Quotes, selections and excerpts from stage and theater plays by American playwright Robin Rice Lichtig

AGNES: There's a rational explanation. Don't waste time trying to figure it out. What about Pam and Bobbie Sue?

MADELINE: In their little place?

BELLA: I just want to get warm.

AGNES: The Snow Queen would have thawed in here by now.

BELLA: My toes are icicles.

MADELINE: One night. She's half dead with cold. She's sort of blueish.

AGNES: From smoking weed.

BELLA: This state of in between is an arctic place. When you're dead all the way there isn't any pain. I've been there many times. But this - It's wild.

MADELINE: (whisper:) What's she mean?

AGNES: (whisper:) Who knows.

MADELINE: I thought you felt what she feels.

AGNES: Not anymore.

MADELINE: Is this how you'll treat me if I disappoint you?

AGNES: Give her an inch and she takes a mile.

MADELINE: Lord, I better watch my step.

2. HARMONY

Harmony is a single mother with a new baby. She is also a very fine violinist. She is trying to compromise

between motherhood and musicianship. Zephyr, a creature from another place, is in charge of finding musicians for the illustrious Symphony of the Spheres. She wants Harmony.

ZEPHYR: You gave him a violin?

LYRIS: It was the town.

ZEPHYR: This isn't simple sapping - it's symphonic osmosis!

LYRIS: He's pretty good.

ZEPHYR: Get it away from him.

LYRIS: It's the only thing he's good at.

ZEPHYR: I'm taking you out of consideration.

LYRIS: Please no.

ZEPHYR: Symphonic Osmosis is deadly.

(no reply)

One of my first violinists is failing. I need to select a replacement from the consideration pool.

LYRIS: How big is the pool?

ZEPHYR: The top five violinists in the universe. By coincidence, all from Earth.

LYRIS: Only five?

ZEPHYR: They're all incredible, but you - you have a purity, a clarity. Your sound is an artist's pallet - pigments of light here and here - separate - careful. Too many colors mixed together and it's a mess.

You haven't had any distractions to muddy your sound. At least you didn't.

LYRIS: Who are the other four?

Act II. Lyris has given up her violin to raise her son, but she is fed up with how he (now a teenager) is cavalier about his own music.

CHRISTOPHER: I'm a virtuoso!

(HE makes the sound of a roaring crowd.)

LYRIS: Your playing is shallow.

CHRISTOPHER: Like you would know.

LYRIS: Your mind floats to trivial places, dirty places, while your fingers move across music so beautiful it should make you cry. It should make me cry to listen. It does. Because you don't dignify a single note with your full attention. You spit on it. It makes me sick.

CHRISTOPHER: You don't know a G-clef from a goat.

LYRIS: First thing every morning I used to practice looking out that window.

CHRISTOPHER: You gave it up. You couldn't hack it.

LYRIS: I'd look at Mrs. Weber's house next door. Two white rocking chairs on the yellow porch. Pots of yellow flowers on the steps. Crocus in spring, miniature roses in summer, chrysanthemums in the fall, plastic lilies in winter. Always yellow. Then you were born. Mrs. Weber died. I don't know who lives there. The porch is peeling. There are no flowers.

CHRISTOPHER: What's that supposed t'be symbolic or something?

LYRIS: I tried to keep the same schedule. I'd play one note - you'd cry. Two -

CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LYRIS: It wasn't just you.

CHRISTOPHER: Good 'cause I don't feel guilty.

PETER: A fish story?

TINY: Sure. Pud's great-grandaddy was a Shinnecock what run off from his tribe. Shinnecocks is noted for fishing ability. Still, he got disappeared. Most of you foreigners cain't live like us and go back - or they get disappeared. Tell 'im 'bout your daddy.

IBANNI: Haint necessary.

TINY: Ibanni's Mama happened on him hiding in Bearclaw Cave. 'Scaped from a Sing-Sing place.

IBANNI: Me, Sis and Suley has good blood. Kinfolk blood wit a touch of foreign is good. Like soup wit a touch of pepper-root.

PETER: What happened?

IBANNI: House haint big. Long winter.

TINY: Nobody else took to violence.

IBANNI: Peter haint -

TINY: Her foreign daddy swacked her Mama atop the head. Mama pregnant wit Suley too. Knocked 'er cold as a tadpole on ice. Next morning somebody was disappeared. Get my drift?

PETER: I think I'll go help with the bower some more.

(PETER exits. IBANNI sits. TINY puts an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.)

TINY: Sorry.

(HE hands her the bottle. SHE takes a swig. HE scans the creek for fish.)

TINY: Nutting but belly-ups. No frogs neither. Mayhaps they moved to the other side of the Mountain. Mayhaps evil come in the air from the valley so the fish died and the frogs moved. Air down there does got a stench.

IBANNI: Night air up here stings wit tears.

The Kinfolk act out a ritualized version of the story of how their ancestors were taken from Africa to Jamaica and then to America as slaves, and how three women escaped to this sacred Mountain 12 generations ago.

CATALINA: There in the fields they work, bent in half. There in the fields our ancestors is born. Babies grow. Join they mamas and papas, bent in the fields. Ankles wrapped wit rags 'gainst rats and snakes in the cane. These strong peoples hide their pride in the hollow of their bodies.

(TINY cracks the whip.)

PETER: Stop!

(IBANNI locks eyes with PETER.)

SIS: (urgent whisper, to Ibanni:) Raimunda!

LACEY: (urgent whisper, to Ibanni:) Get to work!

SIS: Aye, Raimunda, come down from the clouds.

LACEY: Seeing tings in her head again.

IBANNI: The babies will need to hear what happened.

LACEY: We haint got babies.

IBANNI: We will.

SIS: You don't bend to work, you see a lashing.

(IBANNI's stare urges PETER to go. HE slowly sits back down.)

CATALINA: Hundreds of miles away a revolutionary fight is raging.

FERN: You bleedin idiot! The future of the Empire is at stake!

TINY: Two ships is all I can manage, sir, General Clinton, sir.

FERN: What's your price?

TINY: Two dollars - dang - quid per head.

FERN: No pox.

TINY: For the glory of King George! The best women the streets of Lon-don have to offer! I's bad. I's evil. Sail to Lon-don. Nabs women. Stuffs 'em in my ships. Sail back - Oh no! A storm! One ship sinks!

FERN: Hey, you, I paid for two ships full.

TINY: Give you a refund.

FERN: My men are fighting a war. They need plenty-plenty women.

TINY: I haint going on that devil ocean again.

FERN: Guard! Seize this man. (to Tiny:) Listen, you. Take a ship to the Indie islands and get more women or else.

TINY: All they gots there is Negros.

FERN: All the same after dark, eh Carrington?