Blue-Eyed Hag

6 W/6 M (Genderqueer casting also welcome)

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Premise: On a distant island, two warring kingdoms are set to patch up their differences with a royal wedding, but a witch and her baby interrupt the ceremony.

ACT I - SCENE 2

(Enter Edith, Audrey and Githa)

EDITH

Is not this a perfect day for wedding, Audrey? Look out from our parapet. The sun radiates. No clouds cataract this blue-eyed sky. Our coming ship will soon break the ocean’s horizon. Then shall our Kytiff and Chauthak houses be aligned.

AUDREY

Indeed, my lady. It is a day fit for dreams. I only wish your daughter could contain herself.

EDITH

What mean you?

AUDREY

She has been singing all week. Her window, she sings. The balcony, she sings. The garden, she sings. Aye me, if the prince is as handsome in life as he is in his image, she’ll never speak a word again. All words shall be songs.

EDITH

We shall soon attest to the prince’s handsomeness. There are many afforded a picture’s beauty who fall short upon actual appearance. There be many. I hope the prince be not one.

AUDREY

And her eagerness. That’s another issue that should be addressed. Tell our lady, the matter, Githa.

GITHA

She already attires herself in her wedding garment.

EDITH

Now? Foolish child. We’ve not yet seen the shadow of the king’s ship. We are six hours from ceremony.

GITHA

I have told her, my lady, but she relishes such delight in her apparel.

EDITH

Bring her to me. If she smudges that dress her wedding will be our funeral. I’ll speak fire and tell her as much. Go to it.

GITHA

Yes, my lady.

(Exit Githa)

AUDREY

To be youthful and to forget oneself reminds me that I am old.

EDITH

Thou has’t no wrinkles to call thyself old, Audrey.

AUDREY

No, but my patience becomes wrinkled on the eagerness of youth. Youth stations itself too far in advance. We that are passed the passions of youth dare not station further ahead, for that way lies the grave, and yet we folly in looking backward too, for that way sadness comes. If this be called middle life, then I think it be old.

EDITH

Aye me. Such misery on what should be our happiest of days. Have I not just painted the sun and sky with our good wishes?

AUDREY

You have. Forgive, my lady. I have been too philosophical of late.

EDITH

And what of this strange woman boarded? Hath she been looked after?

AUDREY

She has.

EDITH

I am delighted in her story. Puts her foot on our white sand, and springs forth a baby. These are delightful omens.

AUDREY

While she sleeps, she holds her child, and her books close as if both fight for intimacy. 

EDITH

Prithee, Audrey. You know my fondness of new infants.

AUDREY

I do. You have often described them as fresh pages in long-awaited books.

EDITH

Go to. In thy stealthiest diligence, creep upon the woman. Do not wake her, for her mind’s rest and body’s retrieval for health is surely needed. But, pry loose her baby, and bring it to me. I would let it delight me with soft memories of dainty smells, and small suckling cherub fingers.

AUDREY

Pardon, my queen. Though I know your intentions harmless, it does seem a slight deviance to take a woman’s baby without waking her.

(Enter Githa and Kendra)

EDITH

There is no fault in admiring, and it shall only be an instant. And now, daughter, what mean you to risk the labour of our craftswomen to tarry thyself in thy special hour, long before thy special hour is due?

KENDRA

We are not so long away, mother.

EDITH

We are at half the day.

KENDRA

And yet it seems so close.

AUDREY

No argument. Your mother gives an order. Should I treat her as if I had a daughter, she’d be in the dungeon till her prince arrives.

KENDRA

Audrey!

EDITH

Thou would’st have been a strict mother, indeed, Audrey.

AUDREY

Give me license, and I’ll teach all children of the realm to behave.

EDITH

To thy task, Audrey. Bring our freshest arrival to delight mine eye. Go to.

AUDREY

I shall.

(Exit Audrey)

KENDRA

Prithee, one more hour, mother. I do practice my walk in this attire to prevent stumbling at ceremony. I’d dare not fall on this, the most perfect of days.

EDITH

We have heard of thy practiced ambling, of thy posing, of thy glass-gazing and singing within all ears. From our parapets to the armory all observe thee in thy wedded attire before thou should’st be seen. Now get thee to thy changing. Githa, gather my voice, my authority and see her behave or my next action will be ruination.

(Enter Godric)

GITHA

Come, my lady. You have heard thy mother. Let us to it.

KENDRA

I shall and will practice my perfected walk these last few steps before I meet the prince.

(Exit Kendra and Githa)

EDITH

And what of thy presence, Godric? Would you like thy turn in chastising my daughter? She may well listen to the bearing of a knight more than we women.

GODRIC

Prithee, my lady I come to tell thee the value of the horizon for a mast doth appear, and we are signaled.

EDITH

They are arrived.

GODRIC

Aye or soon will be. Come to edge of our parapet. Do you see? A small steeple upon the ocean.

EDITH

Ah. Yes. An embryo in a bobbing bottle awaiting entrance to our world. Letter’s preparations, some ten months since and now shortly we are to greet our new partners.

GODRIC

The wind is our good fortune fast, my lady. They’ll break our circumference in an hour’s time.

(Enter Audrey with swaddled baby)

EDITH

Go to, Godric. Ready thy men, and then stand guard. We must make it seem we are well prepared for.

GODRIC

Yes, my lady.

(Exit Godric)

EDITH

Have you glimpsed yet?

AUDREY

I’ve been so quick in the borrow that I have not. I’ll let thy eyes savor before mine, and then I’ll quick and return this little treasure.

EDITH

Come, little one, let me unmask thee, and peer into thy fresh countenance.

(Edith removes cloth from baby’s face)

AUDREY

Is it not such a joy? My lady? My lady?

EDITH

Oh, my.

AUDREY

I like not this turn. What do you see?

EDITH

Oh, keep in thy startled gasp. Do not say.

AUDREY

My lady? Methinks, you turn white on thy own words. What is’t?

EDITH

I’ll not speak of it. Not today. Oh, let not my happiness become deformed with fear.

AUDREY

Tis best we return, my lady. Hand me over.

EDITH

Do not peek upon this face as I have done. Do not. Oh, that I could rewind the time to never have been curious for a glance.

AUDREY

I like not this change. Give me this child, and let’s forget we shared this deed.

(Audrey takes swaddled baby from Edith. Enter Sycorax.)

EDITH

Forget? No. This shall be with me for as long as I live. It strikes at humanity.

SYCORAX

Fools!

AUDREY

She is wakened. This I was afraid of.

SYCORAX

Foul betrayers of womanhood, I curse thee. Oh, that my power was not weakened with wrack and labour, I would have seen thy theft. Oh, I curse thee!

AUDREY

Forgive us, dear lady. We only thought to admire thy precious gift. Here, take comfort back to thy arms. We err taking before thy permission was granted.

(Audrey gives swaddled baby to Sycorax.)

SYCORAX

What I gain in hospitality I lose in privacy. Foolish women, prattle and pry! Oh, pray that vengeance does not sway me more than what my power should allow. You put yourselves in danger to inspect the nest of a spider.

AUDREY

Come, return to sleep with your swaddled comfort, and when you awake apologies will be due.

EDITH

I banish her.

AUDREY

My lady?

SYCORAX

Ha! It is foreseen, thieving royal, for I have rested, and my visions are clear. You speak words echoed long ago.

AUDREY

My lady let not this mother hold the penalty for our own undoing. Analyze thy heart.

EDITH

Hold thy speech, Audrey. You have not experienced such a hell as I have. This woman is not of our world. Our happiness trembles. She must be gone.

AUDREY

My lady-

EDITH

Banished, I say. Be gone before a wedding’s love and a stake’s fire become twins on this day.

AUDREY

Prithee, let us gather our compassion before such rashness settles our decisions.

EDITH

I’ll no more words. Gather her books. The forest shall be her abode.

SYCORAX

And thy foreboding, for now all our futures become clear. For after this day dips dark beyond the sun, I’ll take this castle from under thy feet, and rope thy kingdom with thorns.

EDITH

Go to it, Audrey.

AUDREY

My lady-

EDITH

No more words, or I shall send Godric in the matter, and he shall be far unkinder than thee.

AUDREY

Very well. Come, sad woman. My heart beats unsteady in this measure, but alas I am enforced. I’ll bring thee and thy babe to the edge of our city, and then what comes next, I know not.

SYCORAX

I do. I do, by Setebos, I do. It was written in Algiers.

(Exit Sycorax with baby and Audrey.)

EDITH

Trembling goes my heart with sights so far obscene,

That quivered is my breath where lungs no longer catch,

For if my eyes were shared the world would surely know,

That terrors creep in small with wicked winds that blow,

but now to better thoughts, our peace is there to tether,

and focus not on blemishes, but goodness of the weather.

(Exit Edith)

Love’s Heavy Burden

5 F/6 M (Genderqueer casting also welcome)

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Premise: Set a year after the events of Romeo and Juliet, Verona is now a famous place where people come to fall in love or end their lives. To visit the sick Lady Capulet unheeded, the countess Rosaline decides to fake an 8-month pregnancy to thwart various suitors. But her deception backfires, reigniting old feuds, and forcing her into humorous and serious situations regarding her own bodily autonomy.

For a tale set in classical times, this play is extremely topical!

ACT II - SCENE 3

(Enter Peter wheeling in the catatonic Lady Capulet with two musicians that follow.)

PETER

Come, play your notes and do our lord’s bidding that it may wake his lady.

MUSICIAN 1

We knew her soul’s music, sir.  

MUSICIAN 2

Aye, she once was a lover of tempo.

PETER

Do not say ‘knew her’ or ‘once was, play her here presently.

MUSICIAN 2

We know not the song, ‘here presently’. Is it played at court?

PETER

You mistake. Play as if she was alive.

MUSICIAN 2

We know not that either but can improvise.

MUSICIAN 1

Aye, or can learn it for more than we are presently paid.

(Capulet enters.)

CAPULET

What’s this stalling of sound? I would hear life in these hallways. Where is thy lute’s revival?

PETER

They play me, my lord. I think to bargain more than have already been negotiated for.

CAPULET

Do they? Play my young friends, play what shall wake the sun from the horizon, for if thy notes shall eclipse my wife from her dark planet, you shall not busk in shadow, the streets of Verona for a decade. I am past wits for answer to her trance. I have even bought fools to make her laugh, but no smirk can her corners gather.

(Enter ‘pregnant’ Rosaline.)

ROSALINE

Hola, my cherished Uncle.

CAPULET

Must I catch my jaw before the floor doth meet it? Doth my eyes perceive shapes bigger than they appear?

PETER

I think I see the same as you, my lord.

CAPULET

You dare come to me like this?

ROSALINE

Think me deformed, Uncle. I merely come as a woman.

CAPULET

And now thy eight months isolation hath been explained. Leave us.

PETER

But our lady’s music. Shall we hear it?

CAPULET

Depart, I say, for if she cannot be wakened upon sight of her double niece, nothing will.

PETER

Come fellows, let’s away.

(Exit Peter and both musicians.)

ROSALINE

Content thyself, Uncle and I’ll give proper reason to this.

CAPULET

You have pained the remembrance of thy dead father and mother.

ROSALINE

Hold thy breath to give me words. 

CAPULET

Thy loving Aunt whose heart did often match thee with her own daughter, who consoled thy grief, who encouraged thy esteem, who fed thee, who taught thee to read, write and think about the world, would shatter to see thee so taken before thy proper time.

ROSALINE

I am the only one who can shame myself. Be wary of thy phrases, Uncle.

CAPULET

You have stained the House of Capulet, and with it may have sparked another feud with Montagues. You are to be enjoined to Benvolio!

ROSALINE

You are set to enjoin me against my will, and many men come against my will, thus I am pregnant.

CAPULET

You shame the sun that touches thee with its light. Wait till dark that you may return home. I would have no one see thee like this or else start a war of rumors.

ROSALINE

Rumor? Was it not rumor that wrote me as a nun because I could not attach myself to Romeo? Because I could not see myself enjoined to a man’s romance, I must be enjoined to God to make men feel better about themselves? Rumor? Fie. I am storied in rumor, Uncle. And now I shall spark these wildfires of my own and have control of what people say of me though it doth not fit the norm. I’ll create my own rumors.

CAPULET

Who is the father?

ROSALINE

I’ll not give thee that answer.

CAPULET

Who is it, I say?

ROSALINE

It may be a Montague’s.

CAPULET

That’s closer to peace.

ROSALINE

It may be five Montague’s. It may be five Capulet’s. It may be the Prince of Verona!

CAPULET

Lower thy voice. You are a flame that seeks wood for burning.

ROSALINE

I tell you this Uncle, the feud that once lived through Capulets and Montagues now lives through men and women. You see old feuds but are blind to new divisions.

CAPULET

Go to. Wear a veil and hide thyself. 

ROSALINE

I will not. I have packed myself in traveling to wake my Aunt, my lady whose care, whose perspective has indeed taught me to think deeply about the world and in this world I see a buffoon constrained by society’s prison, a man who cannot think for himself without the strict parameters of what all men should think.

CAPULET

Get thee from my sight. You disgrace me.

ROSALINE

I shall stun thee some more. Do you seek to keep me as confined as thy dead daughter? Did Juliet not go anywhere in this world, except to her room and church? Had she been allowed an education further out of door, she may not have couched her existence so much in one boy, in one grave.

CAPULET

Out.

ROSALINE

I’ll not be thy dead daughter. I shall live. 

CAPULET

T’were better she was dead than you come to me like this!

ROSALINE

I hope the lady doth not have ears while she sleeps, Uncle. Let me speak with her and give effort to her revival.

CAPULET

You shall not, and since this debate doth not move thee, I’ll move thy aunt to another room. She lives somewhere twixt life and death and am certain her knowledge of thee would push her farther south. Mend thy ways, niece. Mend thy ways.

(Capulet exits pushing Lady Capulet in wheelchair.)

ROSALINE

Though I am at odds now with mine uncle, I’ll devise ways to get closer to my aunt. I have not come all this way without attempt. I’ll to Bianca with new ideas.

(Exit Rosaline.)

Malvolio’s Twin

3 F/8 M (Genderqueer casting also welcome)

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Premise: In Malvolio’s Twin, an imaginative sequel to Twelfth Night, Malvolio, tormented by his previous mistreatment, and mocked by his peers, considers suicide, until he is rescued by his previously unknown, identical twin brother, Vladimir. Vladimir feels pity for his twin, and suggests that Malvolio relax and adopt another identity, while Vladimir takes on his brother’s role and settles some old scores.

ACT III - SCENE 5

(Enter Malvolio and Vladimir. Vladimir is attired in dark clothing. Malvolio is disguised as Sir Ulrico, a knight.)

MALVOLIO

I am loath to leave chambers. You risk our countenance to guests mingling candles that might puzzle our features together. Why bring me to this musty cellar?

VLADIMIR

Be a man!

MALVOLIO

Lower thy voice.

VLADIMIR

Lose thy fear I say and be a man! You slough advantage to hobnob royalty while trepidation keeps thee caged.

MALVOLIO

I would back to the darkness of those chambers, unseen.

VLADIMIR

This disguise should be thy freedom, not thy imprisonment. Have I not invented an avatar worth the pain of disappearing? Implement thy disguise into this public!

MALVOLIO

I am dull at pretending faces. I would be Malvolio again.

VLADIMIR

And I say there is no such thing. You are nothing but the artifact of aspiration’s theft, a shadow of a man robbed of his dreams who gives no effort to right his own soul’s ship. If you will not play in this disguise, then you have nowhere else to retreat, for who is a man removed of his own self-pride? What becomes he deprived of his own humanity? Doth he find the same cares of the world? Do the same ambitions inspire his heart? If robbed of character, who is he? Doth his speech the same sound resonate? Doth language the same patterns annunciate? In short, is this man, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO

I need not someone I’ve just met to tell me who I am.

VLADIMIR

Thy new brother knows thee better than you think. 

MALVOLIO

Dismiss my uniform or I shall strip it.

VLADIMIR

Now, there’s a man.

MALVOLIO

I will once again be steward to this house!

VLADIMIR

Unless you would be a murderer, you must never be this steward again. 

MALVOLIO

How now? Murderer? What mean thee by that?

VLADIMIR

Come. These cellar doors beckon our mutual strength. I shall show thee there is no way back. Lift and open. Come, now. Lift, I say. This prize is for thee. Now, look there. Is this not a good start?

MALVOLIO

Oh, stench! Foul maggots that offend hell. What is that headless body between the casks?

VLADIMIR

Can you identify one without its head?

MALVOLIO

I think this be the stature of Feste.

VLADIMIR

Ay. And our lady shall note his absence to be much longer this time around. How might you compliment me for this great trophy?

MALVOLIO

I have not asked thee for this.

VLADIMIR

Consider it a brother’s generosity.

MALVOLIO

You have the gall to dispatch him with my own face?!

 VLADIMIR

I do for thee, what you cannot do for thyself. You should thank me.

MALVOLIO

You are a fiend!

VLADIMIR

And you are a cuckold to life! A pitiful indecisive who will not repay the debt for vengeance!

MALVOLIO

This action exceeds the plot.

VLADIMIR

Tell me, why do you save such mementos in thy closet?

MALVOLIO

What mementos?

VLADIMIR

Here.

(Vladimir shows yellow stockings to Malvolio.)

MALVOLIO

You scatter thyself through my belongings? Rooting boar! Eater of death!

VLADIMIR

Speak truly; in the heat of dreams, do not thy enemies ever meet their ends?  

MALVOLIO

No thoughts will I reveal to thee.

VLADIMIR

Will you let them always laugh?

MALVOLIO

I will find my way back. I will be myself again.

VLADIMIR

Have I not shown thee the path from this misery? Either dissolve into thy weed’s escape or join me in revenge.

MALVOLIO

Get out! Get out!

VLADIMIR

Very well. I give thee leave to walk the hallway lit alone. We should not want our faces puzzled together.

(Exit Vladimir.)

MALVOLIO

Had I saved myself the pondering of who I am, who I was, or who I shall be, then that deep cliff might have been my high heaven, but alas a murderer now usurps my face.

(Exit Malvolio.)