(Two humans sit on rubble, paddles propped up beside them. A carries a newspaper and a paper sack with a few bits of food. B carries a backpack. Overpass above. Water all around.)

A. Let’s peel the egg, shall we? We’ve a little salt.

B. Crocodiles float by. Rotting carcasses.

SETTING:
One bedroom apartment in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.

CHARACTERS:
MELVIN, 19, a part-time poet/ part-time window washer. He is wiry in build with mid-length dreads.

DEBRA, 25, homemaker/songwriter. She is slightly heavy set with unruly artist’s hair. This part requires singing and some guitar playing.

RICE STREET MAN, 22, looks haggard and worn. He has been dead for eight years, therefore, he is a ghost figure, functioning more for the audience than to interact with the cast.

(Curtain rises with MELVIN scratching away in a notebook. A kitchen table serving as his desk. He goes through a series of scribbling and scratch outs.)

CAST (w/ brief backgrounds*)

SYMONE EDWARDS: Middle-aged adult, married to Henry Jones (not in attendance); one of their adult daughters (also not in attendance) is a vegan.

DEREK JONES: Young adult, single, Quentin’s young cousin. Intra-generational competitor with ROSE.

QUENTIN JONES: Senior adult, Derek’s older cousin (married with adult children not in attendance.)

A new treat from the street vendors: duck grease on a stick.

Do I need it…
or do I need innovative voice solutions?

Do I need a look that’s as young as I feel?

Do I need a truck that works as hard as I do?

Scattered leaves cover the stage floor, the suggestion of roots and trees nearby. We are in a forest clearing, the river not far away. Two girls, 16. ELIZABETH guides a blindfolded SAMANTHA, called SAM.

All my life I have had this recurring dream. It’s late at night and I’m running across a field during a lightening storm. My mom and dad and my brothers are with me. And lightening is exploding all around us. Everyone knows to lay down on the grass. Everyone, but me.

PASCAL:
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues, friends. My purpose here today is to demonstrate a new surgical procedure which will change, nay, has already changed the treatment of… oh, let’s say, nervous disorders. No, let’s not say that. Messy term. Let’s call

ACT 1, SCENE 1:
Letterbox reveals VICKY.
Vicky “January 1864. Dear Mama, War with Denmark is a mistake, caused by the uncontrolled power of an unprincipled man.”
Distant cannonfire. Boom
Vicky “June 1866. War with Austria is deliberatel concocted. Bismarck uses conflict to unite the German peoples.”

Korba had a smart frock on, on the very day that her husband caught a troll. That fact would have no relationship to the other until you understand that Korba was wearing a frock that had been given to her, not by her husband as one might have hoped, but by a pharmacist whose motives in the affair were just that, to motivate an affair!