Map presentation – there’s no place like here

There is a single chair at center, facing the audience.

I enter wearing my backpack and sit, immediately leading into dialogue. Under the dialogue I begin to untie my sneakers and remove my shoes and socks, placing them under the chair.

This summer I went in vacation to a national park in Maine. All around the park there are these wooden signposts with maps of the park, in case you get lost. I wouldn’t say we were lost, more like, curious.

So we go up to this sign and it’s in the key, in the legend and everything, that it’s supposed to be there, but there just is no big red dot for “you are here.” It’s like someone forgot to put it on, or it fell off, or something. And I thought to myself, you know, if we were actually lost, we’d be kind of screwed.

Now barefoot, reaching into backpack and removing pair of ruby red slippers, a la The Wizard of Oz, and putting them on.

And it got me thinking, that I spend all this time worrying about where I’m from and where I’m going, home to here, here to where, that I don’t really stop to think about the one thing I do know.

Remove from backpack big red dot foe construction paper, place on ground in front of chair, and stand upon it.

I am here.

Class skit 9/16/11

Physical:  As I read this poem I moved around the room at different paces, having an unfocused look, spinning ans circling the audience. I moved my arms up to appear as a mummy or zombie at one point and then at the Oh part I sat down.

 

Changes: I was going to nervously rip the poem apart as I read it, but as a last minute change I didn’t probably because I was worried as to my ability to do that and then clean up as I moved around the room. I would have made the Oh moment more dramatic and maybe had more of a conclusion.

 

I wrote this up not intending anyone to read it, so please disregard the terrible English errors throughout. If we later need me to fix them I will though. Thanx!

 

Movement, motion, turning around

Its dripping, time’s dripping

I need to get down, And work and get there, for I’m here

And time is not patient if I stay near

Im running, im running, nothing does set me free

I can’t see, I can’t feel, I’m following thee

Im the drop in the clouds that is floating about

Victim to wind and to sun, but wait, now Im falling down

Im flying im floating, nothing does set me free

I can’t see I cant feel, im following thee

Oh sweet people, sweet crowd,

know that I don’t question  to where am I being led

Oh well, as long as my greed is being fed (harsher tone, slight shift)

Im running im running, nothing does set me free

Can you please map out my life, define it for me?

Yes, success! Now I know how to be successful…

You tell me it’s money and possessions

Yes success! Now I know how to be happy…

It is drinking and parties and inhibitions set free

Yes success! Now I know how to find joy

I avoid strife, and grief and emotions in life

I take “me” time… or weeks, or years at a time,

A life that’s devoted to what I’m trying to find

Im running, im running, nothing does se me free

I can’t see, I can’t feel, im following thee

I am unconscious in mind,  (mummy)

Going through the motions of life

Helpless I’m hopeless as to what I don’t know I need to find

Drugs is the rage

Sex is the rage

Who needs family

Who needs morals

When I live in a dog eat dog age

 

Movement, motion, turning around

Its dripping, time’s dripping

Oh (emotion)

Oh (awake)

Oh (grief)

Oh (final)

Emotion, I feel it, death has set me free

I miss you, I loved you, you’re still inside me

I want you, im waiting, for something to fill I cant avoid

Im asking, im hoping

I see now, my movement was void

I moved nowhere

I saw nothing in the flurry, the race

I know nothing, my life, it has nothing, no taste

Emotion I feel you, death has set me free

Im finding I have, a voice inside me

You will not map me out

Define me in a legend/key

Or images that before, past them I could not see

Oh (oh)

oh (awakening… look around slowly…………)

oh