A giant velvet curtain covers the stage. A particularly fantastic portion of Handel's messiah plays and the curtain begins to rise.
A woman is revealed standing onstage atop a small pedestal.
She is wearing a corset cinched around her middle and a long petticoat and would look like a half-dressed Elizabethan but for the dark sunglasses.
CORSET: I am here to tell you something very important. Thank you for coming, I was afraid no one was going to make it on account of all the rain. The message I bring you is not just from myself, it's a gift from the beyond, no, not God, and not aliens either, though I'm sure there's more life out there somewhere, aren't you? I am talking about history -- all of those that have come before, whose flesh begat ours, who've strutted and fretted their lives upon this planet, they're still here, no, not ghosts, though I'm sure ghosts exist also -- but more like cellular memories that inhabit me and you and that chair and that curtain. We are all vessels for that which has been, and today I'm going to speak, because that chair cannot and today you're attending to me, for which, did I mention thanks? So. Anyway. Here I go.
She takes a deep breath.
CORSET: Hold on, I think I have to take this off. Hard to breathe.
With expert hands she unlaces the corset rapidly, creating satisfying whipping noises. She pulls the laces all the way out of the eyelets.
In the moment the corset drops off her body, the woman's image wavers, then, in an instant, dissolves completely, leaving only a few sparking atoms in the air where she once stood.
The curtain falls.
(Written 3/5/11, after Solo Training Session #8)
I like it. Playful
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