CHIMERA A work-in-progress, for one voice

Conceived and created by Suli Holum (performer)

and Deborah Stein (playwright)

CHIMERA is being developed through a HARP residency at HERE Arts Center and the Workhaus Collective, company in residence at the Playwrights’ Center. An early workshop was held

New Dramatists with the support of the Creativity Fund, made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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PRE-SHOW.

The audience sits in rows, looking at a stage. On the stage: a kitchen. This is both a kitchen and a theatre. Later it will also be a university biotechnology laboratory, and a doctor’s office, so it should feel both sterile and not. Sleek lines, brushed aluminum surfaces, things on wheels. An island counter in the middle of the space doubles as a table. A refrigerator upstage left, a sink upstage center overlooking a window that overlooks a garden. Stage right is a bar with stools that also doubles as a counter. It is a gorgeous, expensive-looking kitchen. But there is something off, something clinical about it. Something impersonal. This is not a kitchen that has been personalized: no embroidered towels, no photos of the family, no calendars or lists. This is a barely-used urban kitchen plunked down in the middle of the suburbs. We know that this is a suburban location because of the view through the window: perfect, idyllic, canned.

Soundtrack of a life: hospital sounds, baby crying, car on an open road, laughter, breathing, ambulance siren in the distance.

1. COFFEE LADY’S INTRODUCTION.

We sit longer than comfortable. When is the show going to start? Finally, a woman enters from where we entered, behind us. She has a white ceramic mug of coffee, stirring in some powdered creamer with a plastic straw. Half in, half out, she starts to talk to us:

COFFEE LADY: There’s—did you see? There’s coffee out there, did you get some? You want to? It’s okay, we have time…anyone? No? All right, suit yourselves.

She goes to the back of the house and takes a seat in the audience. COFFEE LADY: So. It’s just us? Is this—everyone? Oh. I thought—there’d be—more—but. This is fine. No, no, it’s fine. Really. Well don’t look at me. Go on. Look over there. Okay.

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She directs the audience to look at the stage. She won’t continue until we all do what she says.

COFFEE: This is a kitchen. This is a theatre. This is a kitchen. There’s new tile there, replaced the old linoleum. This tile is clay, beige, it’s cool if you put your cheek to it. Not that you’re going to do that, put your cheek on the floor. But if you were to lie down on the floor like a dog and put your face on that tile, it feels cold. This is the kitchen of Jennifer Samuels. It has her personal stamp. There is nothing personal about this kitchen. On the right she has one of those, what’s-it-called, those bar-things that were so popular in the 90s, a bar where you can cook and entertain at the same time. That’s on your left, there. Stainless steel. There are three wooden stools with short backs, and cream-colored cushions. About eighteen inches off the ground, on the far side, where the stools are, the bar is scuffed and dented. Feet. In sneakers. Kicking. Jennifer Samuels has a son. Eleven years ago, when she put in this bar, he was eight. And prone to kicking with dirty, dirty little boy feet. In the center of this kitchen is an island that doubles as a table. Behind that is a sink and if you stand at the sink running the garbage disposal, you’re going to look out that window. On the shelf by the window is a bowl of fruit, lemons and limes and a heavy peach, and also a row of bottles. Vitamins? Medicines. But if you stand at the window, you won’t look at the shelf, you’ll look out the window and into the garden. There are lilacs there, and lettuce, and a pear tree. Jennifer Samuels has a beautiful garden. The window doesn’t actually open. This is a kitchen. This is a theatre. The faucet doesn’t work, this isn’t that kind of theatre. On the table, on the island, on the table, there is a knife. To the left of the sink, against the wall, there is a refrigerator. Sleek, brushed steel, the kind with the two long doors and a freezer that is the same size as the fridge part. Inside the fridge, on the top shelf, on the left side of the fridge, there is a bag of rotting apples. Jennifer Samuels stands in the kitchen between the island table and the sink by its window, and she is breathing heavily, and she sees her heart beating in her chest. Sees it—well, the only word is “throbbing”—she sees her own heart throbbing against the skin, making her own flesh vibrate—she’s fascinated, fascinated by the perceptible tactility of her own body. Guh-thump, guh-thump, guh-thump…

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There’s all kinds of similes I could use here, to describe what it looks like and feels like, but I won’t, because this is not a poem.

COFFEE LADY gets up, comes down from the back of the house and stands at the side of the stage, drinking her coffee.

We’re not living inside a poem, are we now? No. Life is not like that. Life is not like that at all. At all. Maybe you were expecting a poem.

COFFEE LADY hands her cup to an audience member in the front row, insists that they take it from her. Walks onstage.

There’s a rotting fleshy smell coming from somewhere in the kitchen. It’s not the apples. Jennifer Samuels takes a lemon from a bowl on the window ledge and cuts it into wedges and throws it down the garbage disposal. COFFEE LADY stands at the sink, her back to the audience.

An image appears above the sink: the view through the window, a perfect and green suburban street. The view through the window is gradually changing. Eroding. Becoming something other than what it is. Going to seed. Popping out of itself. Its insides overtaking the perfect exterior. A car passes by, and again, and again.

She turns around. She is now JENNIFER SAMUELS. We still hear COFFEE LADY, but now she is in voiceover. COFFEE LADY Ah. Lemon. Better.

JENNIFER SAMUELS breathes heavily. Watches her own heartbeat. Smells a fleshy rotting smell. Crosses to the fridge. Opens, sniffs, closes. Turns. The following we hear on a realistic soundtrack, and is mimed—there are no props in this kitchen, and it turns out that the fridge and the cabinet don’t open. They are what she said they were: a stage set. In mime and soundtrack: JENNIFER SAMUELS picks up a lemon, crosses to the table. Cuts the lemon in half. Then quarters. Crosses to the sink, drops the lemon into the disposal. Turns on the water, then the disposal. Turns off the disposal, then the water. Turns. Smells the fleshy rotting smell. Sniffs herself, her arm, her armpit.

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COFFEE LADY (VO) Jennifer Samuels falls down.

She does. Jennifer Samuels can’t stand up. Jennifer Samuels places her cheek and her hands to the floor. She does. She’s burning up. The tiles are cool. The tiles are clay, they keep the cold. Something’s not right. Something’s going on. Something’s going on inside of Jennifer Samuels.

JENNIFER SAMUELS stands, shaky, crosses to the sink, vomits. From her position at the sink, she turns again, a repeat. The same movement pattern now, same soundtrack, but the movement is more abstract. She breathes heavily. Watches her own heartbeat. Smells a fleshy rotting smell. Crosses to the fridge. Opens, sniffs, closes. Turns. Picks up a lemon, crosses to the table. Cuts the lemon in half. Then quarters. Crosses to the sink, drops the lemon into the disposal. Turns on the water, then the disposal. Turns off the disposal, then the water. Turns. She crosses downstage, sniffs herself, and sniffs and sniffs. Then she falls down.

Let me dispel something right off. This is not a tragedy. Nobody is going to die in this story. You got that? You clear about that? Because some people will worry, they’re going to think, “oh no, this lady, this woman, this Jennifer Samuels, whom I’ve never met but because her story is being told on a stage via certain ancient narrative structures designed to make me care, to make me invest in her, this character in whom I have, in spite of myself invested, this young and smart and vibrant woman, she is going to die.” So, get this straight, this is not that kind of story. Nobody’s going to die. I speak of Jennifer in the past tense, standing here in her abandoned kitchen, because there came a time when Jennifer Samuels disappeared. She—vanished.

JENNIFER SAMUELS crosses to the sink and vomits. (End of Excerpt 1)

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(Excerpt 2 – not sequential with Excerpt 1)

BRIAN SAMUELS-DAVY, age 19, appears inside the refrigerator. Like this is his secret hiding spot, although he’s too old for hiding spots. He’s a little bit awkward, extremely smart, devastatingly charming. He talks directly to the audience.

BRIAN So there’s this myth of the chimera. You can see paintings, like on ancient pottery shards—Homer talked about it in The Iliad, the Chimera was this beast with a goat’s head, lion’s torso, and a snake for a tail. Oh, and in some versions she breathes fire. Homer says the Chimera was raised by Amis odorous, who I don’t actually know too much else about. Gotta look that up. But there are other ones, other chimeras in ancient mythology, monsters made up of different animal parts. It’s always a monster, trying to destroy some town somewhere, and the hero comes into town and kills the chimera and is—you know, he’s the hero, that’s how that works, just ask Joseph Campbell or whatever. I remember feeling sorry for the chimera when I first came across the story. It’s interesting to think what monsters represent you, what function they serve in our lives. We’ve gotten pretty far away from using myths in our every day lives, consciously I mean. Again, talk to Campbell about how much this shit influences our sense of who we are and why we do what we do or feel compelled to do what we gotta do, or whatever. I’m not sure how useful that beast was. At least I could never see a reason for that particular beast – not like the Sphinx – I mean in terms of the crafting of the story, it’s kind of a lame myth. But the interesting thing is that that monster has been co-opted by modern science to describe something quite mystical. Like, my mom, she was what they call a medical chimera. Which is a medical thing but if you think about it it’s actually quite mystical. And it turned out that she has this thing called chimerism, which means that she has more than one person’s worth of genetic material. And I am that other person’s son. So that other woman who never fully happened is my mom, and my mom is not my mom. So. She’s a monster, I guess. I mean, if that’s, like say this were a story. If this were a story. Like if you wanted to hang the mythology on the raw biological facts of the situation—am I supposed to be the hero? Is there someone I’m supposed to free? Anyway. So I told my mom all this, about Homer and stuff, and I thought she would find it interesting, like, inspiring, like, she’s part of a great big mythology. I’m not really sure what I was thinking. I was eight. Anyway. She just cried. Which is something my mom was not really very famous for doing. And she looked at me like

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she didn’t know who I was, which is normal I guess. I’m kind of a weirdo in my family. And this is, like, proof, like, I’m monster spawn, and she was like— Anyway. That’s the only time I ever saw my mom cry. This all went down, like, over ten years ago, right before she left. What does an eight year old know about genetics? My mom—she was always talking over my head—and she wondered why I’m a literature person. Hello, mom, the left side of my brain got, like, rotted out before puberty, you made it work so hard. Jeez. Also—one more thing. The Chimera, in some versions, is the mother of the Sphinx. I almost didn’t tell you that, because it seems too laden with symbolism, or whatever, but—it’s too cool to keep that one to myself. (End of Excerpt 2)