,
The books burned as she read them.
They paid close attention.
The dragon and the girl who came to visit
Lived in the heat of blown glass -
The cave in which the dragon lived
Was blown glass.
The king sent a knight
To put an end to this class.
Knight threw his lance and
Killed the dragon.
Glass ball shattered.
DOCTOR/RAPHAEL
Leaving daughter dancing on
The black ribs of night’s percussion.
VIREO
I hate the world because it is around me
I hate the world because it moved me
I hate the world because I love the world
And would leave it to hold it
Most of all the Doctor and Raphael
And my mother are witches
Because they are around me
I see them every day
PERNETTE
Cried the dragon
Celestial surgeon
Expiring in ash and shard.
(The Elephant stops abruptly and Mother falls off. She’s a lion tamer now; the Doctor and Raphael hold hoops. Dragons appear… and 200 girls.)
VIREO (To Mother.)
The lions and tigers and elephants are all worms, and they kiss the flesh from your
bones.
CAROLINE/AFFLICTED GIRLS
Many witches burn
MOTHER (Nervously.)
Oh mighty kings of the jungle, please tell me what to do!
AFFLICTED GIRLS
30,000
ELEPHANT
I tell you elsewhere, and then merely to your hearing.
CAROLINE/AFFLICTED GIRLS
Many thousand witches burn
VIREO
I never see you again.
AFFLICTED GIRLS
Thirty thousand, thirty thousand witches burn
CAROLINE/AFFLICTED GIRLS
Many witches burn
CAROLINE
I name as Adam named
Ownership, erasure
AFFLICTED GIRLS
Thirty thousand witches burn, witches burn.
CAROLINE/AFFLICTED GIRLS
I name as Adam named
Ownership, erasure
Many witches burn
Thirty thousand, thirty thousand witches burn
VIREO (Blurts out.)
I name Caroline.
(Sudden silence.)
I name Caroline a witch.
CAROLINE
Oh, really. Vireo. I name you. I’ve know all alone you were a witch. Do you want to do this? 30,000 die hanging or in flames. Do you want to do this?
AFFLICTED GIRLS
Ah! Ah!
CAROLINE
Do you want to die a crazy woman?
VIREO
I name Caroline.
CAROLINE
I name Vireo.
VIREO
I name Caroline.
CAROLINE
I name Vireo.
VIREO
I name Caroline.
CAROLINE
I name Vireo.
VIREO
Caroline.
CAROLINE
Vireo.
VIREO
Caroline.
(The Runaways depart. The show curtain splits to reveal 30,000 murdered witches on barren hills – the fires twinkle like orange stars, the metronome rope-hanged people tick and tock. Fanfare, Queen: Made of glass.)
QUEEN
Queen, queen, queen.
DOCTOR
Mother marries the Doctor
Vireo and Caroline go, they got away, no trace
Then World War One
Takes pride of place and
Doctor flees to treat
Shell-shocked men in Finland
(Caroline leaves, reading about herself in a magazine.)
QUEEN
Queen, queen, queen.
Turn person to pieces, scatter and
There, a snow globe order.
Scatter,
Shake, shake
Academy turns,
The map burns.
Each need, a disease,
Cost of cure
Royal. Sure.
Me,
I,
We
Blow it up, blow it out to find the mean.
Greetings from your queen.
(The sound of distant explosions. The field where the witches died is now a no-man’s land, crossed with lazy gunfire and barbed wire.)
Great knowledge sees the very many.
All at once:
One isn’t any.
Whirl, Whirl the blown apart,
Rhythm of near
Rhythm of far
And when spin stops
There is still
Me
I
We
Hello from your Queen
Awake without a moon, inside dynamite
Debris flies free
Spectacular light
Countries roll apart
Hysterical art: a proxy
Dollars go again to bombs:
Money’s best aim, get, name.
CAROLINE (Reading the magazine)
Raphael’s fame
As the man who broke hysteria
To the media:
Fades
(Raphael flies in on a hypodermic needle, wearing his flowing black
graduation robes.)
RAPHAEL
I finished my thesis! Finished! Finished! And it has been serialized in several
magazines!
(He exits.)
CAROLINE
And the magazines are gone.
QUEEN
Absence, evasion, is good manners
A nod to the grace
Of a well framed occasion
Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. I
Am your Queen
(A Crow flies to Vireo. A stick pops out of its mouth and a message unfurls. A voice comes from the Crow - it is the voice heard at the beginning of the play, but tortured down to crow-size.)
VOICE
Leaves fall
Pernette, the hanged… blow down
(Everybody but Vireo leaves in war-fog.)