Photo copyright 2001 by Joie Verona.

Dramatis Personae

Nicole: A clockwork. She has long, white hair, and should be outfitted in a plain white dress. There is a white boa around her neck, and she wears an iron collar with studs.

Timothy: A factory worker.

Sadiana: Goddess of the factory.

Beaumont: Clerk in an ice cream store.

Randall: Friend to Beaumont.

Also a juggler, a clown, and three scientists dressed in white lab coats.

Setting: A field of violets. The sun has set, and twilight is rapidly approaching. There is a small, simple hut on stage left. It has two windows, both of which are curtained. The outline of skyscrapers can be seen in the distance.

NICOLE: Twilight.

NICOLE: [Composes herself] You’ll be the death of me. What’re you doing out so late?

TIMOTHY: I brought you some roses.

NICOLE: How beautiful…

TIMOTHY: Fresh from the city.

NICOLE: Thanks.

TIMOTHY: No problem.

NICOLE: Don’t scare me like that!

TIMOTHY: Sorry. I thought you needed some distraction.

NICOLE: I do. I’ve been thinking about the key again.

TIMOTHY: Always the same thing.

NICOLE: What if I lost it?

TIMOTHY: You’d die. But you’re no more fragile than anybody else.

NICOLE: No, it’s different. You can’t lose your heart. You can’t misplace something like that. I’m not attached to this key.

TIMOTHY: It’s still the same. My heart can get broken, or stopped-up, or torn apart. You can toss your key down a well, and it’d be pretty much the same. Actually, it’d be less painful than taking a bullet.

NICOLE: But your heart is inside. You don’t have to worry about where it is.

TIMOTHY: I can still kill myself. If I’m depressed, I can just point a gun to my head, and POW!

NICOLE: Maybe.

TIMOTHY: [Stares at outline of skyscrapers in the distance] Let’s take a walk. It’s nice out.

NICOLE: I think I’m going to stay here. First I think I need time alone, but that doesn’t help. Then I think I need to get away, but that doesn’t help either. Then I think talking to somebody else will help, but it doesn’t. It all happens again and again. Right now I think being alone will help, so I just want to lie here in the violets. I don’t think you could talk me out of it.

TIMOTHY: Sure?

NICOLE: Yeah.

TIMOTHY: Your loss. Goodbye, mon cherie!

TIMOTHY:
Windy, windy weather,
Cold and frosty weather,
When the wind blows
We all blow together.
I saw Peter!
When’d you meet him?
Merrily, cherrily
We all fall down.

NICOLE: [Lies down and closes her eyes] Turning to the rhythm. Blue, white, gray, and green. Only one thing in common. They’re colors, and I like them.

SCIENTIST 1: I’m not so sure about this.

SCIENTIST 2: She’s a freak of nature.

SCIENTIST 3: But she’s our creation.

SCIENTIST 2: She’s just a bunch of clockwork and wires.

SCIENTIST 3: What’s your definition of life?

SCIENTIST 2: Anything with a mind of its own.

SCIENTIST 1: Go ahead and start the test. We spent a long time on her. She can’t hurt anything except herself. Actually, she can’t even do that.

NICOLE: I’m floating.

NICOLE: Who are you?

SADIANA: My name is Sadiana. I live between twisted metal pipes in a factory. It’s hot, and noxious, and loud, and it never stops.

NICOLE: This is a dream.

SADIANA: Maybe it is. So what?

NICOLE: [Pinches herself] Where am I?

SADIANA: You’re inside a snowflake, floating through the air.

NICOLE: Why?

SADIANA: Don’t worry. Everything is absolutely necessary.

NICOLE: I don’t want to be here.

SADIANA: You’re better off this way. We’re drifting downward toward the city. Let me tell you a story. Once a man was born without a heart. He lived a normal life until the moment he died. Something happened then. He closed his eyes, and said, ‘Something is missing.’

NICOLE: Just like me. Only I know something is missing now.

SADIANA: Exactly. His problem is your problem.

NICOLE: Can you help me?

SADIANA: No.

NICOLE: What then?

SADIANA: Timothy.

NICOLE: He doesn’t need my problems. Everyone has enough of their own.

SADIANA: So what? Like you said, something is missing. Maybe it’s the ability to love.

NICOLE: How would you know?

SADIANA: Maybe I just know. Then again, maybe it’s just the ability to express love.

NICOLE: I like to be alone, but I love my field of violets. I love the evening and the twilight. I love the winter, especially the snowflakes. I love a lot of things.

SADIANA: It’s not the same.

NICOLE What if it’s not?

Setting: A crowded street market. There is a vegetable stand, a poultry stand, and a dairy stand. In the middle of the stage, there is a man juggling five silver balls. Large skyscrapers can be seen in the background.

NICOLE: It’s too hot.

TIMOTHY: There’s plenty of things to take your mind off the heat.

NICOLE: [Smiles] Like what?

TIMOTHY: Like this market. There’s a thousand things to do.

NICOLE: I’ll trust you. This time, anyway.

NICOLE: You’re pretty good.

JUGGLER: It’s what I do.

NICOLE: It looks hard. Do you ever mess up?

JUGGLER: When people run into me, and I get off-balance or distracted and drop the balls.

NICOLE: Can I try?

JUGGLER: Sure. Here, start with two. Do it like this.

NICOLE: [Tries to juggle, but drops the balls] Hm, this is even harder than I thought.

JUGGLER: Only at first.

NICOLE: Juggling seems like a pretty strange occupation.

JUGGLER: It’s easy enough. Before this, I worked at a poultry stand. I took a chicken breast, and ripped off the skin and the fat like this. You can hear the bones crack. It’s an interesting sound.

NICOLE: That’s disgusting.

JUGGLER: Sometimes.

NICOLE: I think I’ve lost my appetite.

Nicole walks over to the dairy stand, where Timothy has just purchased a gallon of chocolate milk.

TIMOTHY: I saw you juggling.

NICOLE: Shut up.

TIMOTHY: You did better than I could do.

NICOLE: Chocolate milk?

TIMOTHY: It’s better than regular milk. It’s good for you. Plenty of calcium, and fortified with chocolate. Sugar is a vegetable too.

NICOLE: You sound like a milk ad.

TIMOTHY: It’s my second job that you didn’t know about. I sell chocolate milk to all the kids behind their mothers’ backs.

NICOLE: [Laughs] That’s just wrong.

TIMOTHY: [Grabs Nicole’s hand and kisses it.] Mademoiselle, shall we be off?

NICOLE: Yes. But we should do this more often.

Timothy hoists the chocolate milk over his right shoulder.

TIMOTHY: I have a riddle for you. Why did the factory worker cross the road?

NICOLE: Why?

TIMOTHY: Because his manager told him to.

JUGGLER: Once upon a May, once upon a day, I fell in love. She didn’t even know I existed. I sat and I stared, and I don’t even think she noticed. I think she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I would have given up everything for just one night. There was no way I could have ever talked to her. If she said something to me, I would have just frozen up and not said anything. The nice thing about dreams is that they fade slower than life. I think some things just can’t happen, but we can still pretend they can. Maybe things are a little bit nicer that way.

Setting: An ice cream parlor. The entrance is at stage right, and opens into a small dining room cluttered with tables and chairs. The store clerk, Beaumont, is behind the counter reading a newspaper story entitled “The Art of Dyeing”.

BEAUMONT: Can I help you?

NICOLE: Do you have orange sorbet?

BEAUMONT: Nope, we ran out this morning.

NICOLE: How about raspberry?

BEAUMONT: Sure. Single-scoop or double scoop?

NICOLE: Single.

RANDALL: Beaumont! It’s such a nice afternoon, and you’re all locked up in here. Live a little man! All you do is read the damn newspaper and scoop ice cream.

BEAUMONT: It’s what I do.

RANDALL: Well, you shouldn’t do it.

BEAUMONT: What else am I gonna do?

RANDALL: Live a little. Walk the streets and meet people. Maybe have some coffee, and write in your diary. Maybe meet some women.

BEAUMONT: Why would I want to do that?

RANDALL: Why not. [To Nicole] Hey, don’t you think our friend here should live a little?

NICOLE: I don’t know. If he’s happy scooping ice cream, then he’s happy scooping ice cream.

BEAUMONT: Right.

RANDALL: Just absolutely unbelievable. I never met a man more attached to his job. He actually stays here all day. I can’t even talk him into having a smoke with me. Anyone else, well you know they skip out on work sometimes when the manager isn’t around.

NICOLE: So he’s responsible. There’s nothing wrong with that.

BEAUMONT: [To Nicole] Hey, I knew you looked familiar.

NICOLE: How, I’ve never seen you before.

BEAUMONT: From the newspaper. Yesterday. Your picture was on the front page.

NICOLE: It wasn’t me.

BEAUMONT: It sure did look like you. Anyway, this girl was some kind of a machine, like a clockwork toy. Totally realistic, but I don’t know why they’d want to make fake people. I mean, what’s the point?

RANDALL: Nothing, except slave labor. Like a smart machine that you don’t have to pay a salary.

BEAUMONT: I guess.

NICOLE: What else did the story say?

BEAUMONT: It said they were monitoring her pretty close to make sure there weren’t any problems. Oh, and they’re thinking of making more clockwork people if everything goes right with this one.

NICOLE: Monitoring?

BEAUMONT: That’s all it said. It was pretty vague.

RANDALL: To make sure she doesn’t go psycho and kill someone, probably. How do they control her?

BEAUMONT: That’s just it. They don’t. This clockwork actually controls itself.

RANDALL: Good, then it doesn’t require an operator. You could just set it to work, and leave it there. Give it some orders, and go do whatever you wanted.

BEAUMONT: Maybe I’ll get one for myself someday.

RANDALL: Yeah, that would be nice.

NICOLE: Thanks for the ice cream.

BEAUMONT: I need a woman like that.

RANDALL: Well, you’ll never get one so long as you stay locked up in your ice cream shop.

BEAUMONT: All sorts of women come in here, and I talk to them. Why should I go wander the streets?

RANDALL: Because this is boring.

BEAUMONT: Maybe to you.

RANDALL: Maybe to everyone. Maybe to the women who come in here. They probably don’t think of you as some kind of a suave gentleman they’d like to date.

BEAUMONT: It’s about finding out what they want and giving it to them. I give them ice cream, and they like it. They come in here to talk to me, and we talk about everything. I hear about who’s having an affair, and who’s single, and all the gossip. We make a connection that way, and I tell them what I think about everything. What’s wrong with that?

RANDALL: It doesn’t work that way. Come live a little.

BEAUMONT: Maybe it does, maybe not. I’m happy, so it’s ok.

RANDALL: What about the girl who just came in here? What’d she want, and what did you give her?

BEAUMONT: I gave her raspberry sorbet and something to think about. She really looked like that clockwork thing in the paper. Maybe it was modeled after her. Either way, she’s lying. She knew something about that story.

RANDALL: I don’t think so.

BEAUMONT: No matter anyway.

Setting: A large merry-go-round. Nicole rides a unicorn, and Timothy rides a packhorse. There is carnival music in the background, and a clown is juggling four purple balls on stage left.

NICOLE: Up and down, around we go. Up and down, up and down and around.

TIMOTHY: And where we stop you’ll never know.

NICOLE: Gliding and flying around in a circle.

TIMOTHY: Around and around.

NICOLE: Ducking and dodging.

TIMOTHY: Through the light and the shadows.

NICOLE: Through an immense forest.

TIMOTHY: Hunting a sly fox. His name is Nicholas.

NICOLE: When we find him, we’ll slay him like this [makes a stabbing motion].

TIMOTHY: And cut him into tiny pieces. Dissect him, and rip out his heart. Then we’ll cook the pieces and have a mighty feast.

NICOLE: We’ll be full. The fox will be dead, but we’ll understand each piece and how they fit together. We’ll stuff ourselves, and then we’ll sleep.

TIMOTHY: All night long.

NICOLE: And into the next day. We’ll sleep until noon!

TIMOTHY: And then get up and do it all again.

NICOLE: Ducking and dodging.

TIMOTHY: Through the shadows.

NICOLE: Through an immense forest. In search of a sly fox named Nicolas.

TIMOTHY: We’ll have him for dinner.

NICOLE: We’ll do it again and again.

TIMOTHY: Around and around in a circle.

NICOLE: Tim?

TIMOTHY: Yeah?

NICOLE: Where are we going to get a fox if there aren’t any left in the forest?

TIMOTHY: In the city, they have lots of foxes there.

NICOLE: We’d better get started.

BOTH: Here we go, off to the city to find a fox named Nicholas.

Setting: Inside a storm cloud. Flashes of lightning can be seen in the background, and thunder is heard continuously. Nicole sleeps on a marble slab in the middle of the room. Bubble machines should be placed around the theatre, preferably above the audience.

SADIANA: She sleeps.

NICOLE: You again. What’s this?

SADIANA: It’s a storm. What else could it be?

NICOLE: I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?

SADIANA: It’s a storm. Everything’s dark down below. We’re above the forest of Illyrium. There’s a fox named Nicholas down there hunting a rabbit. He’s tearing its head off right now.

NICOLE: Nicholas. That name sounds familiar…

SADIANA: No matter. You’re here now, and I want to talk to you.

NICOLE: About what?

SADIANA: Let me see your back.

SADIANA: [Rubs white powder on Nicole’s back] 0324.

NICOLE: What?

SADIANA: It’s printed on your back. It’s your identification number.

NICOLE: Like a serial number?

SADIANA: You might say that. I was just curious, but it’s not really important.

NICOLE: So I’m a clockwork. So they made me in a lab. So what?

SADIANA: That’s true, they did make you in a lab. They’re testing how you’ll respond to different situations.

NICOLE: How?

SADIANA: You might say it’s all staged.

NICOLE: That’s impossible. I know what’s real and what’s not.

SADIANA: Maybe. [Aside] But you were made for a different purpose. This is just the beginning.

NICOLE: What?

SADIANA: Go back and just be yourself. It’s all as real as it needs to be.

NICOLE: This is an odd dream. What’s that? [Looks down and to her left]

NICOLE: It’s a violet! [Holds it in front of her face] I see four petals, one two three four. Violets are black, and so am I.

[Nicole wanders around the stage and starts to sing.]

NICOLE:
Sleep little flower, sleep.
I see the winter coming,
Jack frost with his razor-sharp teeth.
Sleep little flower, sleep,
Here beneath the willow tree
In the gentle mist of a thousand tears.

NICOLE: [To audience] I knew a blind woman once. She fell in love with a man she hadn’t ever seen. She loved his voice. When he touched her, she could see his hands. She used her imagination, and it was real enough. When he died, she locked herself away. She didn’t think there was anything worth seeing anymore. And maybe there wasn’t.

Setting: The interior of Nicole’s hut from Act One, Scene One. The hut contains a fireplace, over which a large cauldron is boiling. In the middle of the stage there is a single table with two crude chairs. On stage right there is a large window, through which the silhouette of pine trees can be seen.

NICOLE: Nicholas is almost ready.

TIMOTHY: He smells great, and I’m really hungry.

NICOLE: I went hunting two days ago. I finally found him in the city, trying to hide beneath a park bench.

TIMOTHY: I didn’t think we’d ever catch him.

NICOLE: He was pretty smart. We’ve been trying to catch him a long time.

TIMOTHY: I’m glad you finally did. Now I can rest easier.

NICOLE: I think he’s ready. Give me a minute.

[Nicole walks over to the cauldron, and dishes some of its contents into a soup bowl.]

NICOLE: I made fox soup. Hope that’s ok. I thought it would be better than fillet-of-fox. There are mushrooms and violets in it, too.

TIMOTHY: Sounds great.

NICOLE: Here you go. And there’s plenty more where that came from. I don’t want you to go home hungry.

TIMOTHY: I never do.

NICOLE: This is better than anything I’ve cooked before. We both knew Nicholas would be flavorful the first time we saw him. With some animals you can just tell. I’d like to eat that, you say to yourself.

TIMOTHY: And then you do.

NICOLE: The only problem is that you can only eat Nicholas once.

TIMOTHY: Well then let’s do our best to enjoy him.

[Scientist One can be seen looking into the hut through the window on stage right.]

NICOLE: How could we do otherwise?

TIMOTHY: Right now, at this moment in time we couldn’t.