We're Gonna Make You Whole

Yasmine Van Wilt

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781849431316
• eBook ISBN: 9781849436618
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: American Drama

'The Gulf is a graveyard. But come on in, the water's fine... You're coming with me on one fiery fucking bronco ride. Ask me nicely, and I'll let you be on top.' Based loosely on the testimonies of more than one hundred Gulf of Mexico residents, We're Gonna Make You Whole is a passionate magical-real political drama that follows the livesof five people brought together by environmental tragedy. Set in Louisiana, the play examines how the petrochemical industries have forever altered the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Gulf of Mexico.

ACT I

SCENE 1

The three CHORUS LADIES face front, eyes down. They are dressed as divas – as a divine and not all together wordly trio. They wait for their introduction from the EMCEE. A picture of the State of Louisiana behind.

EMCEE: Welcome to Louisiana’s very best kept secret, the House of Funk. Hailing from the deepest darkest corners of the Bayou Teche, raised on Cajun goodness and Creole soul – they’ve been through heaven and hell and back to be HERE – Delphine, Antoinette and Betty Sue – come on people, put your hands together for – ‘The ORACLES’ – take it home ladies.

The following is flirtatious…

CHORUS 1: (Coy.) This your first time in Louisiana?!

CHORUS 1: (Sexily.) Don’t worry baby, we’ll take real good care of you!

CHORUS 2: Down in our bayou country. You’re gonna get yourself –

CHORUS 1: A nice little brain fog –

CHORUS 1: You’ll forget about your wife and kids.

CHORUS 2: You’ll forget about your whiny husband.

CHORUS 3: (Sung.) You’ll just get LOST!

CHORUS 2: Maybe it’s cause there’s something eating your brain?

CHORUS 1: Or maybe it’s because we’ll treat you so good… you’ll never wanna leave!

The lights rise on the CHORUS LADIES. CHORUS 1 plays the tambourine and triangle and CHORUS 2 begins dancing. CHORUS 3 hums the introduction to ‘Swing Low.’ As CHORUS 3 sings into the microphone, CHORUS 1 and CHORUS 2 dance behind, accompanying their movement with tambourines, castinets. They sing along on every ‘Swing Low’ and hum the Accompaniment all the way through. The dancing becomes more stylised, erotic with ‘I Put A Spell On You’ – CHORUS 1 AND 2 lean forward and hum their harmonies into their microphones.

CHORUS 1: Come on down, we’ll have a big parade.

CHORUS 2: We’re gonna go downtown.

CHORUS 3: (Sung.) AND ALL THAT JAZZ –

A beat. The CHORUS sing all together on each repetition of ‘Oh Susannah’

CHORUS 3: (Sung.)

Oh Susannah,

don’t you cry for me.

Bury me beneath

the old oak tree.

And cross these arms

that used to fight.

And bury me beneath

the old oak tree tonight.

Bullets light the sky

like shooting suns

and I stare into the night

well it’s not my choice to fight

And I see him fall

barely a man at all.

And his young lead legs,

collapse dead weight.

He calls to a lover

he leaves behind

and curses, the man, that’s me,

who’s shot him blind.

Standing in the centre of the earth.

A lonely god sings a silent dirge.

But what of the hero slain?

Oh no, just one more young life taken.

Well, do I cry, do I feel remorse?

No, no. They say. This is the soldier’s curse.

Oh Susannah,

don’t you cry for me.

Bury me beneath

the old oak tree.

And cross these arms

that used to fight.

And bury me beneath

the old oak tree tonight.

A beat.

The CHORUS strip down for a moment, removing their hairpieces, etc…as they cross offstage.’

CHORUS 1: Can we get some whisky Tommy? We’ve got friends in…Hello you…

CHORUS 2: It’ll only be that same old cheap-ass bourbon.

CHORUS 3: But you’re welcome to have some.

CHORUS 1: It makes the story go down smoother.

CHORUS 2: We’re glad you’ve come. We’ve been waiting for you…

CHORUS 3: Since the water turned black.

CHORUS 1: Guess we were hoping you’d come a little sooner.

The CHORUS laughs.

CHORUS 1: But no matter, you’re here now.

CHORUS 2: And we know we can trust you to take the story back…

CHORUS 1: That’s why you came right?

A beat.

CHORUS 1: Baby, we’re about to get a little postmodern on you because we gotta whole LOT of perspective.

CHORUS 2: We been here…since – before people.

CHORUS 3: Since just after the Mississippi started to run her curves down to the salt – making the bayous…

A beat.

CHORUS 2: We can be anybody –

CHORUS 3: And nobody. But sugar – sometimes having a body is nice.

A beat.

CHORUS 2: So long’s there’s been a life force, there’s been a Urizen – better known as THE Company.

CHORUS 3: Better known as THE Company.

CHORUS 1: THEY are the force who try to keep the natural world down –

CHORUS 3: And we are the natural world –

CHORUS 1: BUT WE will not be silenced.

A beat.

CHORUS 2: What THE Company have always told the people…

CHORUS 1: What they have always wanted you to believe…

CHORUS 2: Is that they know better than you. That there’s nothing you can do to take them on –

CHORUS 3: That there’s nothing you can do to take them on –

CHORUS 2: THE Company have always controlled the flow of information.

CHORUS 1: But they can’t control us.

CHORUS 2: They’re shit scared –

CHORUS 1: ’Cause we have the whole story…

CHORUS 3: And they know, eventually, the truth’s gonna get free.

A beat.

CHORUS 2: When we were young, we could –

CHORUS 2: Throw out a line – let it zing through the air – and you’d fight out the biggest tuna, its scales shining in the sun like it was made of truth.

CHORUS 1: Catfish the size of dogs used to swim through our waters tickling us with their whiskers –

CHORUS 3: Dolphins. When we were children, we swam in Barrataria Bay with the pods – holding their dorsals as they sliced through the water…they were joy embodied…

CHORUS 2: There were pools – where thousands of shrimp, in their own crazy dance used to breed, on the bottom of the bayous – rising to the top as they grew. And you shoulda seen them in the noonday sun – they were silver on fire.

CHORUS 1: Mosquitoes the size of your face – we made them, to keep THE Company away!

They are examining the audience, searchingly.

A beat.

CHORUS 2: We were children when the people who would become the Cajuns came down the snaggle-toothed mouth of the Mississippi to hide from THE Company here in this land…

CHORUS 3: It wasn’t the first time people came here hiding from THE Company. But back THEN…nobody from THE Company would follow.

CHORUS 1: The first people…helped them survive…what was then…our wild land.

CHORUS 1: Not everybody chose to come here.

CHORUS 1: Some arrived in chains.

CHORUS 1: And spent the centuries since they set foot on this soil fighting...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Act I
• Act II