One Island
Ghostbird Theatre Company
June 2022
Wasmer Art Gallery, Florida Gulf Coast University
Juliana Morgan Alvarez
Brittney Brady
James Brock
Kimberly Campanello
Katelyn Gravel
Philip Heubeck
Carolina Vargas Romero
Xiaoyue Zhang
Displacements: a Fugue for A and the audience.
A enters. A disruption to the radio reception occurs, sputters, recovers, and then the radio goes dark. A is on the spine of the Central Pangaeic Mountains, to her back is the Dronning Maud Land of the Antarctic and to her front are the Red Mangroves of the Everglades. There is a thermal divergence diminishing.
A
There is a thermal divergence.
(long pause)
Diminishing.
A takes a cleansing breath, lets it out. X and Z enter. They stand abreast to each other, with X and Z’s backs facing the audience. Pause. X and Z take a cleansing breath. Y and B enter. They stand abreast to each other, with Y and B facing the audience (as is A). Y and B take a cleansing breath. A moment of rest/placement.
Today is March 11, 1743.
Brittney
(off stage or among the audience, with the date of the performance)
Today is June , 2022.
A
Already? (beat) Today is June , 2022.
Last week, I floated in the ocean. Pelicans floated above me, ringing the sky, eying the man o’wars floating beneath me. There were twelve of them. My apostles. I am their lord. Beneath the man o’wars and the echolocation clickings of sea beasts, the North Atlantic Current is collapsing. What will happen to Labrador or Iceland, I do not know. I think the dinosaurs may return, or even the return of the trilobites, by the millions.
To my back are the pre-Cambrian ice sheets. Before me red mangroves. My heart is red, but it is inedible in either climate, any climate. My heart is fractal and so is whatever thing is the soul, a worn out shoe.
(directly to the audience)
You, my dear Floridians. Fling yourself into the ocean, for it is loaded with salt, float happily among those other bioluminescent Floridians, singled-cell and otherwise, their skin slick and blooming blue, their anemone hair expanding and expanding. We are becoming something else.
Y and B take a cleansing breath. They exit.
X and Z take a cleansing breath. They exit.
Brittney
(off-stage or among the audience)
Today is Tuesday.
A
So it is. Thank you, Brittney.
(again, directly to the audience)
Float gayly in the ocean, open-eyed, my dear ones. Those black-eyed pelicans are yours, too. And the sky, and those icy whiffs of clouds. Your ears are submerged, but you hear not your heart, not the stirrings of the ancient dead who fill the oceans, not the night falling, not the current closing down. What you hear is an arrival. What you hear is a new place.
A takes a cleansing breath. The radio’s reception returns. A exits.
