Abandon

by Matthew Maguire

c. 2006

127 Greene Street, New York, New York, 10012212.674.5593

maguirecpc@nyc.rr.comRepresentation: Clinton Fisher at Hanly Conroy Bierstein Sheridan Fisher & Hayes LLP

112 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016-7416 212.784.6446

AbandonBy Matthew Maguire

SettingNew York. The present.

Characters and castHelena, mid-twenties, afraid of love Alexis McGuinnessMarguerite, her younger sister Genevieve OdabeKaline, a seer, Helena’s guide Victoire Charles

Sewell, their father, Michael Ryanwealthy owner of a meatpacking plant

Axel, Helena’s suitor, Jeff Barrya grad student of physics at Columbia

Max, a composer who works as a butcher Richard Prioleauin the meatpacking plant

Note: This play is dedicated to Ellen Stewart. Ellen gave me my first production in 1977.I have experimented with many modes of creating since then, including my recentexplorations of realism. Ellen has urged me for many years to return to a work in myoriginal voice, and so this is for her, with love and gratitude.

I want to acknowledge the process employed by the company to make this piece. Thecast devoted several months to the creation of their work. Working from the visual andmusical scores they generated their performances through structured improvisations,which we then compressed and refined to a precise choreography. Matthew Maguire,October 2006, New York City

Act IThe Dance

Helena loses her balance.

Axel discovers Helena in distress and reaches out to her. He approaches her to dance.She’s evasive.

Hands Locked 1Four hands converge: an open palm facing us upright, a hand fused with it, its fingersreaching up, three fingers of a hand squeezed between them, and a disembodiedfist—clenching a short section of pipe—nestled in the first palm.

Helena locks her hands. Marguerite tries to pry them apart. She wants to bring her sisterback into the fold. Kaline joins Marguerite to aid her.

Sisters Divided 2Two grey rooms rhyme. Two empty lightbulb sockets echo. One room has a windowpainted black, the other holds an eight-foot plinth. In the rooms stand identical women,naked; each holds a white sheet to cover her. One stands on a stone, the other on thefloor. They face a sunlit window.

Marguerite recognizes that Helena is in a crisis and she must help, but her sister is sodistant that she wonders, is she lost to us for good? Kaline separates the sisters and warnsMarguerite to let Helena go.

Hall of Mirrors 3There are four shards of rooms. Each contains a mirror.

When Axel approaches Helena he discovers his rival, Max.

Marguerite opens her arms in an offer to dance. Helena balks.

MARGUERITEWhy won’t you dance with me?

HELENAI can’t dance with my sister.

MARGUERITEYou danced with Mother.

HELENAOnly after Father left her.

MARGUERITEWhat if I left?

Helena is forced to relent. She grips Marguerite’s hands to dance.

Sewell sets an empty military boot near the orbit of their dance.

The Waltz 4The two sisters waltz in each other’s arms on a mountain peak. Nearby perches an emptyboot. A hot-air balloon approaches through the clouds.

Kaline dances a lonely waltz by herself. Helena panics as she feels the closeness ofMarguerite. She breaks away. Marguerite is unable to stop her.

Sewell removes the boot. Kaline prepares for Helena’s fall.

The Fall

Intimacy terrifies Helena; it propels her into freefall.

Plunge 5Helena splits the sky as she dives straight down into a mountain gorge. Her sky pathforms perfect rectilinear angles. A rectangular shaft of cloud seizes her calves, provokedby her fear of love. She evokes The Hanging Man of the Tarot. She plunges deep intoher imagination where she hopes to construct a reality she can control and will protect herfrom the world. She is building a shell.

Helena inverts herself.

The Dance of the Empty Sleeve 6Strips of empty rooms, an empty suit in a mirror, an empty chair in the sunlight, an emptysleeve reaching round a corner, an empty hook in the center, and the far right inblackness.

Everyone that Helena knows disappears in a dance, hovering and erupting in the creases.Sewell disappears and appears and disappears. Max and Kaline weave in and out. Axel

vanishes with Marguerite. They are people who live in striated rooms and cast furtiveglances at one another across their invisible and sharp-edged boundaries. Helena feelsdesire and her body punishes her for it.

Falling Infant 7A naked infant plunges headlong through the rafters of a steel building. Below, two moreinfants, naked twins, sense the plight of this tiny Icarus.

Kaline attempts to guide a recalcitrant Helena in a fall.

KALINELet go … Helena … Let go.

Falling Forever 8Helena free falls. No one can stop her. Not even Marguerite. Sewell grasps Helenaespecially forcefully. He can’t let his daughter go.

SEWELLCome back!

HELENAYou’re the one who left.

(Falling Forever collage sustains)

KALINEYour mother felt like a stranger in her own house so she said yes toanother man.

HELENAFather caught her?

MARGUERITEStop it! (to Kaline) Go back to your bookkeeping!

KALINEThat’s when he walked out and didn’t come back.

MARGUERITEUntil now.

HELENAThen it’s his fault she suffered a breakdown.

MARGUERITENo.

HELENAShe died in that place they put her!

MARGUERITEI don’t want that to happen to you.

Wounded Hand 9In the background hover a sphere and a stalk. In the foreground a hand, its palm opening,with every finger but one bandaged.

Helena fears her hands are wounded.

Kaline and Marguerite resist allowing their own hands to be sucked into the vortex ofHelena’s obsession with her hands.

The Flood

Helena is flooded with emotions that are drowning her.

The Deluge Begins 10A veiled Arab woman crouches apprehensively next to an overturned patio chair. Fourpatio umbrellas are on the verge of sailing off in a high wind. Over the low veranda

explodes a magnified water drop, surging like a flood.

Axel approaches, slowly, inexorably, his arms upraised like the flood. Kaline basks inthe force, but Helena and Marguerite are overwhelmed.

Tempest 11A dark tower penetrates swirling clouds. At its core a rectangular void is filled withwind-lashed blood-red sky and palm fronds. Before it and behind it women wrestle withumbrellas that threaten to fly away.

AXELWhy won’t Helena let me in?

KALINEYou might need to give up.

AXELNo.

KALINEWhen she was a teenager her father told the girls about a death atthe plant. There were two men in love with the same woman. Shemade the mistake of walking through their work area. They startedpunching and one man fell. He hit his head on a butcher block andwas knocked unconscious. The other one picked up a cleaver andchopped off his rival’s hands.

AXELOh my god …

KALINEAs he did it he was screaming, “You’ll never touch her!”

AXELWhat’d the woman do?

KALINEI’m still there.

AXELWait!

Seeking Refuge 12A dark figure with a bright white umbrella leans against an invisible downpour as hestruggles towards a dilapidated two-story wooden building. From the second-story hangsa sheet that obscures the door. An orange light, like a comet’s tail, plunges into thebuilding, so that it glows from within.

Sewell forges on in his attempt to return to the home he abandoned.

Humiliation 13In a room without a ceiling the air looks like acid burning a photonegative. An Arabicwoman in a red robe rides backwards on the fragment of a horse. Her soaking hair fallsin front of her face, and her head is wrapped with animal entrails, a traditional Arabicpunishment for an adulteress. Spinning in space are masses of dark fabric wound astightly as tornados.

This is the story of Jane, Sewell’s wife and the girl’s mother. Trapped in a lovelessmarriage with a husband who ignored her, she said yes to another man. Ironically, whenSewell caught her in the act he was enraged and left her and his daughters. Janeunraveled, suffered a breakdown, was institutionalized, and after two years hung herselfin her room at the sanitarium.

Helena is surrounded by the others in a dance of shame. Wound tightly in the memory ofher mother’s humiliation she denies all of their attempts to reach her.

A Fury 14Light from a large window fills a room that contains a wooden apparatus with a steelwheel. Under a beam of the machinery Helena bends over, her drenched hair obscuringher face as she tries to wring the water out of her dress. In the foreground a grey robedand hooded figure whirls like a Fury.

Kaline channels the ferocious avenging spirit of Jane. She whirls through Helena’s

psyche as Helena fails to squeeze the deluge out of her hair and clothes.

Hand Cut by Steel 15A dark and weathered hand is pinioned to a conjunction of spheres, a plane, and aplumbing trap.

Helena’s obsession with her hands wells up again with a savage force.

Hiding

Helena tries to hide as Marguerite attempts to find her.

Running Into the Smoke 16A space of striated bands of smoke. A girl runs into the smoke. Her back is still visiblebut her head and shoulder and arm have vanished behind the smoke-line. In the far rightchamber broods an empty chair. Smoke bursts around it. A boy cries out a warning. Hishand is lost behind the razor-edge of a smoke-line.

Hiding Behind a Red Curtain 17In a white stucco chamber with forty-foot walls stands a tower with a bas-relief eyebelow its cupola. Four small windows puncture the chamber walls. In the lowestwindow the torso of a male corpse drapes. In the foreground a naked woman sits on achair and hides her head behind a large red curtain that is stretched aloft by dark hands.

Kaline holds a curtain in place as a refuge. Helena hides her head behind it.

Mourning 18In a room of frames a naked woman crouches in a coiled fetal position at the head of abed. She wants to sink into the scarlet pillow propped against the headboard.

Helena retreats ever deeper.

Hooded and Bound 19In the central chamber of a striated room stands a woman in a black dress with her armsheld down at her sides with her hands palms-back, almost as if she were bracing herselfagainst a wall but she’s not. A black hood covers her head. Several windows high in thewalls are allowing the entrance of light. Several chambers to the left sits a figurecompletely swathed in white fabric. In the chamber to the right is an Asian female pearldiver adjusting her head wrapping.

Axel gets wrapped in the fabric. It takes time to ravel and unravel.

Lost Girl 20A girl with impossibly spindly legs searches for a place to hide in an impossibly metallicworld.

Helena takes off her hood and searches the planar surfaces like a Weimar music doll.Increasingly her half-human features register a growing recognition that she doesn’tknow where she is. Marguerite and Kaline watch over her, although she doesn’t seem toknow they are present.

MARGUERITEYou’re not our mother.

KALINEI took care of you.

MARGUERITEYou run the meatpacking plant, that’s all.

KALINEDo you see how your father looks at me?

Labyrinth 21

Max approaches Helena.

HELENAI don’t even know you.

MAXYou’ve seen me. I work in the plant.

HELENAYou work for my father?!

MAXJust to survive—I write music.

HELENAYou’re a butcher.

Max leaves and Axel arrives. He tries to take her in his arms. She turns away.

AXELYou promised …

HELENAAxel …

AXELHelena …

She flees.

HELENAMy hands …

Hand in Brass Knuckles 22

Several disembodied hands, one in brass knuckles, and another lying palm up as if its armis about to be tied off for a fix.

Once again, Helena is seized by the fear that is fixed in her hands.

Possession

Helena feels as if a man is invading her body and possessing her.

Possession 23A naked woman of bronze is enveloped by a male shape-shifter with three arms and twotorsos. She tries to deny the possession with a blank stare. A red laser beam spans hisback and bisects her nipple.

Sewell attempts to embrace his daughter. She locks up and retreats inside. The othermen in her life, Axel and Max, arrive and also try to contact her. She is literally petrified.

She Faints 24The charcoal blue of a mist-enshrouded dawn. A naked man stands in a rowboat washedup in a recently reaped hayfield. In his arms he holds the naked body of his fainteddaughter.

Helena faints. Sewell lifts her in his arms and carries her off.

Hand and Pistons 25

A hand grips a rope-clamping device in a field of pistons.

Act IIBattle of the Sexes

Helena dreams she is at war with men.

Invasion 26Five men standing on a raised steel strut stretch a ceremonial cloth through a window andunfurl it across their torsos. On the opposite side of the warehouse a naked woman leansinto a bright light whose source we can neither see nor understand. Behind her a ghostlyrobed figure walks a narrow ledge toward a slumped behemoth so swathed in cloth thathuman features are barely visible.

Sewell, Axel, and Max march in lockstep to invade the women’s space. They flaunt theirferocious testosterone in ludicrous display. The women circle in a shamanic dance torepulse the threat.

Rigid Man Off-Balance 27A man petrified with his hands on his hips stands guard forever. Metal coils havereplaced his lower body, and he tilts precariously in the empty landscape.

Dangerous Alpha Male 28

Hand Crusher 29

Brain Crusher 30

Male on the Hunt 31A naked male athlete runs across a bed in a room full of frames. He is in full-extendedstride. His right foot outstretched behind him connects with a red frame. His right handstretching far ahead connects with a red frame.

Women Fight Back 32

Invention of the Wheel 33A woman in Arabic robes holds a large steel pipe across her arms. She is entering aroom, her back to us, On either side of the room is a wooden wheel, free-standing. Thesky swirling above the walls of the room, which does not have a ceiling, is filled withswirling shapes some of which seem to have flesh-tones and others which look like acidburns on silver nitrate photo plates.

Women Mobilize 34In the same room as A Fury, three female laborers put their shoulders into the task ofmoving a pair of railroad car wheels by levering its axle. A man one quarter their size,intent on his own task, bends precariously in their path. Floating above them is anotherset of wheels and a large bald head.

Male Beheaded 35As Helena lays her hands on the severed head beneath her, she turns as she senses thearrival of a larger-than-life flayed and headless torso. Its exposed musculature is vivid.It emanates a light like the aurora borealis.

The Five Hands of a Male Corpse 36

Like photographs of Matthew Brady’s war dead, the corpses lie still on the ground,seeming to embrace and caress in death.

Victory

It may be delusion, but Helena feels a strength she has never felt. She is full of pride thather empowerment has vanquished the invading male.

Mouth Ear Eye 37Nikko Toshogu Shrine (See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil)In a field of flesh are three figures: a mouth rotated so its lips are vertical, a bald headwith a prominent ear, and a Buddha’s statue on its side so that its eyelid is vertical.Nature’s shapes repeat themselves in endless subtle variations.

MARGUERITEWe have to commit her or she’ll end up like Mother.

SEWELLIf we do, she’ll end up the same way.

Diving 38

Passage (The Boat) 39

Flight on the Fly 40A dark-skinned girl sits in a woven basket atop a huge fly in flight. She stares at us wide-eyed.

Tightrope 41

(Tightrope image sustains)

Woman Warrior 42

Ominous Bird 43

MARGUERITEYou’re turning into Mother.

HELENANo!

MARGUERITELook at your hands.

HELENA(pause) What can I do?!

MARGUERITECan you let go?

Fire

Helena’s recognition thrusts her into a conflagration.

A Hand of Women in Flames 44

Dwarf Woman with Globe 45A wooden house completely filled by a bed is surrounded by a conflagration. Outside thehouse waits a massive female dwarf holding a reflecting silver globe. Her hardenedexpression is one of mute endurance. Inside the house Lenin stands on the bed above twocorpses. He cocks his head imperiously at the approaching flames.

Wax Man in Flames 46A flayed cadaver of wax sinks into a thicket of flames. As he melts he imagines awooden leg.

Firebreather with Three Legs 47A man breathes fire as a third arm between his legs emerges holding a torch.

Firebreather and an Angry God 48

Act IIISex

Challenged to confront her sexuality, Helena approaches it on her own terms.

Hands Lift Skeletal Hand 49

Men Approach 50

Helena invites Axel and Max to approach.

Captive 51

Helena binds Axel. She feels her power. As a defensive measure she will only approachher sexuality by dominating Axel. She will only let him touch her as her slave. This isthe only intimacy she can endure at this point.

Prisoners of Love 52

Priapus Dances with a Spirit 53Surrounded by mist-enshrouded mountain peaks, a Buddhist spirit with a skull headdances with a small rough-hewn Priapus.

Boy with Boa 54On a bed stands a naked boy with a boa wrapped around his waist and over his shoulder.He holds the snake’s head up to a frame within a frame that may be a window or it maybe a mirror in a room full of mirrors.

Climbing the Walls 55

Shedding the Cocoon 56

When Lips Part 57

Arrival 58A naked woman squeezes herself out from between huge wine casks. Behind her bracesthe arm and shoulder of a man who hangs his head.

Betwixt Texts and Tail 59

SEWELLWhy not?

KALINEFor one thing, I work for you.

SEWELLThat could change.

KALINEHow?

SEWELLAn arrangement?

A Gift 60A naked woman, squatting with her back to us, straddles large folds. Several yards ofcream-colored silk cascade between her legs. Above her a foot protrudes from a fold.Below her a man offers an apple as if he might put it up her potta. From the appleanother hand points away from her.

Luxury 61The naked Helena luxuriates on a couch formed by the French-kissing tongues of twopeople seen in X-ray.

Riding the Light Ecstatic 62

Riding the Roaring Male 63A miniature woman, naked, rides a cock. The cock is attached to a pair of balls withanimal haunches; a satyr-cock. This ecstatic duo is roaring through space on top of thesidecar of a 40’s vintage motorcycle. In the pregnant night beyond them surges a spermcell, all motility.

Orgasm 64A masked woman, her body covered in silver, her breasts capped with conical pasties,arches backwards with her arms reaching upward. In the sky above, a man strapped intowax wings swoops toward her.

Raining Love 65

Healing

Having confronted her greatest fear and survived, Helena emerges on the path tohealing.

Hand with Perfect Sphere 66

Portal 67A room replicates itself and its second incarnation sits atop the original, doubling itsheight, forming a massive doorway from which golden light streams into an otherwisepitch-black room. Helena whose back is to us faces this portal and approaches it witharms open.

Nimbus 68A white light glows in the distance of a long tunnel. Three people fill the mouth of thetunnel. On the right a female saint stands serenely on an orb, the shape of which echoesthe nimbus surrounding her head. On the left a figure in a white suit leaps over aspherical globe of the heavens. Between them a dynamic dancer in a gown doubles overin a passionate contraction. Her bare back reveals powerful vertebrae tracing a pathtoward the light.

Beatitude 69Within a gigantic white flower blossom stand Helena and a monk. They are as white asthe petals of the blossom. Helena, robed from head to toe, crosses her arms above herhead. She appears to be rising out of the stamen. The monk gazes contemplatively at thestamen.

Sewell enters to reconcile with his daughters. Helena gives him her hands. He reachesout to Marguerite and kisses the top of her head. Then he withdraws.

Reunion 70

Sisters Reconcile 71Mary Magdalene embraces the swaddling cloth. She has two bodies, one crouches inwhite to the left and one kneels in red to the right. This merger metamorphoses on a fieldof rain-dappled animal hide. In the distance a red-hot star sets.

Sisters Dance 72

The End