“…the moon pours down its pale enchantment.” – Baudelaire

The full moon shines on a cluster of apartment towers overlooking the sea.  Agatha, Beth, and Sam sit on the upper balconies of different buildings.  Agatha is in her late 80’s, in a wheelchair, deep into Alzheimer’s.  Beth is in her early 50’s.  Sam, curly-haired, with glasses, is 16.

MOON:  Knowing you suffer in silence, I want to catch up with each of you, if you choose.  But first I have to ask—what is going on down there?  Wildfires on every continent, 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Siberia, methane released from the thawing tundra, the virus in its fourth wave…

Silence.

BETH:  Horrible.

SAM:  To be honest, none of it is real to me.  I’m vaccinated. 

AGATHA:  I no longer receive this kind of information. 

MOON:  Right, but Beth and Sam—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a month like this.

Silence.

SAM:  What do you want me to say?!  I’m not responsible for this!

BETH:  One way or another, we’re doomed.

Silence.

AGATHA:  If I could start.  There has been a change.  As you know, I have only myself, and that doesn’t include my brain.  So my organs have become like pets to me.  Like a little group of poodles. I know exactly what’s going on with each.  I watch them function.  I feel the life in them.  I’ve named them.  This is new.  I wanted to tell you.  And thank God the problem is not in my organs.  My favorite right now, if I’m honest, is the liver.  I never drank much, and he is really a champion.  He has a kind of kingly quality.  And I thank him for his service.  I can’t walk my organs in distance, but I can walk them in time.  I choose one, and concentrate, we are there together, and we go for a walk.

MOON:  So this is a good thing.

AGATHA:  This is a very good thing.  I feel like I’m getting out.  Seeing the street, smelling the trees…

MOON:  I’m happy for you.  That’s wonderful.

BETH:  I’m happy for you.  Keep going.

SAM:  Here’s something not so wonderful.  It’s boiling, so I wear shorts. But I hate my legs and feet.  If I wear sneakers, my legs look too skinny. If I wear flipflops my feet are small and white.  So I walk everywhere in socks, even the parking lot or the street.  My socks get black and stuck with gravel.  My father worries I’m disturbed.  I can see it doesn’t make sense:  if people would think I was a freak because of my legs, they would think I’m even more of a freak for walking in socks.  At least my calves look better, they have a little more shape.  I know I’m making a mistake, and getting a reputation as a weirdo, but fuck it.  Look:

He raises his leg and shows his foot in a white sock that has become black with tar and dirt.  Silence.

BETH:  It was a bad month of eating.  Pasta and cheese and ice cream.  Chips.  Everything, no limits.  I sucked the nectar out of each thing, and I hit the pleasure center of my brain again and again, jabbed it, then kept my finger down.  I don’t give a fuck.  You know why?  Because relationships are over for me.  There won’t be another one.  I can’t do it.  Every once in a while you read about someone who eats till they burst.  One guy sat down in front of a Grand Union, ate everything in his bags, and ruptured his stomach.  If that’s me, that’s fine.  I’d like to splatter myself all over the last motherfucker.

AGATHA:  I hope you won’t do that, dear. 

SAM:  There are fat free and low sodium versions of everything, that taste just as good, my father says. 

Silence.

MOON:  I wish I could do something for you!  That’s my curse, I guess.  To be so close and yet so far.  If any of you liked swimming in the ocean, I could certainly create a nice high tide for you.  But other than that…Does anyone have any thoughts?

Silence.

AGATHA (to Beth):  I like the fan you’re using to cool yourself.  Is that Japanese?

BETH:  Yes.

AGATHA:  What are those figures?

BETH:  The long-legged birds?  Cranes, I think.  In the reeds, the marshes…

AGATHA:  I wouldn’t want to live inside it because of the constant opening and closing, but it’s lovely.  Sam, you have nice hair.  You’re a handsome young man.

SAM:  I disagree, but thank you.

BETH:  Nerd-chic, I think they call it.  Don’t worry, it’ll work.

MOON:  Anyone else?  No?  Please think about each other this next month.  And remember our agreement:  no one will do anything to hurt themselves until we meet again.  Okay?  And when we meet, you’ll talk about the thoughts, and any plan you might’ve made.  Does everyone agree? 

Agatha agrees first, Beth last.

MOON:  All right.  And now, you lovers of the moon, please, enjoy!

They each look at the bright disc and bask in the pure light.

In these 10 short plays, many of the characters are isolated and trying to overcome their fears in order to connect with the larger world.  There are mad scientist types who have only their obsessions, people struggling with agoraphobia or body dysmorphia, as well as more surreal situations:  a taxidermied deer within a glass sculpture, a singer with a knot inside her who is helped by the Sabbath Bride.

Although these were written before lockdown, some characters are disintegrating from loneliness in a way that many people may be feeling these days.  But the plays are written with humor throughout, the characters fight hard against their fears, and I hope these will be a source of encouragement as well as enjoyment and escape.

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Read 3 plays below as a preview:

Alone at night in a quiet corner of the Metropolitan Museum, a taxidermied deer, looking back over his left shoulder. From his antlers to his hooves he is coated by a thin but ornate layer of glass. In places the glass is semi-transparent and traces his contours; in others it is built up and crafted with bubbles and beads.

GLASS: One thing I noticed about you, and I can see you through a lot of different lenses—you don’t know how to project yourself onto the world.

DEER: I don’t know, could that be ‘cause you’re encasing me, you stiff bastard?!

GLASS: C’mon, that’s just an excuse. Look back, be honest. How many times did you get nudged aside from a big acorn just as your mouth closed in? And what’d you do about it? You’d slink off, saying, ‘I aimed too high. I go to my rightful place.’

DEER: I liked the smaller acorns. See, that’s the thing you don’t know. To me they tasted sweeter.

GLASS: Uh-huh. And did you like celibacy?

DEER: Why don’t you turn all those bulging lenses on yourself? Afraid?

GLASS: I’m trying to offer some constructive—

DEER: You look like a bag of tumors. If you were fur instead of clear you’d be a monster. But everyone sighs, ‘Exquisite’. I don’t get it, I really don’t. You’d be nothing without me, there’d be nothing for you to be! But no one can even see me, or just faintly! ‘Oh, there he is in there’. Standing on tiptoes, leaning in: ‘Oh there  he is, I think I can make him out—the poor dead thing.’ While you’re ‘amaaazing’. No. Even if no one else in the world knows the truth, I do.

GLASS: Yeah? What is it?

DEER: The classic jawline, that’s me! Your…coat, your ‘bubbles’: he just took my liquid eye and fractalized it.

GLASS: Funny, no viewer or critic has ever seen it that way, and it’s not in any of the artist’s statements, unless I’ve missed something—and I haven’t.

DEER: You’re nothing but a death mask! Of me!

A guard has entered and is listening.

You’re the shadow. I’m the object. But nobody knows it!

GLASS: Then why don’t you do something about it?

DEER: If I was naked, you think I’d be in the Met? They’d hustle me out a back door and throw me in the garbage. The best I could ever hope for is Natural History, as background in some diorama.

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GLASS: So you got me to thank for something.

DEER: I’d rather be a head on a wall—at least I’d be seen, at least I’d be me!

GLASS: You got a serious interiority complex there, m’boy.

DEER: He took a full-blooded, full-bodied animal with a whole rich history and made it a skeleton. I’m someone else’s bones, not even my own!

The guard approaches. He’s middle-aged, stooped.

GUARD: I couldn’t help overhearing. Do you want me to bust you out of that glass cage? I’ll do it.

DEER and GLASS are silent.

There must be a fabrication seam. Or I’ll smash it if I have to.

Silence.

They caught you in one moment. And then somehow that one moment—that maybe you think isn’t even really you, or just a little part—somehow it’s become everything. It’s grown and hardened, and your fate is sealed! 40 hours a week, of showing up only in body…after 20 years, you can’t disown that.

But maybe it’s not too late. Tomorrow night, I’ll bring a crowbar. Tomorrow night, you come into your own.

The only thing I ask is—let me paint your portrait. In that moment of deciding whether to bolt. Any viewer can relate who’s ever been in the woods and tried to make a deer stay, tried to project his own harmlessness, saying with his face and outstretched hands, “Look, friend, I’m well-intentioned through and through, you can even smell it through my pores! Don’t run.”

But not with you looking like late Elvis. The fear. The moment of deciding. The even more fragile self that you surround. I can capture that. (He takes a folded form out of his breast pocket.) To enter in the contest.

I’ve been smothered for too long by…(looks around at the art) all this. This year I’m gonna force myself. (He rattles the form.) I think we could help each other.

I won’t lie—sudden exposure to the air…who knows? Mummies and unburied scrolls—some of them, poof. But what are the options? Are you happy in there? Is this all there is? If you’re happy, tell me and I’ll go away.

Silence. Curtain.