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STAGE action is in this column (what the actors do etc.) | MEDIA action is in this column. Me and my Mac and Syquest Drive store and work the center screen, SCREEN-C, projecting pictures and movies. Two side screens, SCREEN-L and SCREEN-R, have paintings and/or slide projector images. Spike works the SOUND clips/loops. I have most of the media clips I've listed in this column-- tho in places I specifically make notes to Kelly, Kimba, or Spike to find/create such a clip. There are also notes here for the stage LIGHTS |
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SET: All lights off. | SOUND: Opening trumpet of Mahler's 5th, when Circus drum comes in, switch over to loud static noise. SCREEN-L: Title slide, "The Monks Got MTV" SCREEN-L: Caption slide, "A mountain in the Himalyas" |
| Play opens in Tibet. Reporters fromaround the world climbing the face of a mountain. Blizzard conditions. | SCREEN: TV-static SOUND: mix of radio static, guitar from U2 Wild Horses, real wind. Reporters voices yelling over the static/snowstorm. Subliminal Mef's Theme plays just as they enter the cave. |
| REPORTER VOICES (yelling at each other as they make their way to the stage): Will it never end. Is this storm everlasting! Ewig? Ewig! Kein Ende! They enter the cave. Dead monk on floor. Room lit by a pyramid of TV's stacked against the cave wall. Reporters look around taking notes, holding camcorders. AMERICAN REPORTER (slapping pink flower petals out of her intern's hands): Fool! drop those and start poking your nose around. Ask anyone if they've seen Richard Gere. (pointing to body on ground) Hundred G's if we can snap him right as he sets eyes on the Dahli-Dead there. Too bad he's not with Cindy anymore; she'd do a good gloss in this light. INTERN: But it's a miracle! Didn't you see? It's the middle of winter and the whole town is full of poplar blossoms. That old woman in town who gave us tea told me that every tree just bloomed all at once. AMERICAN REPORTER: And if they told you you could fly would you just throw yourself off the edge of the Himalyas? Listen: the altitude, the air, the freezing cold, those flowers probably bloomed last spring and just haven't decayed yet. It's like the Yak-butter statues we saw, they last for years up here in this climate. | SOUND: Zooropa channel-chatter (short-wave radio bites). SCREEN-C: pyramid of TV's, each tuned to a different channel. E.G., Telemundo Channel: "Occurio Asi presente, Padres de Muerte!" (ideally each TV contains sample of sample the counties/people which will be visited in the Play, making a sort of overture). SCREEN-L: Papparazzi snapping pictures (La Dolce Vita) SOUND: Maybe some of the David Bowie, China Girl (''I'll ruin everything you are") |
| A pair of monks enter to take the body away. Reporters all talking. GERMAN REPORTER (to monk): What's the name of this cave? MONK: deh. REPORTER: It' must be Rigpa. In his last public appearance, the Dahli-lama said he was off to Rigpa. BRIT REPORTER (to monk): Did the Dahli-Lama bring all these televisions up with him? MONK: deh. FRENCH REPORTER: I'm sure the Japanese reporters did. Video-philes... FINNISH REPORTER (whispering to another): I think the Indian soldiers did... staged all this to throw us off. Supposedly a bit further up the montain they've discovered a mass grave of frozen bodies from the stone age-- KOREAN REPORTER: That's not why the Indian's are here. There here in case the Chinese-- RUSSIAN REPORTER (to monk): How did the Dahli-lama die? MONK: deh. ITALIAN REPORTER: Maybe he lost the remote control. | SOUND: Tibetan monk chants (The Offerings for Sarkam, Trak 1) |
| ITALIAN REPORTER (to monks): If you could just sign this we can offer you the exclusive rights to an interview on Il Mundo. Just a few questions. A few shots of the monk before you take him down to the valley and burn his body. | SOUND: David Bowie, China Girl (I'll give you Television... ) |
| As the monks drag his body out, Christopher Wagner removes the hood on his parka CHRIS: Is the Ladakh monesterygoing to grant the scientific expeditions an autopsy? MONK: deh. CHRIS: Please, your highness, if you let me take just a small blood sample? Exit the monks, draggin the body. CHRIS (yelling): Just one drop! | . |
| Reporters start to leave. Chris and Italian reporter, Marcello, are the last in the cave. Marcello takes binculors out and looks out cave. MARCELLO: The snow has finally stopped. CHRIS: Damn! Now it stops. If only it'd done this an hour earlier-- I could have seen it too. MARCELLO: What do you mean? You got to see his body. CHRIS: No, no. I didn't even know the Dahli Lama would be here when I flew here. MARCELLO: Oh, were you here with those meterologists? Was there really a big hole in the ozone which just opened up over Tibet? CHRIS: I was here for a sunset. MARCELLO: You flew across world for that? CHRIS: Not any sunset. A once in lifetime, once in a civilization's lifetime, sunset. The opening of this cave is supposedly aligned so once every 3600 years-- the Saros, when the precession and alignments of earth and Sun-- And to see it up here, at this altitude, above the clouds-- unless a storm comes along and spoils it! There just doesn't seem any justice in it. An event written into Nature's laws thousands of years ago, screwed up by some random weather, some bug flapping it's wings in Brazil at the wrong time--- (seeing light from outside cave) What's that light? MARCELLO: Que Bella? Que Diablo! Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome?? I must preserve this! (Marcello points his video-cam at himself. Does a newsreport right there on the spot) MARCELLO: The fires on pyre are changing color... to deep umber as Yak butter statues were beginning to be tossed into the flames. All sorts of different kinds of these dolls were being passed around the tops of the crowd, like rock stars riding the audience's hands at a concert, sooner or later ending up heaved on the pyres. One looked like a tiny man holding onto a great penis with both his hands. Another hugged sacks filled with shiny stones. Some of the Yak butter dolls were drenched in barley beer, their swelled mouths stuffed full of food. The last doll I can make out lookslike it isholding onto the face of the sun, its hands on fire-- | SOUND: Tibetan monk chants (Traditional Composition for Gya Ling and Dung Chen, Trak 5) SCREEN-R: Kelly's doll-pyre painting is illuminated with spotlight. SOUND: Methany-clips zoom in and out SCREEN-C: Marcello's live video-feed of himself reporting what he sees in fire. (if we could put a News-Logo on the videofeed, to make look like TV-Italia news report?) |
| Vapors begin to rise up and fill the cave. MARCELLO: What's this? CHRIS: Probably steam, from the pyre. From all the blood and water in the monk's body boiling. He saw it! I bet the weather cleared up, even if just for a second, for the Dahli-lama... then clouded over when we showed up. And whatever he saw his last winking moment, if it left any trace in his brain, anything biochemical, then the chemicals would still be in his blood-- if they'd've let me get a drop... to trying isolating it... MARCELLO: Isolate what? CHRIS: What's the most intense experience you've ever had? The one where you felt like crying out to your creator: Stop! This moment is so beautiful. I am ready to die, for time to stand still for eternity! | SET: Incense wafts up (or dry ice) SCREEN-L: Black screen so smoke picks up light SOUND: Spike ring some bells (or Trak-3 of Monk tape has bells) |
| MARCELLO: Well, you're talking about Saints and monk's, so mine will sound a bit sacrelgious, but I'll never forget getting head in the Copola atop Saint Peters in Rome. CHRIS: That's fine. When the profane and the sublime meet and shake hands. With me the closest I got was the last sunset I saw in Fiji before I had to leave... When day dies but is so gorgeous in that fiery death, when everthing, more than your body can handle, all floods into the soul, when everything, earth, sun, stars, love, death all almost makes sense for an eye-blink... That's why I wanted a sample, to study, to find out what chemical, what endorphin, was corsing thru their brains at that last moment of ecstasy when a monk dies... so maybe you could synthesize it... have it anytime you wanted. Chris tries, in vain, to grasp and catch the mist MARCELLO: What if it's not some chemical. What if it's something else-- | SCREEN: clips from Fellini's La Dolce Vita (Marcello chasing Helena up stairs of St. Peters) |
| VOICE (offstage): Everyone out! Welcome's overdue, Chris gets up to leave, trips over a laptop on cave floor. VOICE: Time's up, And take all equipment with you! CHRIS (to Marcello): Is this your computer? MARCELLO: No. Claim it. | SOUND: Mefisto is the 'Voice'. Maybe mef's theme plays softly. |
| Chris wonders if he should take it. The last TV to be turned off has ad for computers. TV: Once upon a time, a dog used to be man's best friend. Now let your turbo-dog laptop do your fetching for you... Try it. We dare you. We guarantee it. MARCELLO: I'll split a jeep with you back to airport? CHRIS: Sure. My flight back has a stopover in Rome. We probably have the same flight. Chris takes the laptop. Exeunt | SCREEN-C: Last TV on has Turbo-dog ad. (Kurosawa Dog clip, etc) SOUND: Internet hype ads, layered on the TV ad voice for Turbo-Dog. And a 'Nothin but da dog in me!' rap. |
