(Stage light brightens, sound: applause.

A man in his mid thirties enters in all black, including black gloves.  He waves to the audience and the applause increases.  He bows.  

A rose is thrown onto the stage; he graciously picks it up and smells it deeply.  Humbly, he bows in the direction that the rose came from and puts it behind his trunk and humbly bows once more.

He walks to stage left, where a stage hand gives him a mask.  He puts on a black mask, disappearing completely into the black stage.  The lights return to the simple down light on the trunk.

The man turns up stage to the trunk.  He opens it, releasing a bright light.  He stoops to lift out the contents.

Above his head, he lifts two curious wooden crosses in his right hand.  He reaches his left into the box and hefts something light but fragile out.  It is a person.

He lays the person carefully on her back.

He takes one of the crosses in his right hand and stands, walking around the box to stand behind it.

He closes the box with a snap.  He steps on the box.   

From here, he is the puppeteer and she is his marionette.  The motions of the two crosses are how he controls her.

 Her head snaps in the direction of the audience, and then slowly returns to looking up.  

 Slowly, as a puppet would, led by her chest and floating above the ground the marionette stands.

                                                 She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come.  

                                                 She tries again.  Again no words come out.

 She continues trying, increasingly frantic, as the MAN on the box controls her with his little wooden crosses.

 She tried to scream, grabbing her chest.   When she touches her chest, she realizes nothing is there.

 Like one would look for lost car keys whilst being assaulted, she checks every where on her, but she is still missing something very important.

 In extreme embarrassment, she runs and hides behind the puppeteer.

 She slowly melts behind the trunk.  

 Before she emerges, the man starts his speech.  As he speaks, she acts out what he is saying.)

                                                             PUPPETEER
At the open, a young woman walks on the surface sun, but it doesn't hurt her feet.  In her arms, close to her chest, her shoulders stooped, she wraps all herself tightly around something, a secret which grew from the dust of another world.  With it protected just this way, she wanders for miles; she is stronger than her thirst, until she is ready.  At the right spot she plants her secret into the blistering yellow soil, protecting it and all outside knowledge of it until she stoops back to behold it.   It is a rose. Reaching out her hands, she warms them from the face of the rose as fire, and as food. 

                                                              PUPPETEER & MARIONETTE
Thank you.

                                                              PUPPETEER
She says.  

(The man lets go of his wooden crosses, leaving them to hang in the air.  

 Standing on the trunk, he broadly bows.  The marionette rolls her eyes.)

                                                             PUPPETEER
Okay.

(The puppeteer starts undressing his black costume, throwing his hood and gloves, etc into the trunk.

She begins to blithely dance around the stage.

He hardly notices her dance as the wooden crosses hang in the air and he prepared to leave.  Perhaps she takes some of his clothes from the trunk, and puts them on.

Finally, he reaches for the rose.)

                                                               MARIONETTE
NO!!!  Let it live.

                                                 (After a moment of consideration, she sits on the trunk and lets her dance.)

                                                                PUPPETEER
Come on, I have another show.

                                                                MARIONETTE
We have another show.
                                                               

                                                                PUPPETEER
You’re replaceable, you know this.  I have six more just like…

                                                                MARIONETTE
Replace me and I’ll break your fingers.

                                                                 PUPPETEER
I don’t know, the girl on the sun thing, I’m getting a little tired of the same act.
 
                                                                MARIONETTE
Girl?

                                                                PUPPETEER
Get in the trunk.

                                                                MARIONETTE
No…

                                                                PUPPETEER
Come on, they don’t have a curtain, everyone’s staring.

                                                                MARIONETTE
I’m older than you, you know.

                                                                PUPPETEER
Please.

                                                                MARIONETTE
I am.

                                                                PUPPETEER
Yes.  Because I made you before I was born.

                                                                MARIONETTE
No… but I’ve been around.  I’ve been to the beginning of time and the end of existence.  I’ve had tea with the divine and joined the underground resistance, I’ve met foxes that talk, I’ve met creature of myth, I’ve danced ballet in Moscow and played Hal in Henry the Fifth, I’ve picked stocks of corn, I’ve climbed poles of beans, I’ve was an emperor for a while fighting battles with queens, I’ve watched from the world the top of a hill, while it’s secrets unfurled, I’ve conquered deserts and hills,  inherited millions in gold by forging some wills,  I swam deep to the bottom of oceans for fun, I’ve played cricket with the stars …
 
                                                                PUPPETEER
And walked on the sun?
 
                                                                MARIONETTE
Yes.  

                                                                PUPPETEER
Cute.  That.  Was all very cute.
 
                                                                MARIONETTE
Jealous?

                                                                PUPPETEER
What if I promise to oil your joints tonight?
 
                                                                MARIONETTE
You are jealous.
                                                       
                                                                PUPPETEER
Repaint your face.
 
                                                                MARIONETTE
That I get to go on wild adventures and you…                                      

                                                                PUPPETEER
Taste food?

                                                                MARIONETTE
Yeah, I’m jealous.

                                                                PUPPETEER
And drink.

                                                                MARIONETTE
Oh.

                                                                PUPPETEER
And have sex.

                                                                MARIONETTE
Yeah.                                                               

                                                                PUPPETEER
You wish you could have sex, don’t you.

(Beat.)

Not with me!

                                                                PUPPETEER & MARIONETTE
Eck.

                                                                MARIONETTE
So fleshy.

                                                                PUPPETEER
All splintery.  Blegh.

                                                                MARIONETTE
Now that’s not fair.  I could be a courtesan, if you’d let me.  A geisha found in one the grandest courts.  A goddess sought after by all, and returning affections only to the mightiest of kings and the bravest of heroes.

                                                                PUPPETEER
Blegh.

                                                                MARIONETTE
You’ll understand when you’re older. 

                                                               PUPPETEER
What if I replace your strings?

                                                                MARIONETTE
Are you tempting me with metaphors?  

                                                                PUPPETEER
Okay I’m done playing.

                                                                MARIONETTE
The carrot and the stick all at once.

                                                                PUPPETEER
In the trunk!
                                                (She audibly sticks out her tongue at him.)

                                                               PUPPETEER
NOW!

                                                                MARIONETTE
I will break your fingers, you know, and don’t think I can’t.

                                                                PUPPETEER
See, I liked that comedy act, I really did.  The one with the other puppet, the puppet that wasn’t you, the one with the belly that never talked back.  That act wasn’t half bad.  

                                                                MARIONETTE
Yeah, well, it wasn’t half good either.

                                                                PUPPETEER
Why don’t I tell jokes with you?

                                                                MARIONETTE
HA!

                                                                PUPPETEER
Seriously.
                                                (She ignores him.)

                                                                PUPPETEER
Okay.  Fun’s over.  I’m hungry.

                                                                MARIONETTE
I swear I’ll…

                                                                PUPPETEER
You can’t walk if I have broken fingers.

                                                                MARIONETTE
That… is a chance … I’m willing to take…

                                                                PUPPETEER
All right.
                                              (She takes this as a cue and dances even more wildly than before.)
He means it another way.  Puppeteer stands and takes the hanging wooden crosses and begins reeling her in.)

                                                                MARIONETTE
Pleeeeease.
                                              (He is winding them up, pulling her back to him.)
Just one more minute.
                                              (He pulls her right up close.)

                                                                PUPPETEER
No.
                                                (He picks her up and puts her gingerly in the box.)

                                                                PUPPETEER

Goodnight.
                                               (She audibly sticks out her tongue.  He slams the trunk.  He locks it, and stays with it for a moment to make sure she doesn’t escape.  There is some inside struggle, the trunk shakes.  There is a little back and forth between the man and his puppet inside the trunk, perhaps a few false starts in his speech.  When the trunk is calm, he turns to the audience.)

                                                               PUPPETEER
Ladies and Gentleman, I apologize for that unprofessional display of chaotic showmanship.
                                                (The trunk slowly sprouts legs.) 
These puppets, they’re changed, not like what they once were.  Strong and wood.  A little paint, a little back story.  They think that to imbibe them with life is to make it theirs.  You know, and I know, that this is not true.
                                                 (The trunk starts walking around the stage clumsily.)
Though, it should be said, skilfully, mysteriously they do touch you.  Open you.  Provide a conduit for you to live, if indeed expression is reality.  Question and explore.  I must apologize, I had let her think she could get away rebellions, what you just saw, when in fact she cannot.  The alternative is that she will not come out of the trunk when I need her.
                                                (The trunk crashes into something and falls open.  Clutching the wooden crosses, she rolls onto her own feet.)
Of course, I am guilty of letting myself believe it too.  That she is whole and alive and other.  That she is free.  
                                               (She makes a break for it, off stage.)
But again, I apologize.  This is not the case either.
                                               (She stops on the edge of the stage, clutching her wooden crosses dearly.  She turns to the rose, which still sits planted in the stage.)

She’s a conduit.  And a conduit is only alive as a living illusion who may pass some substance on.  Otherwise she is merely the Roman Aqueducts, the charioteer, practical and beautiful and obsolete and tired.  Something to do, something to see, something to study, but nothing to be.  
                                               (She slowly returns to the flower and warms her hands on it.)
But when this purpose, this substance, this food, this fuel, this heat, this life, this message, be it of me or  from some vast reservoir behind me that, like water, is filled by what will ultimately be its final destination, flows from me to her so that it may, hopefully, arrive for you.  I hope she’s been sufficiently open for you.   
                                                (He briefly glances back to the puppet.)

                                                              PUPPETEER (con’t)
In any case.  We’ve already kept you too long.  Thank you.  For your indulgence.  Thank you.
                                                 (He turns to the puppet and taps her on the shoulder.)
 
                                                                PUPPETEER
                                                (Almost inaudibly).
Let’s close it down.

                                                (She nods.  Tenderly removing the flower from the stage, she clutches it close and crawls back into the trunk and walks off stage left.  He walks upstage right, where someone off stage hands him fresh blacks – gloves, mask, etc.  As the trunk marionette’s trunk walks off stage left.  Two similar looking trunks walk on from stage right. 

 

As the two new trunks find their place centre stage, the dressed puppeteer finds his place behind them, almost invisible against the black back drop.

 

Simultaneously, the two trunks open.)

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