. play script . All Of Us (girls) Have Been Dead For So Long

She died on the 8th may 1876 in Hobart and her one desire was that she should not be given over the surgeons to dissect her the way they had cut up King Billy. She wanted to be buried at sea. But the white Tasmanians had other plans for her, they boiled the body down, cleaned the bones, wired them together and stuck them in a glass case in the Hobart Museum.

Slowly a light above the chair turns on, a girl dressed in a black velvet tracksuit, pink converse shoes and chipped red nail polish enters the performance space from the audience down-stage left, on her shoulder is a black leather bag. She kneels in praying position in the beer cans.

She stands and walks in a diagonal line to back stage right, places down a black leather bag, out of this she gets a toy tape recorder, she places down the tape recorder and presses play. An Opera song in a language no one can recognise, sounds from a toy tape recorder, she prepares herself in a wide lunge [4th position], The arms are extended and are moving with the hands expressively, you cannot see her face. The lights are dim, the audience only see fragments of the moving body via shafts of light. (This is a symbolic lament for when the witch Hectate was transformed into death, and Truganinnie body was placed in the Museum and other subjugated knowledges). She abruptly ends the dance and turns the taperecorder off half way through the song. She grabs a light blue shawl from the bag and places it over her head, and turns to the audience, she is holding it at the front of her chest with her hands hidden apart from her little finger sticking out, making reference to Madonna of the little finger.She looks at the audience and pans her eyes from right to left. A voice over begins.

I remember what the Pirate Girls said. They say the Ancient Greeks sick of the priestesses and fortune-tellers who were controlling the future, transformed Hectate: the Queen of the witches into death. From then on, Hectate was invoked only during clandestine rites of magic, loosing her special powers, she was named black by the local politicians and at the same time I my family was reduced to ordinary dog.

The stage lights come up. She drops the shawl and the lights moves to the centre of the stage and smoothes her hair, she talks while she fixes her pins while sitting onto the ground.

An immense pressure was on me.
I could not move with out dislodging the weight of centuries.

She spins to standing & begins to dance in tableax across the back of the stage.

at the time i didn't see how i could become another person, a person who wasn't scared of pain, because becoming another person means dying and being hurt. if what has to happen to me in me won't happen, I'll do anything, I'll never take a sip of red wine again, I'll stay away from all drugs i pleaded.

Suddenly the dance shifts to sharp heavy breathing, fast arm and leg movements to stillness. As she speaks these broken sentences below in random order, there are specific movements that match each line & these are repeated & developed
no its all right / I just didn't’t want to repeat it / I didn't want to take it up / I just didn’t want to repeat it / rim my eyes with kohl / concealing revealing veils / I just didn't want to repeat it / I ignored them/

A movement is repeated to become more clear as if she will puff a cigarette in a tableaux, then in folds the hand the at the last moment it leads movement though other more abstract movement tableaux. Which take her into a big spin that starts her runing through the space,where she runs through the compost. She 'comes out of the dance' and grabs the tape recorder and walks to the chair.and sits, front stage left.

The fortune teller had told me that i would be free after i journey into the land of the dead

She puts on lipstick in a compact mirror, gets out a cigarette from her bag and lights it. She presses a pedel that makes 'land of the dead sounds. She stands, faces stage right & walks towards a radio mike placed upstage right, she is moving two steps forward one step back. when her back is faced to the audience she pauses for a moment in a very sharp way her head turns to face the audience. Then she continues, when she arrives at this microphone she sings in profile to the audience singing, smoking 'dream a little dream', [the version of muma cass].
Stars shining bright above you Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree Dream a little dream of me

Say "Night-ie night" and kiss me, Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on, dear Still craving your kiss I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear
Just saying maybe oh maybe. Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you But in your dreams whatever they be Dream a little dream of me ba ba ba bum bum....

Slowly this fades out and her head turns towardupstage left, the land of the dead. she slowly, quietly and respectfully walks through the pile of beer cans as if it was a cemetary. with out touching them, however she deliberately rocks a few of them. She makes her way to the chair . Here she moves and speaks :

The cemetery was my favourite place in the world. spoken
I said i want to go where I've never been before' voice over
T here i saw that the angels and the dead bed together. spoken
I was living in a room that was in the slum. i was still sane. voice over
I wanted to live there for the rest of my life. spoken
i had no life. i only loved those poets who were criminals. voice over
as if i were on an ocean spoken
i began to write letters to people i didn't know, not in order to communicate with them.voice over

She leans back as if she is on an ocean, on the chair in the horizontal plane in a levitation position as if she is floating on an ocean waving her arms and legs now and then. A slide projection of the Ocean lit ebbs & flows in lights & is projected on the her body.

End of song, she releases her body to arch over the chair. Her arms on the ground, her legs move over her body backwards on the chair on the the floor, very slowly. Here she speaks from the floor

though i was safe for the first time in my life, i wasn't able to fall asleep.

she asks the adience if they have any image and she places them on the floor and stares at them.

i hunted for an image that would protect me, i couldn't find anything. what was i saying about my life?

She walks up stage & starts to spin for a very long time [qtime]

There is a flashing blank super 8 type projection on her, the light source is used like a camera, producing grainy, black and white, film like effect sudden contrasts: black-out, black hair and fabric over white glowing skin, fast-foward flickering sequences like a live silent movie.

R eturn to the chair very dizzy trying to gain her composure

I searched for the woman who had taken the bottom half of the ticket away from me. it was as if there was no one. it was if there was no more time.

She slides off the chair like the start, there is a midnight blue light in the centre of the stage, she walks into it and she prepares herself in a lunge [4th position] with arms extended & hands moving expressively to an Opera song in a language no one can recognise. It sounds from a toy tape recorder. [Hectates death]

But you can see her face, fragments of the moving body via shafts of light & her facial expression is very present.

After the dance the lights are turned up:
Now I remember what the pirate girls say, they say the ancient Greeks sick of the priestesses and fortune-tellers who were controlling the future, transformed Hectate into death. from then on, Hectate was invoked only during clandestine rites of magic, named black by the local politicians and at the same time I my family was reduced to ordinary dog.

She turns the pedel on and rolls her eyes & speaking as if a mantra
all of us girls have been dead for so long
all of us girls have been dead for so long
all of us girls have been dead for so long
all of us girls have been dead for so long
all of us girls have been dead for so long

She snaps out of this mantra, stands up & grabs the tape recorder, faces the audience with the microphone on the tape-recorder & says very defiant.
but we're not going to be anymore

she presses the loop pedel and runs around the stage there is a voice of a pirate lady who is repeating
but i wanted to grew up to be a pirate wench with my own ships
who wanted to take my cousins who cracked their whips
and point guns at me i say & rode around island with their big horses
to the blood curst and fly them up the riggin' and frigging in the rigging i say
if they gave me any cheek the wind would bring them down and there would be blood on the decks and bate for the whalesIm going to scan all the psychiatric hospitals and prison's to find someone who's locked up and needs to get out on parole. She said: I'll find, some real funky blues singer or something like that...some old fat muma who wont shut her mouth - they've locked her up to keep her mouth shut and keep her away from the public... oh there's plenty of them darl'n...

There are no pirates anymore so we have to be crooked as hell in order to exist and we are existing.

They don't think about it cause they think about sex and skulls. They're perverts.

eyes scan the room and roll as if tracing a map
do we know who wrote the map that we're following?

There are buzzing land of the dead sounds. On the stage with light revealed with an X is tiny Piano-la [ hooked up to a contact mike on a piece of tin. this is the powerful force from the land of the dead

plays the GODFATHER she plays it as if she is very moved by each note, as she does this in stillness the she slowly walks & turns slowly when the song finishes A Voiceover

no one ever finds her.
she lives inside the interstices of the world.
located between red flowers