Callisto: A Queer Epic

Hal Coase

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786823861
• eBook ISBN: 9781786823878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: History

Callisto is a swirling constellation of remarkable queer stories, weaving together  four stories of same-sex relationships from across the ages.

Hurtle across time and space with this scintillating and extraordinary new play. launching from a 17th-century opera house through cislunar space and into the distant future, Callisto tells four stories that have nothing and everything in common. 

In London, 1680, opera star Arabella Hunt has secretly entered into the first recorded gay marriage in UK history. In Worcester, 1936, Alan Turing pays one final visit to Isobel Morcom, mother of his lost first love, Christopher. In the San Fernando Valley, 1979, Tammy Frazer arrives at Callisto Pornographic Studios, searching for the love of her life. And on the Moon, 2223, Lorn is building a paradise to sleep in, but his A.I. companion Cal is determined to keep him awake.

These love stories are both poignant and comic - a bright constellation of queer encounters. Callisto premiered at The Pleasance Dome at the Edinburgh Festival in 2016 and transferred to the Arcola Theatre, London. 

 

Act One

CAL, ALAN, ARABELLA and TAMMY enter.

ARABELLA is in a drawing room in Buckinghamshire, it is 1680.

TAMMY is in a parking lot in LA, it is 1978.

ALAN is in a church in Worcestershire, it is 1936.

CAL is looking out at the moon, it is 2223.

They listen to each other.

TAMMY: Come on. Come on. You got this, Tammy. I know you have and I know you better than anyone.

She shakes herself down.

La-la-la. You. Have. Fucking. Got. This. You can do this.

ALAN: I am not going to pray, you know, God, not actually pray. I don’t pray anymore.

CAL: And we go up – no back downs now. I see all thinkings on your face while you sleep. Every one – and I count them each – every thought you swim in.

ARABELLA: How? How shall I plead my cause, when you, my judge, already have condemned me?

ALAN: No but maybe it is something rather like a prayer. Oh, now, listen to me – how – … As if any of this should matter… How… Seven years.

TAMMY: Hell, can’t do anything else anyways. Hah. Ah… You go in there – and you find her. You find that Daisy Lew.

CAL: Do you see me? All of me? Not so cert, p’rhaps not so strong on that one – it’s p’rhaps truth that you look through me.

ARABELLA: Shall I bring the love you bore me for my advocate?

CAL: Cept I can hold the love your eyes had when they first touched mine.

ALAN: Seven years, Christopher.

And will I not ever be done with thinking of you?

TAMMY: Maybe just like that you make something of yourself for once.

ALAN: Goodbye.

TAMMY: Let’s do it. Let’s do it.

CAL, ALAN and TAMMY move off, exit – ARABELLA continues alone.

We land in a drawing room, Buckinghamshire, 1680, early evening.

ARABELLA: That love is turned against me, and destroys me, for love once past is at the best forgotten, but oftener sours to hate; it will please my lord Antony to ruin me, and therefore I’ll be guilty…

DRYDEN: The gods.

ARABELLA: I know – ’tis called a pause, Mr Dryden, a pause, it gives the audience but a moment to decide what they would rather be doing.

The gods.

The gods have seen my joys with envious eyes; Cleopatra has no friends in Heaven, and all the world, as if it were the business of mankind to part us, is armed against my love: even you yourself join with the rest; you, you are armed against me.

KILLIGREW: My, my – how beauty fades. Dryden?

DRYDEN: A little graceless, but passionate enough.

KILLIGREW: High praise indeed.

DRYDEN: But you will see – my Cleopatra is all passion, nothing but passion, and she has some passion.

ARABELLA: Shall I begin again – passionately?

DRYDEN: That she could do it, I am sure –

ARABELLA: ‘She’ is here, sir –

DRYDEN: Yes, undeniably, she is –

ARABELLA: Are we quite done?

KILLIGREW: There is always more to see –

ARABELLA: Perhaps I should call my husband?

KILLIGREW: I submit to the playwright.

DRYDEN: Lady! For my part: if you will but put aside your fresh bridal pleasures, quit Buckinghamshire, and come back down to London with us this night – ’tis done, decided, the role is yours.

ARABELLA: You are both determined then to have me?

KILLIGREW: Any night of the week.

DRYDEN: And having seen you, as was said, in Cavalli’s La Calisto, I could not, dared not keep away. ‘Where beauty is, there must I walk –’

AMY enters.

AMY: And mind you do not tread on her.

ARABELLA: Sirs – my good husband. James, Mr Dryden, playwright, poet, writer of wrongs –

DRYDEN: Your good wife might have mentioned me –

AMY: She may have, I do not recall –

ARABELLA: And this is –

AMY: Ah, wait!

DRYDEN: Yes –

AMY: No, no, that was someone else –

AMELIA: This is Sir Thomas Killigrew, director of Drury Lane –

KILLIGREW: And a very, very old friend –

AMY: With respect, kind sirs, we left London hoping to have left all this behind.

KILLIGREW: With respect, sir, I would not see Arabella Hunt, prima donna and guiding grace of the King’s C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two