Playwright Portrait, Madeleine George, Excerpt from Precious Little

The Playwright Madeleine George, 2009pswb©2012


Precious Little:

Pinlight up on THE APE, draped over a great gnarled log. She reclines halfway, Odalisque, elegant and weary. She is barefoot; she wears Chanel. She does not wear an ape suit. THE APE lifts her big hand, a stalk of celery in it. She works the celery into her mouth contemplatively, grinding it into her face as if feeding a tree branch into a chipper. We watch THE APE, spotlit, as through the peephole end of an Easter egg: odd figure in an odd world.

THE APE (even, calm)

I chew. I swallow. I recognize the vegetable. I drop my hand with the vegetable, forget the vegetable. A breeze. I swell my chest to it. Light comes from every direction here. Light comes from the ceiling, someone left the ceiling open here. I stretch myself out on what they have for me to lie on. I smell the air; it smells like buildings here. I smack my lips. I close my lips like a purse over my yellow teeth.