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Memory Play: Scene III

Memory Play
Scene III
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Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Half Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Prologue
  8. Act1
    1. Scene I
    2. Scene II
    3. Scene III
  9. Act2
    1. Scene I
    2. Scene II
    3. Scene III
    4. Scene IV
    5. Scene V
  10. Epilogue

SCENE III

The child wakes up again in the same spot she woke up in before only the tone has altered to something less ghostly. Pelican carries a pair of skates.

Child

Are those mine?

Pelican

Wake up! No.

Child

Are they yours?

Pelican

I got them from a suicide. Do you want them?

Child

Maybe. I got a hexagonal block from a great grandparent who died once. I have lots of grand-parents. And step grandparents. Do you?

Pelican

I don’t know.

Child

You don’t know or you don’t remember?

Pelican

What’s the difference? What you will remember of this conversation will be nothing like what went into its construction.

Child

It’s okay to kill yourself, because it’s your body.

Pelican

Well, usually in theater when somebody kills themself you really go into it and find out all about them. You become tormented with their torments. You discover compassion even for the parts of yourself you don’t like. It’s an ordeal. This time it’s just gratuitous violence. Nobody liked the guy very much; although he was kind of a kick, and he wasn’t very human. His songs weren’t any good but people enjoyed them anyway. Nobody’s going to care are they? That’s what’s okay about it. He wanted to be an orator in a time when orators have almost ceased to exist. He was an artifact of another period like a … toy. Toys are a form of memory, more or less distant. Well, that just about wraps it up. I bet you don’t have any parts of yourself you don’t like, right?

Child

I’m not parts. Do you have parts?

Pelican

Sometimes I do things you like, right? Sometimes I do things you don’t like, right? Well, those are parts. Sometimes I’m selling you a bill of goods because it’s something I have a passion, a proclivity for. I like to shine. It’s part of me. And sometimes I just say what I think and that’s a part. It’s what I live with. Parts.

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Scene IV
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Copyright ©1994 Carla Harryman
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