Down By The River Styx
Theatre In The Woods aka Lair
(About animals, parents, and robots)
tranSF melodrama
Down by the river Styx is a “female Hamlet” in between two worlds: this one that we call Reality and another, the Shadows, where the dead are living and time is aligned with spirit.
Dahlia is coming home with her human-robot San, after a long time, just to discover that her father is gone and her mother is getting married to another man. She risks her life to find her father in Shadows where she travels to the past and confronts her biggest fear of being abandoned and dying alone.
After she dies in Shadows she finally finds one true love with San, a robot whose heart starts beating when in the grief of losing her.
Down by the river Styx is the third part of drama trilogy by Ana Lasic. The first play was Where are you coming from? and the second one For Now, Nowhere. Looking for a producer and/or director.
ACT ONE
Scene 1
The wedding parade pierces through the night.
The storm is raging outside. On the wall of the freshly painted hall there is a red stain of blood. On the floor lies a body of a grown man, almost dead; showing slight signs of life. HELENA is washing the blood away. The more she rubs, the more it comes out and leaks down the wall.
THE COUNCIL OF OLD WOMEN
Forget, forget and forgive.
Go now, there is nothing for you here.
Go and forget.
The circle is closed, it had to be closed.
Now you know, you've learned.
Tell your born and unborn children, tell everyone that it is the end.
They are free. You are free.
You have a new life ahead of you.
HELENA
There is still so much to be done. In the old life.
DALIA'S GRANDMOTHER (HELENA'S MOTHER)
There's a man waiting for you.
HELENA
A living one?
THE COUNCIL OF OLD WOMEN
It is a man you've always known, a man who likes you;
who has been waiting for you forever. Choose him and go with him.
Go wherever he takes you.
HELENA:
I am old and ugly. He is old and ugly.
DAHLIA'S GRANDMOTHER
Ugly and very alive.
HELENA
He is about your age.
DAHLIA'S GRANDMOTHER
So?
THE COUNCIL OF OLD WOMEN
In the place where you'll be heading there is no fear and no hope.
No dreams. No fear.
Walk and look ahead. What do you see?
HELENA
It is so filthy here, so ugly.
I have so little strength.
I see blood. Pools of blood.
THE COUNCIL OF OLD WOMEN
Pick up your strength and carry it with both hands, carry it up high.
Can you feel its weight?
Can you feel how heavily it weighs
upon your arms and your body?
Pick up your strength...
There is strength with you, you know not you posses.
HELENA
There's so much blood.
I don't know where it's coming from.
THE COUNCIL OF OLD WOMEN
It comes from inside. Walk out. Greet the guests.
HELENA
Guests? In this weather?
THE COUNCIL
The wedding guests are at the door!
GRANDMOTHER
They are bearing gifts!
HELENA
Here? Now? At my door?
THE COUNCIL
You are ready.
HELENA
I am not a bride. We need to have a funeral first.
What an awful, awful night!
They can't come in, they can't see me like this.
Keep them outside, stall them for as long as you can.
She looks at the body on the floor.
Photo:Betty Bradley and pet Bennie The Deer, Beverly Hills, 1927