THE BROKEN GARDEN--one act play

The Broken Garden is a drastic rewriting of the play AJAX  by Sophocles. It is a play about forgiveness when the crime is heinous. And about capital punishment. At least my reimagining of the play is trying to do that. The play is intended to be done with outsized characters.  Such a gathering of people in prison is an imaginary & impossible setting. It is really taking place in Jackson’s head.  I see the figure Thena, who is Athena, as gigantic, the character named fly as a chorus. 

Persons:

Jackson an Incarcerated man on Condemned Row

Thena: a woman CO, His God/dess

Otis: His enemy often invisible to him

Teka: His love

Huston: His son

FLY: the flies, the multiple eyes, the voices in his head/ overdub the same 2 voices twenty times.

They sit is a circle and watch sometimes leaning in to it and sometimes sitting back. They are there at all times and speak silliness or sanity.

Place: a solitary cell and an enclosed recreation area with only a light from the sky directly above, a circle of chairs along the outside of it. No windows but maybe the word  CONDEMNED ROW in the goofy script at SQ

Time: now

Setting:  A half circle of chairs in the exercise yard outside the cell of Jackson. Everyone sits there until they have to speak and move.

Three days to execution.

Scene 1: What has he done?

(Everyone is there. They are looming but invisible, and he is unaware of their presence unless they step forward.)

Jackson: (a shout from the cell) Where is my child? Where is my shield?

FLY: We want to think it won’t be long until he is back making sense. He thinks he has killed them, the enemies, but he has only hurt himself, bloodied himself.

Tek: He’s sane. He is now clear thinking and so he is miserable 

FLY: What?   He is sane?

Tek: While he was crazy, he was happy and now he is broken again. He thinks that I have abandoned him. But he lives in my head as much as he walks in circles in this pit, this garden. So this is the …

This is what we get for being solid.

Jackson: Where is my child?

Tek: This is the company misery loves. He thinks he has slaughtered all the enemies because he has to think that. He cannot stand to think otherwise, not now not right now when he is so lost. He has to think he has fought a great battle and won and that the world is somehow mourning the dead and that they now know what a great thing he is. But no.

FLY: He is swimming in blood and has thought that that that he has revenged and relaxed into it.

But no

Tek: These delusions are not the enemies, the true enemies but the convenient herd. A swelter of sheep and goats  … he has slaughtered the innocents and the ghosts and the flags and the branches of trees, the lonely dogs and lost kittens. Swinging his arms like machetes. Sometimes such actions are worse than murdering the actual grown up humans. He is a kitten killer and people care more about that than real people of certain sorts.  So he is the worst kind of evil monster. The innocent, not the powerful, not the ones who matter … some how he thinks, well, I have killed the ones who make the decisions and he has not at all … he is swimming in helpless animals, their blood in his head

FLY: which which which have now engulfed him in that solitary place. It is what hell looks like when it is not a restaurant with white linen tablecloths.

Jackson: What was that song by Hikmet?

(Sings)

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

Their arms are full of sacks

the sacks are full of sugar

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

the dog is yellow; he holds a bag;

the bag is full of lettuces and peppers

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

They have no hands or feet.

but they dance in their thoughtworld

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

a mule is awkwardly choking back his tears

he walks so that others can ride

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

the dog has eaten the peppers in the basket

and nothing is left for me

See the women waiting at the gate

see the children waiting there too

why do they wait for music that is not playing?

You are not there, you are not there

Thena:

Drama much? You have the right to be pitiful?

What have you done to earn this gift?

No one lifts themselves with self pity.

and you can’t have mine.

Pity is a small pearl that I keep in this

corduroy purse, which lives in my chest.

Otis: He cannot see me?

Are you sure?

Thena: I think you are the farthest thing

from what he can see. Go ahead  … wave yr hands in his face.

You see … nothing.

Jackson: Disrespect!

Thena: What?

Jackson :No respect. They took it. They took the respect that

It was sposed to be mine, even Achilles  … well if he would have had a voice on it. Well he would’ve given me the nod, the next step  … but no  … they took it and they gave it to Otis … fuck them.

Thena: What?

Jackson: What is there but respect? What matters but that…. and it is the thing that when you have nothing else you can have that or not  … or it can be taken  … it can be stolen.

Thena: Did you call it respect?

Jackson: Yes

Thena: Do you even know what it is?

Jackson: only matters …. the sky is dropping like a curtain. I can see it through that hole up there. Sometimes it is clouded and sometimes it is clear and one day a year the sun is directly over my head; I can set the year by it. my ache   Respect  respect do you know what it feels like to be empty? The slot above my head and through it falls the rain. That is what they call outdoors. Did you know that? That is what they call being outside for me for now; it has been too many years to count. 23 hours in and 1 here in this device they call outside,  Pretty fucked Huh?

FLY: What did you do to deserve this?

Jackson: The growing darkness makes me think that the sun is slumping into the south so … I have my own astronomy.  I can sometimes see this or that star and then even a moon or a bird or a cloud but only the sun once a year. I think it is true maybe I am making this up.

Thena: how do you even know that they are dissing you? How can you know anything when you are stuck like this? You have no contacts.

Jackson: Everyone  …  no one is empty of connection. The world is swarming with news from this or that CO or cockroach or I have these flies that buzz across the yard and listen … a fly on the wall …  you have heard of the fly on the wall?  those are my flies.

(he sits upon the ground and begins to play with imaginary figures becomes entranced and lays down on his belly to see them sighting them along the ground like the eye of god looking at the lives of his creatures.) I can hear them see them playing at playing with me.

Otis: Ask him   …. if he intends to kill me?

Thena: He …. you are not paying attention … he thinks he has already done this trick. He is in his cell right now swimming in blood, yours and ours and every ounce of blood, mostly the ones who chose you…. mostly the gods, mostly the ones who make the choices and so he is lost in his toying with the dolls

Jackson sings:

Smooth the paths or is it smooth?

the mule is weeping the dog is creeping

What is there left for me to think?

They are silent but I know they are

standing there waiting for me. my child. He is

outside with his mother waiting for me.

I have nothing but this to

give them.

I have nothing but this to

give them.

Thena: Nothing but what? What do you think you have to give anyone?

Jackson: Respect. The respect … that is what is mine and what has not been given to me but should have been. And has been wickedly stolen from me.

Thena: But if you don’t have it, then you cannot give it and if you don’t have it, then it is not yours. Respect is not a thing that someone leaves behind or loses or has stolen and …  it cannot be stolen or taken, only it can be not there to begin with. No

respect is not control or some kind of thing you own.

Jackson: What do you know?

Thena: You do not make respect out of domination, out of control, out of fear. Yes. You are messed up!

Jackson: Fuck you!

Thena: yes you have confused fear with respect.  Or Or    only   Okay you have no understanding of what it is to be respected.  So you are lost. I can see that, looking in your dictionary and see that yes deference …  people get out of your way … they listen, they obey  when you have respect but if that is not possible then fear will have to do. But whose afraid of the big bad wolf when he is locked into his own head.

Jackson: I am finished with these things. My hour is up. (He is going into his hole)

Thena: Do you think you can get it? Otis are you listening? This is what you have in store if you are not careful. This is the silly code that says that to be something is to be seen as something and not to be anything unless someone else says you are something or … I am swirling in it. I need to …  who is gazing at whom and how to be … is to be seen… and to be feared is the only way he can be certain that he is seen. It is something wealthy to be in yourself at peace. You are far from that but closer than Jackson. He is very poor and could be rich because he is loved in spite of his recklessness and

Jackson sings:  He brought the animals home with him

He heaped them in the choking cell

he tore their wings and cursed  their flight

he threw them in the pile of night and opened up their

weeping veins and let the blood and tears drain

out upon the feckless floor the stains

that’s all that’s left nothing else

nothing is left of them

nothing more is left of them nothing more

Otis: How can anyone love that?

Thena: (Thinking) they love what is in him more than himself …  what he thinks he is. Like a sweet grace that falls from heaven which is not calculable. You cannot imagine that this most evil thing is the only thing that makes him what he is. He has other moments than this. We all do. We are more than the worst. so yes he is loved irredeemably. 

Scene 2: What have I done?

Jackson: Friends can you help me? Can you help me to die? I am not worth a nonthought. Let me tell you the theory of a hole.

FLY : We are going back to Salamis. We have to go home. This is getting too bleak, too folded.

Jackson:  a hole is not defined by its edge because the edges immediately, not the hole, it is the not-hole  the knothole   no not the knot hole the not-hole, the hole is what is not there, the in between thing, the space that is  … well do you know the difference between the pudding and its skin? That might be a way of thinking it. I have spent much too much time in holes. A hole is not possible without its edges its body of things and so this hole cannot exist unless the world is going about its business.

Jackson: I need your help. I am sick and I must die. I have to snatch execution from them.

FLY: So since when is it a cure to kill anything? The cure is worse than the disease. It is not a cure at all.

Jackson: It is contemptible to want to live forever. Die nobly!

FLY: What is noble about closing the door on everyone who loves you, needs you perhaps ?

Jackson: Who could need me?

FLY: Good question … I will let them answer that, if they want to. But imagine the annoyance your living gives to your enemies.

Jackson: I could kill them all like I thought to in the first place and  …

Tek (stands at her chair): Then kill me too and your son and everyone who had the foolishness to love you in spite of your crimes. We who stood there when forgiveness seemed to be the last thing.

Jackson: Have you been standing there outside the gate. I don’t think so. Anyway … How can you forgive this?

Tek: What needs forgiving if it isn’t this? Only the unforgivable requires forgiving everything else is …   well something else, something already possible and boring … it is that some crimes are … well get used to it … but some crimes are …  stop us in our tracks and we are paralyzed.

Do you know that what you have dropped on us is guilt? We have guilt like dust covering us in a thin skin … being near we accumulate the dust of what you have thrown off by it and they carry it, he carries it, your son carries it and let me tell you, the world tells him that he is infected by this and that I am infected by this …  we are all carrying you, even if you think we have forgotten you and somehow wandered off and abandoned you. No you have abandoned us.

There she goes  ..  The world says … Jackson’s wife and his repulsive son … they are no better than he was … he made them … he sinned  … and they did not detest him, did not change their names and hide and crawl into secret sleeves that we keep just for people like them in the city. You know there are families here that do your time with you, you know that. You see me like I was born the day you took me away, but I was a human being before that and I was a person who had a name and a soul and happiness and hope. I was happy to be at peace with you in your bed. I think you can give me that.

Jackson: I am weak with seems and lost in this saline river … You have somehow thought that you could pummel me with pillows and then walk away like nothing has happened   don’t you think the world has collapse around me? This is not a castle, no tower of ivory. I am impaled on the light that comes through the hole and slices me and then disappears for 23 hours. I cannot imagine the wings of that fly.

(shouts)

Bring me my son. I want my son! I want my son!.

Tek: No!

Thena: Here he is.

Jackson: I will see you in a minute. (He takes the boy into the cell.)

Tek: What?  … is he bringing him into that hell, flooded with blood?

Thena: It dispels the ghosts ends the mysteries the silly thing is that no

that is not a flooded bloody chamber but a factory and it is as clean as an oven and smooth with only the stains of too much breath, too many hours, too many days in a row without a day to be alone, a room should be alone for days on end so that they can heal from the use of living things that seems to injure everything they touch and a room is not less injured for being stone or metal or plaster or tile or what have you.  No let him see it. Otherwise it will be the stuff of his nightmares for years without having any reality …  no every child of a prisoner should have to see it and to see that it is not what they see on screens, those screens that have proliferated and have become his walls, the things that will otherwise capture him and suffocate his dreams anyway. No … let him see the cell, it is nothing but a room and it should not be confused with magic. Yes they do surgery on souls in there, but those are just workshops not castles. We can unbuild them.

Scene 3:  What can I do?

They are left alone in the cell so the stage is cleared and the space is now the cell. the others walk into the door and shut it. or maybe the stage has already been split into the two halves of the cell and the exercise yard.

Huston: What are we doing here?

Jackson: We are now alone and in the conch. Can you hear the ocean it roars and it sings and drones and it is my music? I want you to never hear my music. I want you to know that this place is here; it is not heaven; it is hell but it is only a place. It is a machine they made to make me fall into despair and I have I have many times done that. I have done that many times. I did it. I fell into despair last week and I will fall again tomorrow.

Huston: I am not scared.

Jackson: Good Good  …. I am proud of you.   You are better than me already because you are brave. I don’t want that to change. I am not brave all the time. Bravery is only being awake to what is actual. … and not sleeping …  sleeping is the problem … they say  do your time and don’t let time do you. You live bravely or you are sleeping. The only two choices: sleep and dream or walk and act.

Huston: The walls are smooth. The floors are hard and the bed is small The desk it has no chair only s stool and you have to go to the bathroom here …  here? and you can’t close the door?

Jackson I cant open the door either.

Huston: It is cold here. Not like our house.

and the colors are the color of mud.

and bones and smoke

Jackson: You are brave. …. I am not done with sadness and I guess you are not done either I can’t promise you that. I cannot promise you happiness. But I wanted you to come inside into the conch, from the outside, from the broken garden where the birds are not singing. Here in time you can hear the ocean; it roars in your ears and for the first ten years it makes you storm like ships going through rocky things in storms and you hear the ocean and you think well I am never going to arrive but always be on this ship. Then you one day realize you do not think that anymore, but the roar has become continuity itself and has the breath of god and the bully, but it is music of some sort and has to be there or you’d miss it.

Huston: I don’t hear it.

Jackson: No  .. and you can never hear it. It is not something you get from just opening the door you have to be sat upon by this place and not be sitting on it anymore. But no you will never be there. I am telling you.

Huston: The kids say that I will be here one day. And my mother’s friend he said it to me. I will live with you (shouts) “if you keep it up!”   That’s what he said to me. I think maybe I might be here with you someday.

Jackson: Her friend?

Huston: Tele he works at her work. He comes to see us. And he gets mad some times about things.

Jackson: The world is twisted and I don’t have the strength to eat the air. I have put myself here. I have put her out there and I have put this boy into jeopardy.  He is not   he is not going to   How do I? I have to …   (gets his weapon) here it is …  this is the weapon. This is the thing that I keep as talisman as my prop  …  it means life or death in here sometimes but to live a long life, just to live, is contemptible. We will bury it in the sand next to the ocean. I will dig a hole right here.

Huston: How can you dig into the floor when it is so hard.

Jackson: It is not the floor that needs to eat this but the air itself and the soul …  and I will bury it and you can see it is gone; no more sword or shields only hearts.

Scene 4: What am I doing?

Jackson: Time  …. it slowly reveals what has been hiding there all along but then it comes a scoops the sand on top of it again. It smothers the truth. Time it is first enemy because it is not faithful. It lies by losing its direction.   And then there is redemption. How do you buy back your soul and why is it a marketplace of souls?

(Huston comes running into the lap of Otis.)

Otis, have you been keeping him company?  with or maybe I should say who have you been keeping company with?

Otis (begins talking to Huston before Jackson has even really said the last line): Did you talk to your Dad? Did you see what a great man he is? I think you could do worse than to be like him. To grow up and be strong and to be a warrior. You could do worse. And he wants you to not be a coward, but to be brave like he is and to make the enemy pay when he’s against you.

Jackson: Stop it. I knew that this was going to happen. (Looking at Huston) These people are poisoned. Do you see? It’s poison and it stops here.

Tek: He is not going to be with either of you. I was afraid.

Jackson: Did you think I would hurt him? Yes you thought I would hurt him. And you were right to be afraid. You are the right person to think about him. I should be ashamed to make you wobble. But (he speaks to her aside) watch for Otis he is clever and not much more.

Otis: I have not crossed the line.

Tek: He has been around to play with Huston. To be in his life. He knows you and he can talk about you. He needs someone …

Jackson: How does he talk about me?   I am …. please just give me a moment … Yes let me think   …. let me check myself …  what is it?  …  what is this? Is it time for jealousy? Stop this clock and when it is uncovered, do not cover it back up again. Let it be there like the sun noon on the equinox.

Thena: There is no such day, not here. But we will let him be full of hope.

Tek: You have nothing to be jealous about. 

Jackson: I have run out of time. I cannot think to live forever ... it is contemptible. To think some how you will maybe have to die, but you will die last! and that will be the best revenge. Who cares? The living in this day is enough of forever as we will ever get.

Otis: I can’t think that we are going to be enemies in the dead zone.

Jackson: I have buried my weapons forever. I am done with killing or revenge. I want my son to be never in this. and I have no power to make that happen except to say it and wish it and hope it and bury the weapons. So don’t tell him I was admirable. I was human and he is going to have to be admirable.

I was wretched but now I have found my peace and safety. I have to be gone now. But you can look for me. (exits to the cell. where it is darkening.)

FLY: Something to dance about finally no more anxious pushing the world but letting it be turning and then being happy with what comes that is what living should be, not trying to imagine you are the one who winds the watch and sets everything in motion; he has been a wicked thing being always on the guard, always on the hunt, always on the verge always on the edge of the precipice.

Tek: you have to live. You have to remember that if you live we have hope. We can imagine that the world will not be this deathtrap.

Thena: This says nothing about the machine that these people are fallen into and that is much more the villain than the tiny lives that they work out in it. Do you think that Jackson can really decide to keep his son from falling into the trap, His son lives in the mouth of hell already; it is nothing to think that he will not be chewed and swallowed and be here in a few years just like his father no matter how much he thinks he can just bury his ridiculous knife and keep his son from the family business. As if that were the sword of the angel Michael or is it Gabriel? stationed at the gate of the Garden; there to keep us out of eden. We live in this broken garden. We don’t just visit it at times. But who the fuck cares the garden is broken just like everywhere else and we have to make it right. This is not Jackson’s story or the quibble with Otis or the sadness of Tek or the sweetness of Huston? It is our story and they are like the dancing men and women boys and girls, we have put on the stage to entertain us to make us feel the world is correct. But the people are crooked. No the world is crooked and the people do their best to stagger along its wobbling pivot. Okay I am breathing heavily and need to calm myself yes some children do not fall or get captured by the net. Yes we have examples of the escapees and their success makes us hate their fathers and mothers all the more for being not successful. We do not love the ones who rise. We use them to indict the rest. You see it is possible. What is wrong with you? The world stinks. But this story is not over and we can still hope that something good will come of it.

5. What did we do?

The cell is dark and the figure of Jackson is there and wandering from side to side. And then he kneels and seems to be praying and then he manages to dislodge a stone and to draw out a large knife. It is clear that he is going to kill himself or someone else. He pulls up his shirt,  

the klaxon horn sounds a squawk. The sound startles everyone in the garden but especially Huston who runs into the cell and grabs his father.

Jackson:  Don’t worry it is the usual thing and nothing to worry about it is what happens and it means nothing new or

Huston: will you live?

Jackson: No one lives forever. It is contem …

Huston: will you try?

The Circle speaks its peace:  (At this point the cast should invent the discussion from  their point of view. It would be good to hear outbursts of the audience as well even if they have to be scripted. Here’s some words to create a structure.)

We can fight this.

On the worst day of your life you did the worst thing and it lingers

We can struggle against the death penalty and

make something useful from the lives of people who have been

thrown away or who have

thrown themselves away

Yes these are people who have injured others

and killed

and terrorized

Thena: but we do not have to learn how to behave from them.