"When Story Stops, the Leak Begins" by John Sullivan
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My personal history involves making a lot of live theatre and this hybrid text reflects that focus. When Story Stops, the Leak Begins is composed of poem-scripts, a format that combines poetry and spoken word (primarily as dialogue), the internal arrangement of a performance script, and a more or less omniscient fictional spy-eye lodged inside each character’s head. These poem-scripts — considered collectively, though not necessarily in consecutive order — comprise a story structured into three acts. This poem-script experiment stems from years of making non-representational performances where speech conveyed content, but also led another life as a form of gestural action. It helps to think of When Story Stops, the Leak Begins as a loose contemporary take on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
This excerpt is the first of a four-part series that previews When Story Stops, the Leak Begins.
I Sing the Body, Dysmorphic
(This routine is essential to stay the course of civilization – at least the version Miz’ Chan & the Right Reverend RSV have imprinted and grown into.)
(Think: Tug o’ War across a waste pit full of coal ash floating in produced water from countless fracking operations.)
(Think: “What I haven’t Got Yet Is Not From Want of Willing, Trying, Killing, or Crying” vs. “Bet On a Sure-Fire Winner & You’ll Never Lose.”)
Body Image: Part 1
(Miz’ Chan holds up mirror and observes herself.
For Miz’ Chan, she is, herself, a shock, or a picture – or both.)
(Right Reverend RSV slides into
his Big Wonderful (but Very Stupid) Shoes.)
Miz’ Chan
(Reading the auspices in her mirror.)
Mirror, mirror …
(To Right Reverend RSV.)
This picture is abgefuckt total.
(Pause.)
Look. I might be a virus. I might be a ghost.
Look, I’ve got no teeth. Listen.
(Miz’ Chan taps her teeth a few times, hard.)
I hate this picture.
Right Reverend RSV
(While he slides & skates and stomps around in his Big Stupid Shoes.)
I never heard about it.
Don't know nothin’ about it at all.
Know what I’m sayin’?
I, maybe, know that even though my piss is yellow,
my O-so-fine-fellow’s ass ain’t even made out of gold.
But I sure do love these big beautiful shoes.
Miz’ Chan
Listen.
(Miz’ Chan Taps her teeth again.)
I’m doing that thing with my mouth again.
(Big Blast from Miz’ Chan.)
This picture is too much.
Right Reverend RSV
OK. You win.
It is a, hmmm, bogus, hmmm, worry routine.
It is a, hmmm, quirk of, hmmm, organized yearning.
Don't you know that yet?
(Right Reverend RSV falls off and out of his Stupid Shoes.)
Damn! My damn shoes fell off!
Miz’ Chan
You should get some better shoes.
(Pause.)
That’s not what I mean.
Right Reverend RSV
Hey, I love these shoes like a sleepy infidel
loves his own furry turtle.
My red tongue says it,
long and loud
and hot-so too:
moon bless dreck
and wrack and rhunk ...
and these here shoes.
(Pause. Looks way down,
perched on his Big Stupid Shoes.)
See? Whew!
I can look way down from these here shoes.
(Pause.)
What do you mean?
(Mr. Rougarou runs a furry chew toy up
& down his arms, legs, chest, etc.)
Mr. Rougarou
Stay still, you Fuck!
Do it!
Miz’ Chan
(To Mr. Rougarou. Miz’ Chan and grabs the
furry chew toy as she speaks:)
Been doing too much zoom again.
Hah! You just zoom and zoom too much.
(1/2 Pause.)
Now you got to jitter, and jitter, and ...
jitter some more.
(Miz’ Chan rubs furry chew toy
over Mr. Rougarou’s eyes.)
Right here. In the hyperspace of your own new yes
(Miz’ Chan drops furry chew toy in Mr. Rougarou’s lap.)
Mr. Rougarou
Open up body!
Welcome to the world of stiff …
Body Damage: Part 2
(A peek inside the World of Stiff.)
Miz’ Chan
(To Right Reverend RSV:)
I mean: I’m doing that thing with my mouth again.
(Miz’ Chan demos doing that thing
with her mouth again.)
That.
That thing I do with my mouth.
I hate that thing.
Right Reverend RSV
Lookee, Mommy, I’m cleaning my room.
(Pause. Right Reverend RSV doesn’t like this picture either.)
Jesus-Peezus!
(Now, mutter-mutter on the downlow:)
Forget this jerk. Heat up.
“Enact a goddamn force” ... something like that.
(To Miz’ Chan)
Tell you what: this pain you scope
is, quintessentially, not my ride.
I stroll around & stroll around
in these here transcendental shoes.
All day long, I love these shoes!
Miz’ Chan
Whew!
And what root have you been smoking?
Can’t you see?
You’ve got some really stupid shoes.
And I got me an unpleasant mouth.
“No naked, sonorous, streaming.” Uh-Uh.
Just the Law. Otra vez, just that same Law, again.
It’s part of this planet I carry on my shoulders.
Mr. Rougarou
(To his furry chew toy:)
Sometimes, it's real dark.
You see what I’m saying?
And then ...
and then you try to say: Pure No.
Pure No.
You see what I’m saying?
(Pause: while Mr. Rougarou breathes like a sick engine.
He picks up the thread and ploughs ahead:)
Tell you what: I’m sick of this TV Monkey shit.
It keeps on. It adds up.
It goes both ways at once.
You see what I’m saying?
Miz’ Chan
(Giving both Color & Commentary:)
So. Now the puppet’s got no legs.
Again. Zoo-Buddha? Coo?
Get that itty-bitty swollen heap back
inside the lane of slow down.
This No. Not-this-No. Not-not-this-No.
I mean: Pure No? For really?
Right Reverend RSV
(Like an off-speed slider thrown
in no one’s actual direction.)
Not no theory of vanishing invisible clean contraire. Neither.
(To Miz’ Chan, in particular:)
Whilst’ you just ghost along, I glide my new world alibis
in these signifying shoes.
Miz’ Chan
(To Right Reverend RSV – a truly intimate extortion.)
Well!
Look whose mouth is Now:
A-sure-enough - Whew! – TEKNIK event!
(And now to Mr. Rougarou.)
And what’s all this “Pure No?” Huh?
Like that’s really gonna’ happen?
Best go Tee-Hee-Hee and sneer down the real dread.
(Pause. Miz’ Chan looks at her own mouth again.)
So, why is my mouth still laughing?
Right Reverend RSV
‘Cuz it’s yours.
‘Cuz it’s smack on your face. Whew!
An ill venue, indeed, for squeak or scream.
(Right Reverend RSV topples over, off,
and out of his big stupid shoes.)
Christ! Shit! Howdy-do!
My damn shoes fell off.
(Right Reverend RSV remounts his big stupid shoes
but with obvious resistance from said shoes.)
Miz’ Chan
I just don't like what my mouth is doing.
(Pause. To Right Reverend RSV -
like a miracle in reverse, or accidental enlightenment:)
And you ... you like it down there on the floor?
All alone? With your shoes?
(Pause.)
Those stupid shoes!
(Pause. Miz’ Chan observes herself again.)
I just love my mouth wide-open.
Like a movie star.
(Miz’ Chan opens her mouth wide open
and arias with no sound, just like a movie star.)
Right Reverend RSV
Yeah?
Well hide all the guns.
Hide all the whisky, too.
‘Cuz-I-just-love-these-here-shoes.
(Pause. Right Reverend RSV slides
& glides & dances some more.)
Wouldn’t trade these shoes for a shimmer-shimmer
kinda’ ... spectophilic valentine.
Yeah: big, wide, beautiful ...(Pause)... shoes.
(Right Reverend RSV topples over, yet again.)
Damn! Damn! Damn!
My damn shoes fell off.
Miz’ Chan
(Her mouth unlocks from her aria rictus; she says first to Right Reverend RSV.)
Looks like your big beautiful shoes “ain’t got no bone.”
(And now (and tenderly?) to Mr. Rougarou.)
& O-You-Do-Too-Make-It-Burn, you do.
Compin’ on the outside with your leper’s rattle,
flyin’ zoom-zoom-zoom inside your own head
like a suicide-drone.
And alla’ time riggin’ on it like a trouper:
when your mind says open
up to it, then your head says
gone. Says choke. Says
every Sefirot go take flight, go
hooji-booji black wing
in the City of Loom & Smoke.
Mr. Rougarou
So tell me here’s a cure ...
but I can’t.
DONE
JOHN SULLIVAN was an ACTF Playwriting finalist, received the 'Jack Kerouac Literary Prize,' the 'Writers Voice: New Voices of the West' Award, AZ Arts Fellowships (Poetry & Playwriting), an Artists Studio Center Fellowship, WESTAF Fellowship; he was also a featured playwright at Denver's Changing Scene Summer Playfest, an Eco-Arts Fellow with Earth Matters On Stage, Artistic Director of Theater Degree Zero, and directed the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) wing at Seattle Public Theater. He and Sheli Rae (Producing Director: Theater Degree Zero) facilitated a series of acting/playwriting workshops inside the Pima County Jail in conjunction with the Pima County Library and the Tucson Writers Project. He uses TO with communities to promote dialogue on environmental and climate justice with environmental health scientists. His work has been published in a variety of print and online venues. Weasel Press (Manvel TX) published his first book, Bye-Bye No Fly Zone, in December 2019. When Story Stops, the Leak Begins came out from Unsolicited Press (Portland OR) in April 2020. A collection of performance pieces, Dire Moon Cartoons, was released by Weasel Press (now of Lansing MI) in October 2021.
