Broken

Mary Anne Butler

• Éditeur: Currency Press
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781925359497
• Sujet: Letteratura
• Sous-sujet: Teatro

A car crash in the Central Desert. A broken man, about to leave his wife. A woman miscarrying her first-born child. Broken entwines the stories of three complex lives as they unfold on a single fateful night in the heart of the Northern Territory's desert country.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Drama, the Northern Territory Literary Award for Best Script and the Victorian Prize for Literature, Broken wrestles with matters of chance, choice, hope and fate—posing the question: When you find yourself empty, how do you start again?%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Includes an introduction by Andrew Bovell.

ASH: Late evening.

A car; rolling, rolling.

In slow motion.

Side, roof, other side, wheels / side, roof, other side, wheels.

Being hurled through the air

like in the Mondial Rollover.

Strapped in, mouth open in silent scream:

upside-down terror.

The slow-ness of it. The dreamlike tumbling; whip-aired and wondrous.

Oddly predictable rhythm:

side

roof

other side

wheels

side

roof

other side

wheels.

Headlights pick up the world outside: turning, churning over and over and the ground’s coming up to meet my face, my eyes, and the windscreen smashes in and the driver’s window implodes and there’s glass in my face, my hair, my mouth. Shards of glass between my teeth.

Something solid hits my forehead.

MIA: Ghaaaaaaaa.

ASH: Whips across my chin.

MIA: Ghaaaaaaaaaaa

ASH: and I wonder …

MIA / ASH: how long can this go on / how long can this go on

ASH: before it finally ends.

And then the last measured tilt as a three-thousand-kilogram troop carrier pirouettes on an axle; trying to make up its mind whether it’s going to land on its wheels or roof, sways slightly from one point to the other; finally tips roofside and does a sluggish roll.

MIA: Breathe.

ASH: The sudden stillness.

MIA: Breathe!

ASH: The silence.

A roo stares in at me through the upside-down night,

red-eyed and frightened.

Moon outside the window frame, hanging there all yellow and pocked.

MIA: Nothing for miles.

No-one.

ASH: You know this road. Just biologists and mad people.

The odd tourist following a GPS into nothingness.

Council workers, once a year, to grade the road where it turns to dirt.

Vast tracts of emptiness.

… just …

me.

MIA: Out of nowhere.

ASH: Hanging upside down in a twiste...