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Scripts & Texts




Suspension 360 Monologue

Once there was a river so brown, you could not hear the fish below ferrying their wimpled souls down and out to the seamless sea, protected as they were from that invisible and indifferent marauding actor who alone does strut and fret this time upon the globe with a lot more fury than sound.

And on the bridge above, we ‐ its captive audience ‐ stroll on feeling each to ourselves that this performance, as powerful as the reviewers say it is, will have to end its haunting run soon. For surely no show can hope to command the attention of an audience of billions for that long, right?

There’s a reason saints are venerated, enmarbled and so few.

We check the time, calculate the interval, measure the rhythm of the plot, waiting for the curtain to drop, the exit doors to fling open, and this dreamplay to end. But end it will not, because time has become a wilderness and the gears of the clock have been overgrown. Forward is no longer the opposite of backwards. And even the sun seems hungry and ready to swallow the sky leaving us all clinging to the railing when the silence of deep space surrounds us and we feel strangely satisfied by seeing revealed finally the face of the cataclysm itself – towering above the city, roaring with the din of the apocalypse and sweeping us all up into its brown arms like our ancient mother returned at long last to console us each in this calamity, filling our ears and stuffing our nostrils with silty effluence as we tumble and toss – smiling with the satisfaction of a terribleness we can actually taste.

No more anxiety of the hidden doubts of perceptions, of two-meter measurements and the like.

But no. Of course not: now is not the time for such knowing. The great lens of rectitude and revelation lies still buried in the lost bottom of the sea. So we carry on trying to amplify the world of yesterday into this timeless today. But what of tomorrow and tomorrow? Perhaps it never arrives. Maybe this day just grows longer expanding until it's a week, then a month, then a year.

Back here on the bridge, we jog on at a pace as our words get shorter to help keep the required space. Salvation’s too big a word; perdition’s too long. This new world speaks nothing, while we yearn to listen.

Schhhlllippp

Into this gap creeps the cold brown tongue of the river, lapping at the bridge’s moorings and licking each of the banks clean while the untroubled fish in the depths dance through the pilings to the songs of the birds in the sky up above.

written by reed o'beirne, all rights reserved

Revelation 360 Monologue

Pull back the curtains, this is the beginning. Something is starting – but it's not really got going yet – though it will, of course. Get going, that is. Why else pay attention? Get settled. Look around. Notice the others. Do they notice? Is that something? Did you silence your phone? Remember to wheel the rubbish down to the curb before you got here? It's fine now. Put it all out of your mind. You are here and it's starting now. It has. It has started. You are in it now. Something may happen. Isn't that the point? We're a long way from the end – from the middle, even.

Ah yes, now it’s started. For a while now it's been going, hasn't it? Not that long, but long enough. Long enough to have started. But how long will it be? Did you miss something, maybe? You could have; it’s started already. It's all around. All around you now. Look around. Maybe there's more. Certainly there's something, isn't there? We can't see it all; we know that, don't we?

Is it time? Time to choose? Is it past the beginning yet? Past middle, maybe? Should we start over? Reset the table before the goose is cooked and we've missed it. Time to face it. Face to face. All around you. Just out of reach.

Where are your hands? Could it be that you are dreaming, then? That's what they say, sometimes: being here when really you're deep asleep somewhere else. It's always possible. Though no one really knows, do they? Still, it's something. It must be, mustn't it? How could it not be something? Now that it's happening.

Everything is something, and this certainly is - now that it's started and things are happening. They always are. Starting, and of course, ending, too. Is it ending, too? The end of the opening – into the middle of something? The next act enthusiastic and you will become enthusiastic about something. At least there's that - now that all’s here as it was at the beginning.

Oh, but this too will end. Will pass. You know it. You started it yourself and you can end it – even now in the middle, if it is the middle? It's your performance here on a thin cold wire disappearing into the misty damp above the dank den of the old tiger - like some solitary spinning asteroid hurtling past the last reaches of the known-universe out into the great unmeasurable mystery.

Who done it? How was the acting? You be the judge. Did the plot arc right when it should have - like something real? Like something now. Is that it? Does that mean it's ending? Times are tough. Your back is against the wall now. Finally. Fight or flight - like a bird on the wing with tears of joy to the world without end forever. Absolutely. Absolutely.

written by reed o'beirne, all rights reserved

Verse Ticker Text

Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum. nullus adhuc mundo praebebat lumina Titan, nec nova crescendo reparabat cornua Phoebe, nec circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus ponderibus librata suis, nec bracchia longo margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite; utque aer, tellus illic et pontus et aether. Sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda, lucis egens aer: nulli sua forma manebat, obstabatque aliis aliud, quia corpore in uno frigida pugnabant calidis, umentia siccis mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus.

Hanc deus et melior litem natura diremit. Nam caelo terras et terris abscidit undas, et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aere caelum. Quae postquam evolvit caecoque exemit acervo, dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit. Ignea convexi vis et sine pondere caeli emicuit summaque locum sibi fecit in arce: proximus est aer illi levitate locoque: densior his tellus, elementaque grandia traxit et pressa est gravitate sua: circumfluus umor ultima possedit solidumque coercuit orbem.

watch it roll here

written by reed o'beirne, all rights reserved