Blind
Written by Lindsay WilsonCharacters
Blind Boy
Girl 1 / Chorus Member 1
Boy / Chorus Member 2
Girl 2 / Chorus Member 3
*Notes on layout: A speech usually follows the one immediately before it BUT: when one character starts speaking before the other has finished, the point of interruption is marked (/).
STAGE DIRECTIONS Darkness that we are descended in long enough for our eyes, as audience members, to become sensitive to any form of light. We hear Tanzanian Folk Song. Then, under a single pure source of light, the Blind Boy sits staring ahead and scans the space in front of him as if surveying an imaginary finish line. Lights up on a pile of bleached white rags. Birds flit in shadows and darts. The Chorus (All) make bird cries and come to perch around the pile. They begin to peck at the pieces and pull them apart, the birds become full-grown shadow men menacing and long as machetes who pull the cloth out in long strips. The BLIND BOY is speaking to his brothers and sisters. The CHORUS is in the process of murdering the mother. The BLIND BOY is not speaking to the chorus; the chorus is not speaking to the BLIND BOY.
BLIND BOY. (Silence.)
She told us to sleep
You all sleep now – no use in talking those things.
Chorus (All). Don’t look, Don’t look, or we will kill you.
BLIND BOY. (Silence.)
These are lies they tell you –
you are albino but you have special powers?
I do not even know what albino is!
You’re a child of your mother just like me.
Chorus 2. We take your leg.
BLIND BOY. If you have those special powers
I can feel them all on your skin.
You don’t believe me?
Where are you now?
Chorus 1. We take both your legs.
BLIND BOY. Come here let me see you-
(BLIND BOY holds out his hands to read the map of his brothers and sisters faces)
Chorus (All). We are not playing around.
BLIND BOY. I did not think you were so far –
Thought you were right in front of me.
If you had special powers I would be able to feel them –
Chorus 3. We are going to cut your arm off. If you scream we cut the other arm off too.
BLIND BOY. See! I feel you – no special powers!
Chorus 1. Rough muti we got here.
BLIND BOY.
Those things?
Those things they call witches
Bibi and all the older people say we mustn’t look in their eyes
Something bad happen to you in no couple of days
Chorus 2. How much money the sangoma say we make for these?
BLIND BOY. Those witches - they come into the room invisible and
come upon the bed and smother you
Chorus 1. Take the tongue to smooth the path to a woman’s heart.
Chorus 2. Take the breasts and the stomach for fertility.
BLIND BOY. If they come in
You catch hold of their arms
and squeeze them so hard
the witch run away.
We have ukuqiniswa from the sangoma
We burn impepho
No witches get into this house.
Chorus (All). Count from 10 and then if you scream we come back. Kill your children. Kill your whole family.
Chorus 1. Okay
Chorus 2. Leave her.
BLIND BOY. You go to sleep now.
STAGE DIRECTIONS. BLIND BOY’s dream. The CHORUS as witches stand in a circle, in the middle is CHORUS 2’s hand stroking what appears to be the belly of a frog, crooning unintelligibly to it.
CHORUS (ALL). lalalala (To BLIND BOY) Hold out your hand.
BLIND BOY. No!
Chorus 3. (To BLIND BOY) Hold out your hand!
BLIND BOY. No!
CHORUS 2 takes BLIND BOY’s hand, he takes one of BLIND BOY’s trembly fingers and strokes it along the frog’s belly.
Chorus 1. Feel that?
BLIND BOY. Y-y-yes…
Chorus 1. Dead!
CHORUS (ALL Laugh) BLIND BOY pulls his hand away like it’s been stabbed and poisoned, burned and broken.
BLIND BOY. Leave me alone!
Chorus 2. Wait! Hold out your hands again.
BLIND BOY. No! It’s – it’s – dead-
Chorus 3. It’s not! Wait! Here…
BLIND BOY gives back his hand and CHORUS 2 places the frog in his hand. BLIND BOY smoothes his fingers along the frog’s belly. The frog sits up and leaps out of BLIND BOY’s hands. BLIND BOY shoots his hands out and flails around him.
Chorus 2. Ta-da – he’s not dead!
BLIND BOY. It’s gone?
Chorus 1. A spell. A / spell a spell a spell of something we imagine! / Rub – rub one way they live – rub another and they’re
BLIND BOY. / It’s gone!
Chorus 3. / Lalalala (through to end of scene).
Chorus 2: (Glumps after the frog squinting, examining everywhere.) Ah – ah – he’s moving -
BLIND BOY. Where?
Chorus 2. Just there –
Chorus 1. No – here –
Chorus 2. No – here -
(The CHORUS (ALL) shatter apart and run off into the shadows in search of the frog leaving BLIND BOY by himself turning around and around trying to get his bearings. Their voices begin to fade out.)
Chorus 2. There –
Chorus 1. Here –
Chorus 2. Here -
BLIND BOY. – I’m here – I’m right here –
BLIND BOY continues turning around and around trying to get his bearings.
STAGE DIRECTIONS: The actors create the sound of bird calls and animal cries, the sound of snuffling and rooting beasts, BLIND BOY under a pure source of light. Grey fills the Blind Boy’s head with snarls of darkness circling in it, shafts of light interject throughout. Small bells ding and silver the air inviting spirits; the sounds of early morning. The low sound of an animal moaning in pain. The sound of a gasp, then one child breathes heavily, added to that the sound of a second child breathing heavily, added to that the sound of a third child breathing heavily, added to that the sound of a fourth child breathing heavily.
BLIND BOY. (To his brothers and sisters) shshshshsh stay quiet don’t breathe
stay quiet no screams think of it as
what are those scrape-y things called?
those flickering things?
Girl 1. birds
BLIND BOY. Birds – yes - birds
(Silence.)
BOY. I’m scared - what is it?
BLIND BOY. It’s birds…that’s all…only birds
come home early
they found someone else where they live
have to get them out of their house
away from where they live
that’s all
lala lala a bird
flickering in a shush of leaves
soft shrieks and pops ripping at the skin of trees
BOY. maybe it’s witches
BLIND BOY. no it’s birds that’s all only birds
lala lala only a bird
a soft plop and scratch flaps
only birds
those flickering things
only birds
only birds
only birds
BLIND BOY (Hums song from the beginning quietly to himself to calm himself and his brothers and sisters. They all join him briefly.)
Girl 1. – Something’s happening in there - what’s happening?
BOY. I’ll put my face to the door.
BLIND BOY. only birds
STAGE DIRECTIONS: Perhaps Blind Boy is erased. He is a shadow in darkness. Then there is suddenly a single strong pure light from overhead which screams out the bleached brothers and sisters. They stand staring forward, eyes blinking rapidly, as if blinded by the salt of superstition. Looking through the cracks, through a key-hole trying to see what’s going on…all in whispers...
The BLIND BOY’s lines are an experience of sound – he’s not speaking them to his brothers and sisters, he’s trying to figure out what he’s hearing. These are the sounds he hears coming from his mother’s room.
GIRL 1. What’s going on?
BOY. Nothing - I can’t see her.
BLIND BOY. smash press slash stab punch wring press burn
press stab slash wring press punch burn press
GIRL 1. Can you see her? Can you see her face?
BOY 1. Can’t…can’t see anything…
GIRL 2. Is it witches?
GIRL 1. I’ll look.
GIRL 2. - let me see!
BLIND BOY. smash press slash stab punch wring press burn
press stab slash wring press punch burn press
BOY 1. No! It’s nothing. Go back to sleep. It was a dream.
GIRL 1. No, I heard - let me put my face to the crack in the door.
GIRL 2. It’s witches. You have to grab them and squeeze their arm and they run away.
BOY 1. ...can’t see.
GIRL 1. Get out of my way!
BOY. It’s...shadows...shadows...it’s just shadows– yes- just shadows –
GIRL 1. I want to go in.
BOY. You know what she said don’t you know what she said she said they are waiting out the door under the knotted floor eyes in the wood coming to find us and cut us up in little tiny pieces-
BLIND BOY. smash press slash stab punch wring press burn
press stab slash wring press punch burn press
GIRL 2. they’re only long shadows of birds - she’s singing the songs of her throat – they’re shadow angels - no – she’s a swaying tall tree crackling with whispers…roots and stump fingers holding on - no – she’s flying up and up and up and floats on the wind
BOY. A bird. (Beat.) Maybe it is witches.
GIRL 2. No way to know but if you see them.
BOY. Shhhhh - no!
BLIND BOY. press slit press slash press stab press slash
press slash press stab wring flicker float
GIRL 2. I want to see them. (Silence.) They’re moving!
GIRL 1. Who?
GIRL 2. ...witches...
STAGE DIRECTIONS. The experience of time being disoriented, jarred out of place. It is the BLIND BOY that’s counting, and his mother who is dying, the two voices overlapping. BLIND BOY is still turning around and around trying to get his bearings.
BLIND BOY.
STAGE DIRECTION. BLIND BOY suddenly appears under a single strong pure light from overhead. Hands, translucent as ghosts, stroke him.
BLIND BOY. Those things?
Those things they call witches
I am not sure how they look -
Bibi says maybe an ugly old woman
who is always staring a lot to other people.
She say we mustn’t look in their eyes
Something bad happen to you in no couple of days
Those witches - they come into her room invisible and
come upon her bed and smother her
she try to catch hold of their arms
and squeeze them so hard
that the witches run away.
They took pieces of her in their hands.
We have ukuqiniswa from the sangoma
We burn impepho
No witch get into this house.
(Silence.)
Go to sleep now.
STAGE DIRECTIONS. Lights to complete darkness.