Footsteps of a Nobody by Donna Williams was a one woman stage show performed by Donna & The Aspinauts at 12 Melbourne theatres in 2009. It can be performed as a one woman show or adapted into a musical and is available to perform at no cost under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License as long as “Donna Williams” is credited as its writer and I would ask that my husband, Chris Samuel, to be informed of any recordings or performances so he has a chance to experience the use of my work.

Creative Commons License

SETTING:
There’s a simple dining chair on the stage, a silent witness. Donna enters, dressed like a global traveller, a suitcase in hand. She is well dressed, cosmopolitan, perhaps professional. She puts the suit case down, opens it and produces a wind up carousel music box. She holds it to the light, watching it turn then brings it to her face, looking into it.

MONOLOGUE 1:
1963, a faceblind kid had bonded,
with colored wallpaper on the wall
we were one, me and Noddy
in a world where we were all,
rainbows upon whiteness and without body we shifted places
in a world without time, without faces.

The welfare’s Sister Jelly rolled with laughing chuckle belly
The frosted glass with criss-crossed wire
My steel bed, was number five, where government white clad matrons kept the at risk kids alive.

ACTION:
Donna sits on the chair, looking small, like a child in adult crossfire.

MONOLOGUE 2:
Popped paper bags and verbal ping pong Was she deaf? Was she possessed?
The hospital had crisp sheets and dry.
I was an item, handled, clean and pressed. She’s not deaf, no leukaemia.
Just psychotic at the age of two
Now, you can take the broken goods back home, and keep them in a zoo.

SONG: ‘SIMPLY BE’

SINGING:
I feel part of the moon and the sun,
Of the colors surrounding me.
I am soothed by the way nature plays its own music,
The sparkles upon the sea.
When you smile with your eyes,
I believe you’re caught, caught in its symphony. Then I can find no place I’d rather be.

Some things will never change. Freedom is my middle name. If this is crazy, don’t give me sane.
Let me Simply Be.

I have cried for the beauty of a sunset sky, Felt at home in a field of gold.
I have known what it is to belong to a world which can touch me and yet never hold.
When I see you at home with yourself, hat’s something that can never be bought or sold.
And I can find no place I’d rather be.

SONG MONOLOGUE:
Do not carry me upon your back nor leave me in a void to die. Don’t suffocate me with your caring, I am a butterfly.
I can already see the light. I know its name intimately. And I can fly, so let me fly. If you cannot, then let me be.

I feel part of the moon and the sun,
Of the colors surrounding me.
I am soothed by the way nature plays its own music, The sparkles upon the sea.
When you smile with your eyes,
I believe you’re caught, caught in its symphony. Then I can find no place I’d rather be.

Some things will never change. Freedom is my middle name. If this is crazy, don’t give me sane.
Let me Simply Be.

SONG MONOLOGUE:
I can already see And I can fly, so be.
the light. I know its name intimately. let me fly. If you cannot, then let me

SONG ENDS

ACTION: Donna produces a 1960s egg beater from the suitcase and, beaming, begins to watch the blades spin.

MONOLOGUE 3:
The tin can poured a creamy liquid
To which I was hopelessly addicted.
Till the end of the can, life was great.
Honey in a plastic pot, amber resin lake.

ACTION:
She puts the egg beater back in the suitcase.

MONOLOGUE 3 (cont)
Moving waves,
a diving finger dives in there
It was good enough for me,
if it was good enough for TV bears….

ACTION:
She jubilantly climbs the chair, reaching for unseen cupboards.

MONOLOGUE 3 (cont)
Watch the doors opening. Out everything goes.
A bag full of flour,
a dozen potatoes, Crackity, crack,
amidst powdery white.
She jumps manically down from the chair staring blissfully at the floor and rubs her body.
I swam in the eggs, in a manic delight.

In a circus of feelings, I became even freer, I could walk round the light bulb
and over the ceiling whilst bound to the end of white Queen Anne bed.
I’d help drive my mother clean out of her head.

SONG: “SHAKESPEARESE’

SINGING:
Velvety the ocean ribboned and Pendulous the dark sky fell.
Daintily the stars did twinkle and time did stop in Tumbleville
A ‘hand’? My kingdom for a concept! This night my very mind took flight.
Shadowy, the spirit, shifted As left brain left by stage door right.

Insanity’s the only thing we get for free.
I’ve even got enough for you ’cause we know I’ve got enough for me.

Out it goes, the panty hose, doth flee,
whilst mind has gone astray.
T’was a tad like Santa with a taste of Fanta, Easter Bunny came at break of day.

I found him in the garden,
in a pink and yellow bucket there
and inside it were the words inscribed
don’t you know that it is rude to stare.

Insanity’s the only thing we get for free.
I’ve even got enough for you ’cause we know I’ve got enough for me.

ACTION:
Donna takes something unseen from the suitcase.
She turns her back on the audience.
Suddenly playing cards flip into the air and shower down around her.
She turns and continues the song.

SINGING:
So fix this lovely brain of mine
for Blu Tac doesn’t grow on trees,
and life is like that, don’t we know just ask one who speaks Shakespearese.
For, O, hath nobles, hung with Alice,
they might have done a better job.
At least white rabbit sat with Hatter though that queen of tarts was such a snob.

ACTION:
Donna crouches behind the chair, rises and pretends to open a window above it.

MONOLOGUE 4:
The escape hatch was there
in the wallpapered wall.
And I dropped like poor Humpty in a long distance fall.

ACTION:
She walks away from the chair.

MONOLOGUE 4 (cont):
For the farty old bed that lived out in the shed Had a Nan and a Pop,
in a room without windows.

ACTION:
Donna takes an old man’s hat from the suitcase and smells it.

MONOLOGUE 4 (cont):
Where time was a luxury
there was plenty of
until purple and still
and so cold, there he was,
and white coats had removed him, on account of because
he was… dead

and then, she too was gone from that fab farty shed.
Just a hundred kilometres off with the strays.
To be seen once a year for another…for another 2 days.

SONG: “NOBODY NOWHERE”
In a room without windows In the company of shadows
You know they won’t forget you. They’ll take you in.
Emotionally shattered, Don’t ask if it mattered. Don’t let that upset you. Just start again.

Take advice, don’t question the experts.
Don’t think twice, you just might listen.
Run and hide to the corners of your mind,alone, like a Nobody Nowhere.

In a world under glass You can watch the world pass
and nobody can touch you. You think you’re safe.
But the wind can blow cold, In the depths of your soul where you think nothing can hurt you, Till its too late.

Take advice, don’t question the experts.
Don’t think twice, you just might listen.
Run and hide to the corners of your mind,alone, like a Nobody Nowhere.

SONG MONOLOGUE:
In the war of your soul, You can’t hear them at all,
And the world becomes an echo Of what’s left outside. But nobody can win, If you can’t let them in
And there’s nobody to answer From that place where you hide.

SINGING:
Run till you drop, Do you know how to stop?
The people walk right past you. You wave goodbye.
And they all merely smiled, For you looked like a child.
Never thought that they’d upset you. They saw you cry.

SONG ENDS

MONOLOGUE 5:
A crackling gold fire had danced at my back.
Where towel had caught fire
and then turned charcoal black.
I stood towel-less and naked in the house all alone.
A family of one in a house minus home.

In the yard with the chickens I discovered their eggs,
surrounded by cluck, cluck, fast stickletti legs.
I lived amidst blossoms in the old lemon tree
against a laughing blue sky and the hover of bees.

Figaro was the word given to the ‘foosh’ pattability which trilled ‘brrook-brrook’ in fluent ‘cat’.
I pursued it, I loved it. Black fur moving fast on legs
The fluttering of birds swam in the air
Under wire, the size of a room
And this hair, ran about on the floor
Squeaking guinea pig, and there,
through a wide opened aviary door.
Mitsy was yellow, and I watched the yellowness fly, Out into the expanse of space
And though I was clean off my face… I was in awe.

But, that tip toe run, that finger play, a-ha! Let’s send her to ballet,
move her limbs, take a chance…just maybe if we make her dance,
she might pass for a ‘real girl’.

SONG: “HOW TO BE A BOY”
Build a fantasy with joy and wonder.
Take me underneath the waves.
Project into my eyes, some girly splendor.
Project on me the things you crave.

How to be a nice girl. How to be a toy. How to be a human. How to be a boy.

Want to help me to be ornamental.
I could be your China doll.
Wind me up and I might just go mental. Don’t be surprised I’ve got a soul.

How to be a nice girl. How to be a toy. How to be a human. How to be a boy.

ACTION:
Donna takes a luxurious boa from the suitcase.

SONG (cont)
How to be a nice girl. How to be a toy. How to be a human. How to be a boy.

Come and share the magic, share the passion. Forget fashion, just be you.
Come to the masquerade but leave the costume. Be what you are, do what you do.

How to be a nice girl. How to be a toy. How to be a human. How to be a boy.

ACTION:
She handles the boa as something foreign, makes it move, then she turns her back on the audience and begins to perform in boa. Finally she turns, deadpan, crumples the boa into a ball and tosses it angrily into the suitcase.

Donna takes an old school bell from the suitcase and sounds it out.

MONOLOGUE 6:
The Emperor, he has new clothes and so, as the 60s story goes
she was sent in as children are to primary school when it begins.

ACTION:
She returns the bell to the suitcase.

MONOLOGUE 6 (cont)
The call, of course was made in haste,
disturbance of the peace and precious time this teacher couldn’t waste on special needs,
when her kids were of better breeds.
This waste of time would have no place
in her 60s style sculpting of the human race.

And fueled by courage from a bottle
she arrived, the teacher here to throttle.
And warned, the teacher was, to call again for such a thing as to complain…
her mother warned,
“This fist, you see now in it’s place
will surely next be in your face”.
And so, it was with purely burden
that that feral, ‘damaged’, ‘little heathen’
was kept as welcome as a fart
included in that 60s class a world apart.

SONG: ’ALL BE HAPPY’
If you were just a little more conservative
and If you were just less outspoken, bit more passive.
If you were just the person who obeyed the must
Then finally, we could all be happy.

If you were just, rather less so solitary.
If you were just, more sociable and always jolly.
If you had just a bit more color, not too much
Then finally, we could all be happy.

In my world, I may not recognise your face.
In my world everything may not be in place.
And my world doesn’t run like a race
So people like me disappear in the shadows.

In my world, there is substance beyond what’s here.
In my world, inequality’s what I fear.
My world isn’t geared for appearance
So people like me disappear in the shadows.

If you had just that bit more muscle, bit less weight
and If you were just ‘more kiss my butt’ and never late
and If you were just the person who would just adjust
Then finally, we could all be happy.

If you were just bit more straight, that bit less Autie.
If you were just a bit less crazy, bit more sporty.
If you were just so normal we could always trust you
Then finally we could all be happy.

In my world, there is no word ‘normality’.
In my world, there is no one ‘reality’.
But my world doesn’t have guarantees
So people like me disappear in the shadows

Cinderella, waiting in the shadows
Of a cruel world, of a fool’s world
By some twist of fate, the prince ran too late
And she was left to build herself the castle.

If you were less eccentric, it would be fantastic.
If you were more production line, that bit more plastic.
If you would just control yourself and not be spastic
Then finally we could all be happy.

If you had just a bit less disability and
If you supported paternalistic charity and
If you contorted all you were you might just marry
Then finally we could all be happy.

In my world, there’s a place for diversity.
In my world, being odd’s no perversity.
And my world’s good enough for me
But people like me, we live in the shadows.

In my world it’s a place of patterns and feel
In my world it’s a haven for what is real
And it’s my world, nobody can steal it
Though people like me, we live in the shadows.

If you could just…
If you had just…
If you were just…

SONG ENDS

ACTION
Donna crouches behind the suitcase and emerges with a large sheet of cellophane between herself and the audience.

MONOLOGUE 7.
She’s got no friends, she’s got no friends, she got….
She lowers the cellophane and crumples it, discarding it gently to the side.
a world where trees hold, and moon follows, where wind talks,
a world where someone in the mirror walks, just like her and shares the silent secrets told in enigmatic stare
of life behind wrought iron bars, in loony attic up purple stairs.

A world defined by ugly loaded labels
passed like salt and pepper,
psychotic, disturbed, spastic, wongo, blonk around the table.

The baby smiled from ear to ear,
eyes twinkling somewhere between mania and fear,
The nine year old became the mother
to the hyperactive clutter of a baby brother.
He looked into her eyes and saw no world apart
and as they spun and jumped and sang the Mickey Mouse song: M.I.C.K.E.Y…M.O.U.S.E…
that deaf girl, she made a whole new start.

ACTION:
She brusquely overturns the chair.

MONOLOGUE 7 (cont).
And the parties whored and roared in raucous sound
As drunkards danced, and sang and drank the whisky down
And music filled the children’s rooms on Friday, Saturday nights
culminating in the smash of glass, the fire of guns
and screaming mayhem of domestic fights.

The baby cried, amidst the place, we came to call, ‘our Vietnam’,
His eyes were wide and terrified, and small, so small,
he stood, amidst the world, neither could understand,
and all that she could offer was her own… small… child hand.

Into the wardrobe, in the dark, she pulled the door tight closed,
and cupped her hand over his screams, and wiped his snotty nose.
Once upon a wardrobe, she became someone who dared.
In a world of one in which she sought to disappear, instead, she’d cared.

SONG: ‘MIRROR’
I look without hearing and hear without meaning inside
And the feelings in there, I can’t seem to share
And it hurts sometimes.

And there you are like a mirror
And it all comes together. We never have to ask, ‘how’, ‘why’ or ‘whether’
We agree. To Simply Be.

I look without seeing, a world without meaning to find.
And when its turned empty, that world seems so scary And I’m left behind.

And there you are like a mirror
And it all comes together.
We never have to ask, ‘how’, ‘why’ or ‘whether’ We agree. To Simply Be.

I’m not some broken version of a one size fits all style
See the person, not the label and we might begin to smile together, together.

I give without trying and love without lying to me.
And when every blank stare says ‘you’re going nowhere’ I can’t break free.

And there you are like a mirror And it all comes together.
We never have to ask, ‘how’, ‘why’ or ‘whether’
We agree. To Simply Be.

I’m not some broken version of a one size fits all style
See the person, not the label and we might begin to smile
together, together, together, together…

SONG ENDS

ACTION:
Donna straightens the chair and sits on it happily, bobbing as if on a tram.

MONOLOGUE 8:
Catch the tram, away she goes,
a free ride off to Neverland.
Tickets please, conductor calls meaning deaf ears don’t understand.

And icing’s aisle number two, the supermarket’s where to eat.
Let the shopkeepers do respite for a girl with dirty feet.

And Ming, will tame this feral cat, his kitchen filled with woks and pans,
Mrs Ming runs round the kitchen table all grey-tied-hair with flying hands.

A hundred lanes and building sites,
a hundred streets of wandered nights
a hundred graves of gentle souls
where the dead lay safe in cement holes.
A hundred strangers phoned up numbers
a hundred lights go out to slumber.
The streets provide immunity To this citizen of community

SONG “MY HEART”
My heart it is a patchwork quilt,
left threads on the shore of a hundred wars left dye on the lips of a hundred whys,
left filling with the pillows of a hundred beds

My heart, oh-oh-oh, my heart.

My heart is a garden of weeds that found a home,
a place in the corner where the dust gathers alone,
a bathtub full of suds that have washed away dirt
of a girl trying to smile in a pink mini skirt.

My heart, oh-oh-oh, my heart.

My heart is a fire for the orphans to warm,
for the fingerless gloves for tinned rain in a storm.
My heart is a window with small hands upon the pane,
and a view on a world where the logic’s insane.

My heart, oh-oh-oh, my heart.

ACTION:
Donna takes a handful of glitter from out of the suitcase. She tosses it into the air and it showers down.

SONG (cont)
My heart, oh-oh-oh, my heart.

My heart is a cat which purrs without sound,
which sees into your soul when there’s no-one around,
which lives on the hopes and the dreams others shed.
My heart is restored from a girl left for dead.

My heart, oh-oh-oh, my heart.
Oh-oh-oh my heart. Oh-oh- oh my heart.

SONG ENDS

ACTION:
From the suitcase she produces a heavy, rusty old chain. She swings it and tosses it in her hand like a street wise teenager.

MONOLOGUE 9:
Hi ho, hi ho, 15 years old, its off to work you go
And last a week, a month, a day,
and out you go without your pay
For you’re the factory fodder child,
dishwasher hands, and bedroom smile.
Psychiatry along the way,
they send you back to men to pay your rent,
in the absence of a family, funds, intelligence at least you’re fun, for sixty seconds,
once or twice or more a day
no prostitute was surely ever so badly underpaid.

Not bad for a psycho, ask a stray cat, they all know, that beggars can’t be choosers
and everyone can spot the tragic losers…
The teeth with rotten holes,
the shoes with flapping soles,
the clothes all out of style
those harrowed eyes, the home cut hair, that plastic smile.

And there he’d stand with his nine year old hand
Which had rapped on the door, of his sister, the stranger.
Just out to the car, it’s the rules, he had said,
you gotta see Ma, or I really can’t stay.
And my hand, closed the door
with my heart in the way.

SONG ‘BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP’
The years were just a blink, kid, water down the sink.
You sure have grown since you were just a weed.
A face across the ocean, some nostalgic notion
of an exile who’s been to worlds you can only dream.
Here you stand with those orphan eyes and a heart that has a million whys
and all you know, is you don’t know, a single thing.

I’m Baa Baa black sheep, Sweetheart.
Mary never kept this little lamb.
I built a castle out of dust,
I just left my footprints in the sand.
I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep. I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Victors write the history,
pictures drawn of me are those which
pose no threat to the secrets they must keep.
Did the doggies bite you?
They ripped you limb from limb.
You ran around in circles
as they bit you once again

and there you stand with that fragile smile
and a soul that wants to stay for a while
and I can’t say the words you want to hear.

‘Cause I’m Baa Baa black sheep, Sweetheart.
Mary never kept this little lamb.
I built a castle out of dust,
I just left my footprints in the sand.
I’m Baa Baa BlackSheep. I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep.

ACTION:
Donna takes out a paper chain of cut out dolls. She expands it. Suddenly she closes it and rips it in half tossing it into the suitcase.

SONG (cont)
I’m Baa Baa black sheep, Sweetheart.
Mary never kept this little lamb.
I built a castle out of dust,
I just left my footprints in the sand.
I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep. I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Thought my heart was tougher,
generations that might follow
could make their way in a circus called tomorrow.
But nobody left the keys to the only exit door
and all that had glittered only left you feeling poor.

And here I am, I got your face, huh?
We stand here in this shared place
and now you’ve got my number, so maybe you might ring.

But I’m Baa Baa black sheep, Sweetheart.
Mary never kept this little lamb.
I built a castle out of dust,
I just left my footprints in the sand.
I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep. I’m Baa Baa Black Sheep.

SONG ENDS

ACTION:
From the suitcase she produces a large white feather. She holds it up, turns it, then bows her head before discarding it to the suitcase again.

MONOLOGUE 11:
The bus stop ate her courage
It had been that step too high
Her legs had frozen as the real people boarded and she trembled life passed her by.

The nerve pills from the doc had kept her zombied well since age of ten,
and added to them painkillers for grinding pain in all her limbs,
but now the source of pain was getting so painfully clear,
beneath a rote trained set of roles, she had an allergy to being here.

And yet, like her parents, in bottle or in glass, the exit’s cheap,
and all could pass into a numb spiritual slumber
and so it was as others played roulette
except in her hand, she’d kept that number…
that name which saw her once upon adventures with a razor blade
so would she dare to take the road less travelled and instead take one the shrink had made?

SONG ‘TOO SENSITIVE’
Why do you hide your smile When you’ve got a pretty face?
You take away the best of you, Leave nothing in its place.
Emotion comes to get you, You try to run away
The games are pretty scary when you don’t know how to play.

‘Cause you are, Too sensitive
Run away and hide, little boy, little girl.
Too sensitive.
An ego made of glass, in a shattering world.

Why do you always hide away The sparkle in your eye?
How many opportunities Have you let pass you by?
You think that if you’re not the best
At least no-one will see.
You found yourself a hiding place To store your sanity

‘Cause you are, Too sensitive
Run away and hide, little boy, little girl.
Too sensitive.
An ego made of glass, in a shattering world.

ACTION:
Donna takes out a glass fairy and holds it up to the light.
She then returns it to the suitcase.
You keep a fire in your heart For no-one else to know.
Don’t you know the more you hide, The more your feelings show?
If your world’s become a prison and the person with the key Is the one who put you in there
That’s the one who’ll set you free

‘Cause you are, Too sensitive
Run away and hide, little boy, little girl.
Too sensitive.
An ego made of glass, in a shattering world.

SONG ENDS

MONOLOGUE 12:
Once upon a shrink I’d learned
That silence costs as much as words
that castles can be built from dust. That you really can polish a turd.

I’d looked across at life refined, designed and fed on books,
a world where uniforms and titles
might set a feral free from dirty looks.

Dream and make it so, the stylish shrink had said.
So I slept upon stray sofas, ever grateful for a bed.
I cycled to fold boxes for fast-chicken seasoned legs.

Was it true one could escape the streets?
Was it true the past was something one could box and store, tidy and neat,
gathering dust, under a bed?
Was it true one could find unmade roads inside the echo of an empty head
And pave them with Dorothy bricks
all the way to Oz?

SONG ‘BROKEN BISCUIT’
Falling, falling, conscious mind, Disintegrates like place and time
and in it’s place a world of dreams replace the many patchwork seams

I’ve heard it said, a broken biscuit is the best one in the tin,
you gather up the pieces, and put them, put them together a-gain.

Rarely here I hear my words, for mind can speak in perfect thirds
a world in which my silent screams are but the music played in dreams.

I’ve heard it said, a broken biscuit is the best one in the tin,
you gather up the pieces, and put them, put them together a-gain.

And fly, I soar, tumble and land, Trajectories intuitive, are always unplanned,
As life each moment here unfurled Is just the stuff of a dream world.

I’ve heard it said, a broken biscuit is the best one in the tin,
you gather up the pieces, and put them, put them together a-gain.

ACTION:
Donna crouches behind the suitcase and emerges from it holding a blank white mask before her face. She removes the mask.

MONOLOGUE 13
Schooling would be worth it, I would speak their sociology,
I would masticate philosophy, and disembowel psychology.
She climbs the chair, standing upon it, triumphant.
I would learn that plants don’t shit, full stops aren’t random,
and how I’ve just one single brain.

ACTION:
She steps off the chair.

SONG (cont)
I’d go to classes once, then twice I’d scan the books I couldn’t read
I’d volunteer and learn to help and seek out those even more in need.
I’d hide in academia, I’d learn to speak ‘Professorese’
and nobody would ever know the broken goods that lay beneath.

SONG: “BEAUTIFUL BEHAVIOURAL MUTATIONS”
Beautiful behavioural mutations….
Could there be, a place for those like me
Beautiful behavioral mutations.
Not incomplete. No need to seek out my defeat

You keep finding all the reasons to close the door. You keep minding that we’re too many to ignore.
We may seem in the gutter from up there where you are Maybe you don’t know we still see the same stars.

Beautiful behavioral mutations.
Humility. It doesn’t ask for sympathy.
Beautiful behavioral mutations.
We ask that weird Be not synonymous with feared.

You keep finding all the reasons to close the door. You keep minding that we’re too many to ignore.
We may seem in the gutter from up there where you are Maybe you don’t know we still see the same stars.

Beautiful behavioral mutations.
Could you find someone like me to be your kind?
Beautiful behavioral mutations. We’re everywhere. No need to… No need to stare.

You keep finding all the reasons to close the door. You keep minding that we’re too many to ignore.
We may seem in the gutter from up there where you are Maybe you don’t know we still see the same stars.

MONOLOGUE 14:
Ten thousand miles across the sea,
Then straight into the broken arms of love,
to find a life time of Exposure Anxiety simply couldn’t rise above.
But there, I stared into a mirror’s eyes and somewhere in the terror knew,
that a broken girl had loved and had been loved.

To fear that one exists. Just think… then think how thinking breaks “that law”
how wanting makes us know we’re here by making us want more.

ACTION:
She sits on the chair and begins to type.

MONOLOGUE 14 (cont):
So typed became my life in silent words upon the page all the love I’d never whispered,
the frustration, all the rage,
all the sorry and regret, all the souls I’d never let know someone whose only crime had been
to dare exist, to care, to dream,

to dare to turn life on it’s head,
to dare to do in spite of dread,

to turn the stagnant pond into a flowing brook, to be there in my face blind eyes
when I dared to share a look.

I had made it to the end,but there I discovered the beginning.
I finally knew the it was not the me, that too much sanctuary can be prison.

SONG “WE TRY”
Can we know the truth yet not run away?
Can we feel the fear yet resolve to stay?

I’ll just, think it over. I’ll just, think it over.

Is this some a dream made by you?
Well, it almost came true, till we woke it. Was this some secret in time,
that could have been mine, till we spoke it?

We roll the dice,we pay the price,
even knowing it’s improbable.
And though our doubt’s the thing that shouts,
to believe that it’s impossible, we try.

It’s so loud in here in this mind of mine.
Would they understand, would they give me time?

I’ll just, think it over. I’ll just, think it over.

Was this some wish that I had?
Some strange kind of madness I’ve woke from? Is this some kind of a test,
to try do my best and remain strong?

We roll the dice,we pay the price, even knowing it’s improbable
And though our doubt’s the thing that shouts, to believe that it’s impossible, we try.

ACTION:
Donna produces a large antiquated key from the suitcase. She holds it to the light. She returns the key to the suitcase.

SONG (cont)
Could I take the risks, give it one more try? Could I dare to love, just to say goodbye?

I’ll just, think it over. I’ll just, think it over.

How does the broken wing fly?
If it falls from the sky, do we hear it?
Is love the monster inside
from which we should hide if we fear it?

We roll the dice,we pay the price,
even knowing it’s improbable
And though our doubt’s the thing that shouts, to believe that it’s impossible, we try.
Oh, oh, we try. Oh, oh, we try. Oh, oh, we try. We try.

MONOLOGUE 15
In the theme park of life we all get a ticket.
There’s no refunds, no regrets, no mistakes, no exchange.
Some are born with the burden of being over loved
Some are walking fruit salads who are born to be strange.
Some are torn between girl, between boy, and their body.
Some are worn out by desire to one day be somebody.
Some are oil and water, a soul torn in two
Some are torn between being an I or a you.
Some will struggle with privilege,and seem born to want more
Some are born to compete, to compare, and keep score.

Some are fooled by the way the appear clouds the be.
Some are faced with frustration of the things they can’t be.
Just one step in front of each other, each day.
In the end, that is all, we’re expected to take.

SONG ‘TODAY STARTS NOW’
Where does time find you? In the morning, left behind you
See those footprints in the sand.
Well, I see those footprints,
I see those footprints in the sand.

Heard you came by this path. Stayed a while, had a little laugh.
Well, don’t you find that
Don’t you find that life is grand?
And I see those footprints.
I see those footprints in the sand.

Well that’s the way, the way to play it. If life is a dream, no need to wake it.
Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now. Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now.
Well that’s the way, the way to play it. If life is a dream, no need to wake it.
Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now. Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now.

With the clouds you drift by.
Happy blue, own piece of sky.
Find your dreams, and set them free Find your dreams, and set them free

Down to earth, just for the day.
Sit by the fire, then on your way. And never take nothing no-one can see.
Never take nothing no-one can see.

Well that’s the way, the way to play it. If life is a dream, no need to wake it.
Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now. Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now.
Well that’s the way, the way to play it. If life is a dream, no need to wake it.
Yesterday’s gone. Today starts now. Yesterday’s GONE.
Today starts now.

THE END