Plays in Time

The Beekeeper's Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether

Karen Malpede, Patrick Duggan

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781783208159
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783208890
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Plays in Time collects four plays by Karen Malpede set during influential events from the late twentieth century to the present: the Bosnian war and rape camps; the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Israel's 2006 bombardment of Lebanon; 9/11 and the US torture programme; and the heroism of climate scientists facing attack from well-funded climate change deniers. In each play in this anthology, nature, poetry, ritual and empathy are presented in contrast to the abuse of persons and world. Despite their serious topics, the plays are full of humour and distinctively entertaining personalities.

Each play was developed by Theater Three Collaborative for production in New York and internationally in Italy, Australia, London, Berlin and Paris.

Part IThe Beekeeper’s Daughter

In memory of two friends, Ned Ryerson and Dorothy Dinnerstein.

For the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all who are forced to become refugees.

The Beekeeper’s Daughter premiered at the Dionysia World Festival of Contemporary Drama, Veroli, Italy, in 1994, directed by Karen Malpede. George Bartenieff played Robert Blaze; Lee Nagrin played Sybil Blaze; Funda Dyal played Rachel Blaze, Jared Reinmuth, Jamie Knox, Christen Clifford, Admira Ismic; The New York premiere was at the Florence Mission Project, Bleecker St. Theater, directed by Karen Malpede, assistant director, Mahayana Landowne, lighting by Tony Giovannetti, costumes by Sally Ann Parsons. George Bartenieff played Robert; Lee Nagrin, Sybil; Christen Clifford, Admira; Brendan Corbalis played Jamie; Carolyn Goelser played Rachel. Theater Three Collaborative revived the play in 2016 at Theater for the New City, directed by Karen Malpede, lights by Tony Giovannetti, costumes by Carisa Kelly and Sally Ann Parsons, set by Michaelangelo De Serio, music by Arthur Rosen. George Bartenieff reprised his role as Robert Blaze; Evangeline Johns played Sybil Blaze; Najla Said, Rachel Blaze; P.J. Brennan, Jamie Knox; Di Zhu, Admira Ismic.

Characters

Robert Blaze, an American poet living in self-chosen exile

Jamie Knox, an androgynous American literary critic

Sybil Blaze, Robert’s sister, the beekeeper

Rachel Deming-Blaze, Robert’s grown daughter, a human rights worker

Admira Ismic, a Bosnian Muslim war victim

Setting

The Beekeeper’s Daughter takes place on an island in the Adriatic Sea, early summer to fall 1993, with an epilogue nine months later. Four settings are called for: the House, an open expanse near the Beehives, the Forest, and a cliff near the Sea. The settings should be simple in the extreme; there is no need for them to be realistic, but they should be suggestive of an austere Mediterranean beauty. It is best if each scene takes place in a different location on the stage. In the 2016 production, the stage was rectangular and each scene spilled closer toward the audience. The House, raised, was upstage, the Hives just below, the Forest mid-stage, and the cliff was played a few feet from the first row.

Scene I

The House

(The main room of a simple, stone house on a remote Adriatic island; a large window leads to the outside, two doors on either side lead to bedrooms and the kitchen. Outside the house, downstage, are Sybil’s beehives. Sybil, a large woman dressed in white beekeeping smock, gloves, hat, and veil, stands by the large window, watching. Sound of a flute being played. A beautiful, young, androgynous man, Jamie Knox, dressed in shorts, tank top and flowing kimono, nearly dances into the room and stretches himself out on the chaise lounge; he is followed by Robert Blaze, the flute player. It is obvious that these two men have just made love.)

SYBIL: The bees are cold.

JAMIE: I feel so wonderfully hot.

SYBIL: Rachel’s coming.

ROBERT: Rachel? Rachel who?

SYBIL: Your child.

ROBERT: So I’m told, though since I neglected to keep her mother under and lock and key, I can’t be entirely sure.

JAMIE: If you were speaking like that about anyone except your first wife, I would take it as a sexist remark.

ROBERT: Dora was a rather astonishing libertine.

JAMIE: It’s the misfortune of the female poet that the knowledge that she slept with virtually every major voice of the twentieth century so far exceeds her literary reputation.

ROBERT: Dora wrote with Sapphic passion…

JAMIE: Quite.

ROBERT: … for that I forgave her everything.

JAMIE: However, you are the oracular voice for the new age.

ROBERT: You, the light of the last chapter of my life. Why is Rachel coming here?

JAMIE: To share paradise with us, why not?

SYBIL: To see me.

ROBERT: Rachel is nothing like Dora. Serious to a fault. When she found she could not save her mother she decided to save the world.

JAMIE: Poor Rachel. (He is quoting ROBERT) ‘The world continues its destructive course/so we must squander love upon the open flesh.’

ROBERT: Rachel has always been obscenely chaste. She saw how sex destroyed her mother.

JAMIE: Sex was Dora Deming’s elixir; she had to forget the doomsday voice inside her head.

ROBERT: Don’t romanticize Dora. In many ways she was a perfectly ordinary extremely difficult woman.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• The Drama of the Thinking Heart
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Back Cover