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Audition Pieces 2. Younger Female Sara Munro, from Taking Liberties Sara Munro has come to the office of her English teacher. He had put a novel by Margaret Laurence, "The Diviners", on his class curriculum and this ignited a firestorm in the community. A group of evangelical Christians are demanding that the book be banned from the school and Sara is afraid that her teacher is going to buckle under the pressure. Sara is 17, a senior at her school. The quoted sections are from "The Diviners". SARA: "I overheard you with the principal yesterday. I was in the office waiting for someone and his door was open and I want to be a reporter… I mean, I wouldn't have listened if the door was closed. I heard him suggest you teach another book there were other good books by Laurence that wouldn't cause such a stink. I listened today in class when you told us you were teaching the other book. That it was better to do so. And I understand. I understand the pressure everyone's putting on you and your family, and I know that the principal's stopped sticking up for you - but Mr. Bales, you can't do this, you can't stop now, not after being on the news, not after getting yelled at for so long! (Opening novel.) Listen to this! Listen, it's the first couple of lines from the book. "The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction, made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after the years of river-watching." I think about you, and you leaving off teaching this book which you say will be so good for us to read. I can't help thinking the opening of this book is so appropriate, that the current does flow both ways. For us, it's flowing forward and these books are going to be accepted; and it's also flowing backwards, because the writers of all those short letters are pulling us that way, too. And I'm thinking that, on one hand, we want to be open and, on the other hand, we're pulling back in the direction of hiding things. And sometimes being too open about things can cause trouble, or is it only the real reason behind your being open that's bad? And isn't it weird how I can read this book and see nothing but beauty, but when someone else reads it out loud it sounds like filth. And it's weird I can feel old and young and really convinced of things, and confused, and really stupid and, at the same time, I feel smarter than all of them put together, all of them! "This apparently impossible contradiction, made apparent and possible…" How'd she know? "The river flowed both ways." And these lines from the last page: "The waters flowed from north to south and the current was visible, but now a south wind was blowing, ruffling the water in the opposite direction, so that the river, as so often here, seemed to be flowing both ways. Look ahead into the past, and back into the future, until the silence." You can't teach any other book, Mr. Bales. It has to be this one. It just has to be." (Pp. 26-27.) The complete text of Taking Liberties Nun from Into The opening scene of Into belongs to the Urban Nun. She is now stuck in a massive traffic jam heading back in to the metropolis, and while she waits she recounts the weekend she has just spent at a northern retreat for nuns. The Sisters' convention ended with the murder of a Cardinal but, as the Nun recounts, at least it began auspiciously. NUN: "I'm an urban nun. I take my God with smoke. I want him loud. Rumbling like the Queen car, howling drunk, crazy with despair, a thorn in the side, a kick in the gut. Don't want him leafy, gold leafy green leafy palm leafy. Don't want him pastoral. Pastoral is death. And yeah, yeah, death's a comfort - but comfort is false. So this comes. A letter. An invitation. To an up-north, get-down Nunfest. A Retreat for all the remaindered nuns of the world. The valiant last two hundred. All of us called to a fine and quiet place of birds and bugs - and birds - and bugs - and bugs - and bugs. So many, many bugs. Nuns alfresco. "In God's own perfect nature". I think not. If nature's so perfect, God won't be there. What's for him to do? Relax? God's going to relax? Maybe he's going to lie under a tree and daydream new plagues? Right. But I go. If only to remember what my sisters look like. Hey - even nuns get nostalgic. We get lonely! I get lonely! I'll often dig out my convent yearbook on a slow Saturday night, and imagine proms that never were, football games I never cheered, Clash Days that faded into black and white. I'll recall novices who slipped on the trip up God's altar. And I'll curse the sisters who never visit me because of the trough of incorrectness in which I wallow. We retreat by bus and car. Minivan multivan mountain bike. Some hobble up the northern concessions - Barefoot Nuns of Perpetual Atonement - grateful for the gravel, the sharper the better. And arriving by floatplane? You guessed it - the Yankee Techno nuns. We're met by Sister Katherine. Kate the Innocent. My convent bunkmate way back when. A vestal goofball sap with a saran wrap smile. Kate welcomes us to the lodge, her arms upraised, like a Rio statue. Naturally, there's an orientation cocktail party. And yes, the jokes are just what you'd expect from a giggle of godbrides. Requests for Virgin Marys. Purple Jesuses. Rusty Nails. But funny things - the walls of isolation begin tumbling like Jericho. We're so diverse, this last two hundred. We're so international. We're so intercultural. Yet we're also interlinked by this umbilical wince of faith. A tender bond, fortified with booze. So - when Sister Kate gets out her singing nun guitar? And warbles "Kumbayeh"? Like a Kate Bush with a human? Well: shut up! Show some respect! A musical cliché chased with Scotch can cure any sister's blues. And: when Sister Kate suggests a little splish-splash? Don't even think about laughing! God's tilted the world into darkness. His moon is warming the lake. His sand fleas are urging us off the beach. So we strip! And we run! No shit! Carmelites, Ursulines, Josephines, Magdalenes! Militants, Pacifists, Militant-Pacifists! New Agers, Mainliners, Hardliners, One Liners! The chaste - and the chased. The dogmatic, the pragmatic, the stigmatic! The night is filled with the rustle of shedding habits! Falling wimples muffling fleabeach! Twittering like a hundred plucked ravens we pound over naked sand! An army of motoring legs and arms! We immerse in the northern waters! Two hundred throats - gasp! Four hundred nipples - pop! It's a glory of dunking sisters! It's a nubile of nuntits! Nuntits! Nunarms! Nunbushes! Dark sacred nunbushes! Oh baby baby! I float out on my back, past them all. I look up at the moon and the stars - stars that might spell 'God' if anyone could remember the language - and I say, "Things don't get much better than this." Exactly. They start getting worse." (Pp. 1-5) Marian from The Edible Woman Marian has just fled the party of her lawyer-fiancé and spent the night with Duncan, a graduate student. Somehow she had hoped that the act of escaping to Duncan would be enough to quell the growing terror she is feeling. As her life has slipped out of control, Marian has begun referring to herself in the third person. Later, in the monologue, she turns to Duncan for help. MARIAN: (To herself.) "Last night everything seemed resolved. But this morning she can't remember what that resolution was. Whatever decision she made is already forgotten - if indeed she had ever really decided anything. It might've been an illusion - like the blue light on their skins last night. Oh, Duncan's accomplished something - but she hasn't. And Peter, her fiancé - he is still, very, very real. (To Duncan.) How do I get out of this mess! Duncan, maybe I should see a psychiatrist! I want to be adjusted. I don't see any point in being unstable! And I've been starving myself to death - I don't see any point in that, either. I just want to be safe. I think I must have thought Peter was safety and now I know I've spent all these months getting nowhere. I haven't accomplished anything! Now I've got to decide what I'm going to do. But I don't think I can do it alone. I don't know what to say. Peter is not going to understand. No matter what words I end up using - the English language isn't big enough for what I have to say but - but - unless - maybe - Perhaps I don't need words at all." (Pp. 87-88) |
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