“How To Save A Life”
PLAY (b4 ours): Kingdom Of Earth
(Chicken / flood / roof-top)
OUR PLAY: I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark On Sundays
JANE has her life with Tye packed in boxes and is ready to say goodbye to him. She says that she is leaving him for another man who can afford “heavy prolonged hospital expenses.”
TYE questions whose hospital expenses they are talking about.
JANE admits to hiding a blood disease for more than a year and then throws up plans about a wealthy Brazillian who can afford a fancy hospital room that she makes sound more like a penthouse suite than any thing else. She continues acting brave as a way of saying what is left to bring her comfort. At the same time Jane falls to her knees begging Tye to turn away from his street life to stay home with her. She believes love is the magical antidote that gave her a remission when she and Tye first met and now she is on her knees begging him for more. She needs his love to live and the chance for another remission.
TYE is blindsided by the event and he struggles to understand all that “she’s thrown at this country.” He abandons Jane and addresses the audience directly.
JANE feels his absence the moment he leaves the room. She is trapped with a skylight and an invisible cat to keep her company. She cries out in pain and makes a large sweeping motion with her arm across the vanity table. Plastic cosmetics crash to the ground as she cries, “I should have told you nothing! I should have just slipped away!”
Tye is begging Jane to cut some slack and to believe in the love they share. He is trying to convince her that his love is all that she needs to live happily. By the end of the play Tye has Jane believing in his promise to return for a celebration of love. He reminds her that he’s got only 4 grades of education and no training for nothing. He is getting dressed and says it’s after dark and he needs to go.
Dancers (yellow stars, yellow cab girl) CAR is VEHICLE (transport . . . love “has traveled so far . . . has so far TO GO)”
Reading for the plot design and intension in narrative:
EROS IS MOTOR | MOTOR as EROTIC, we find representations of the dynamics of the narrative text, connecting the BEG-in-n-ing and end across the middle
Jane is on her knees begging Tye TO TURN away from his life on the streets and TO STAY home with her. She needs his love)X(when Tye crosses the room TO PUT his clothes on) and making of that middle–what we read through a field of force.”
With champagne aspirations, which you’ve blasted.
Middle = (when Tye crosses the room TO PUT his clothes on) reading for the narrative Plot Design and Intension in narrative (*TYPE* | P-UT ME) connection the begin inning and end across the middle—what we read through—a field of force.”
You RECON that’S right
you’re right. I NEVER
asked many questions and
neither did you, we JUST
accepted each OTHER until
this particular SUNDAY
when CHICKEN LITTLE was
right and the SKY FELL
in. Well, the police
didn’t come. It’s getting
dim in the room, it’s
getting – 8 -—and
*SKYLIGHT | Chicken Little was right and the sky fell in.
*INT. BEDROOM – DUSK
TYE
Well, the police didn’t come. It’s getting dim in the room, it’s getting almost dark—and we don’t talk. I smoke my joint. I offer it TO HER. She takes a hit and coughs, I look at her
Steady in the room
GETTING DARK and I see
her clear. SHE TURNS her
face away and I walk
around that way and look
TEXT:
We
room, it’s getting almost dark—and we don’t talk. I
t TO HER. SHE TAKES a hit
and coughs, I look at her
GETTING DARK and I see
her
face away and I walk
________________ TYE
ll, the police didn’t come. It’s getting dim in the .
smoke my joint. I offer i
Steady in the room
her clear. SHE TURNS her
face to the other and he’s crying
without a sound and a
black man’s playing piano
at the Four Deuces round
the corner, an oldie,
right the atmosphere of
this bit–something like
–
FADE IN:
Piano playing, “Seems Like Old Times.”
Tye begins TO SING softly with the piano.
JANE
Don’t.
He stops the soft singing but continues TO STARE at her.
JANE
DON’T!
TYE
Jane, you’re thinner,
ain’t you?
JANE
Why?
TYE
How much thinner are you?
JANE
I—don’t know or–
TYE
Sometimes you walk a
block and can’t go any
further.
JANE
I guess I’m a yellow cab
girl. With limousine–
aspirations which you’ve
blasted.
TYE
Cut the smart talk, Babe.
Let’s—level about it.
*Tye lights a cigarette from a burning candle. Jane extends her hand.
TYE
Another hit?
*Jane nods and TAKES A HIT off his cigarette.
TYE
Huh?
JANE
It doesn’t seem likely now that my checking account or savings account are likely to be noticeably increased by the Brazilian. How about yours? Say in case of heavy prolonged hospital expenses without Blue Cross or whatever, both of US being–free lancers—drifters. – Could you afford heavy prolonged hospital expenses since I can’t?
TYE
Tell ME, Jane, whose hospital expenses?
JANE
Well, after all, if you’re interested in it. It hasn’t been just lately I’ve lost weight and energy but for more a year in New York. I went to this fatherly old doctor WHO “gave” ME routine test–blood chemistry, but no convincing diagnosis, you know.
You know, I think they don’t until you really demand and then sometimes they will if they’re sure you’re not pretending. Evasions. I got fed up with evasions and pick-up injections. I was going abroad to see the new fashion trends in Rome and Paris, you know. So I said to this fatherly old doctor, no more foolishness, please. TAKE a piece of paper and this ball-point pen and you write it down, spell it out in black and white what’s wrong that I don’t know, in case I take sick abroad and am completely ignorant of–he stared at ME a moment or two–or more–and I stared back without blinking and he knew that I meant it, I did, and then he smiled, professionally but–sadly, and–wrote it outon the paper with the pen I’d stuck in his hand.
TYE
(whispering TO HER.)
Downstage, in the light.
JANE shakes her head slightly. (at a loss of words.)
JANE
Sorry. I don’t remember the name of it, some–blood thing–progressive, rather fast at my age, and no cure.—I think I had a remission when I met you.
This is to Tye.
JANE
A definite remission. My God, what a pair, you, ME. –Here. –Like the world stopped and turned backward or like it entered another universe: –months!
JANE moves convulsively, Tye grips her shoulders.
JANE
Then. . .it. . .I. . .
TYE
Us?
JANE
That unnatural tiredness started in again. I went to Ochsners and it TURNED OUT that the blood count was worse, it was close to–collapse . . .
_______________________________
SQUIRREL
On long line at the video store, my weekend
under my arm– Wait Until Dark, The Glass Menagerie–
I want to hit him, want to throw her
into my car and drive her to piano or ballet,
where she might give her breasts a chance
to set in their mold, give the bone in her knees
a chance to fuse before the tugging at her soft
joints and sockets begins, the loosening.
Fourteen, tops, she’s the kind of pretty
they paste false lashes on and falsies,
splash over the cover of Cosmo,
the kind of creamy-pretty men love to spoil.
She’s leaning over the counter
where she almost works,
nodding yes to the much older boy,
man, really, old enough to have tattoos,
to have fathered listless children,
who’s fidgeting in his Levis
like a corn worm tunneling in its damp husk.
Then she’s on the phone to her mother, saying
something about a movie, some other girls, someone’s
older sister driving,
safe as a ragdoll and the story floats.
A heat-driven dog off his leash,
he looks like he could spontaneously
combust, he’s so excited, like I could just
stand here behind him and blow gently,
coax him into totem-sized flames,
but I walk next-door to the Winn Dixie
for popcorn, cat food.
–by Tania Rochelle
_________________________________________
*Venn Diagram
Ultimately, what is said about love and politics is experienced necessarily as trauma–a pattern that Varda repeats continuously in a painterly setting with a sense of Disney happening.
inevergetdressedtillafterdarkonsundays 