Dreams, Nightmares, and Weird Stuff
Scene: An ordinary American stage, with a beautiful dancer going through marvelous moves in a glittering, skintight costume. The audience is captivated. . . .
Then the music is overridden by a thumping base beat and discordant wails. The dancer stops, obviously startled, and looks around for the source of this rude interruption. . . .
The audience becomes aware of movement around them, dark forms marching down center and side aisles in step to the strange rhythm now filling the room. The music clarifies into “American Woman”, and as the forms reach the stage, the audience becomes aware that they are, in fact, all women. . . .
Women of all ages, of all shapes and sizes, or all races and professions; there is an Asian doctor complete with lab coat, a tall blond tennis player, a plump chef, a muscled construction worker, a soldier in combat fatigues. . . .
They surround the now frightened dancer and, as the song progresses, shoo her off the stage. . . .
And they begin to dance, and as they dance the audience realizes that hey, these women are, in spite of being old, and round, and saggy in spots, and not at all the Barbie fashion-model figure they were just watching . . . these women can dance. . . .
As they move through their routine, the audience sees, as each woman steps into the spotlight for her turn up front, the spirit inside each one that never ceases to dance and play. . . .
And the woman go back out through the audience and disappear into the darkness once more.
The music fades.
And just as the audience is trying to decide whether or not to actually clap, the original dancer runs out on stage again, throws out her arms and with only her body language, begs the women to come back . . . and just as she is visibly despairing, they come back in . . . from behind her . . . and surround her and start to dance again, only this time it is the dance of a mother showing the way to her misguided child, and as the music rises again (a different song than before, one with a good beat but one that talks about hope and rebirth and love without being soppy) the modern beauty joins in and takes her place as one of the women, no longer a glittering star above them, but a humbled and mature part of the pack. . . .
And I wake up, wondering . . . with dreams like that, how could I have become anything but a writer? And wondering . . . if there is a director out there with the guts to pull that kind of performance off. . .
