Whereby the Clown of Life and Death Meets Her Foil in an Accused and Black-Hearted Clown

Written by Jason Stutz

with Heather Joy Gosnell

©Jason I. Stutz 2019

1st Piece

You did it.

(blandly) I didn’t do it.

(also blandly) “Yes, you did.”

No, no I didn’t. (shakes head) No.

“Yes. (nods head affirmatively) Yes you did do it. (nods head) Yes, yes, you did.”

No, no it must have been someone else. You! You did it. (smiles and points) I didn’t do it; it was you.

“Me? No, no, certainly it couldn’t have been me. It was you!

Me? No. You… you did it. (the tone is as though a child’s game being played)

“No, no it wasn’t me- it was you.”

Nope, no it wasn’t. Nope. (shakes head with playfully)

“Yes, it was. (getting more serious, but not without a playful heart) It was you. It was you, I’m sure of it!”

What? When?

“You know.”

(beginning to reflect) Know what? When? (shakes head) What, when?

“When you did it. You know.”

Know what?

“What you did. You did it.”

Maybe… m-maybe… it must be… almost 20 years ago…”

“Time does not erase what you did… see? You did it!” (exultant and accusatory)

What? No, no, I…

“Yes, you did! You just admitted you did!”

But, but I…

“You did it.”

(looking very sad) Well… well, what did you do?

“Me?! I didn’t do anything.”

Surely.

“Me?” (silence) “Tell me what you did…”

You’ll wish to kill me if I do.

“No… I won’t.”

You will. You’ll kill me.

(silence)

“No, I won’t kill you.”

You will. (silence to communicate the gravity of what he did) Even if you will, though- I will tell you, anyway. (reaches over to Clown 2’s ear who, upon hearing, becomes filled with righteous anger and takes a weapon and her fists unsure which to use first as she beats Clown 1 who does not resist, only cries and cries and cries).

(Clown 2 stands and crosses her arms, obviously quite upset)

(silence)

(wiping tears from his face, observes Clown 2 looking rather self-righteously) How do you know I did it?

“Oh? Well… I saw you there.”

What? Where? Why were you there?

(looking very embarrassed) “Where… there? I was only observing.”

Oh… maybe you did it… maybe you did it, too!

“Not that!!” (looking very accusatorily at Clown 1)

(shirks back from shame) But… but, something.

“No…”

(silence)

Something… what did you do?

(silence, looks away, slumps over and cries)

Tell me.

“You’ll leave me and tell everyone!”

(they look at each other)(Clown 2 is bound, as though by blood oath, to confess)

Clown 2 reaches over to Clown 1’s ear and whispers hotly

Clown 1 cries out in horror and runs to the ears of three planted actors to whipser hotly in their ears what she did.  The first what cries in horror, the second one vomits, the third one just sits glaring at her in all hate. Clown 2 shrieks and cries until Clown 1 returns to face her. Angry, afraid, sad, and hurt, she attacks Clown 1, again and beats him as he receives her beating, again, crying from shame. After the beating, they have their backs to each other on the floor they are crying upon. Clown 2 looks back at Clown 1 who catches his eye accusatorily and Clown 2 winces, but then looks back at Clown 1 accusatorily. They both are moved by this exchange, now, to stand and try to look at each other, again, but cannot for shame. They turn their backs, and move to several yards from each other and sob.

End scene.

2nd Piece

The Birth of The Clown of Life and Death

Whereupon the CLD is perfectly loving and feels quite pleased and entitled to her power. (And often leaps to save people)

~The Shield~
by Jason Stutz for Heather Joy Gosnell
©May 3, 2020 by Jason Stutz

The CLD bares her horrible shield upon the crowd of miscreants and wanderers.
Astonished, some; others, terrified, or all of them, both- they fly in horror to stages right and left, but two of them remained.
“Is that birch bark?” inquires one with a smile.
“Oh, yes,” says CLD with almost arrogant pride at its power and loveliness.
“Beautiful,” says the other, wondering upon it, as they walk away stage right coolly, vitalized.
They chirp at once:
“Let’s go to the field!”
“Let’s go…”
“And then… yes… the ocean…”

3rd Piece

Black-Hearted Clown Meets the Garbage Can

“I have. I don’t have. I have. I feel disconnected from my feelings of connection. I’m mental-only and not real. I’m empty and don’t have and I have to get from… who?“

Scene 1

Blackhearted Clown sifting through the garbage can for food. A hand rises from the garbage, surprising Blackhearted Clown, to say the least. It points. The hand points ‘That way.’ Blackhearted Clown looks that way, slowly, turning his head but keeping his body to the hand indicating connection maintained. He turns his head back to the hand. It points, ‘That way.’
He turns his face again to look, then turns back to the hand, again, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “What do you want me to look at?”
The hand points in various directions, not really at anything specific, though it seems the hand is really pointing at something.
“What? Where?”
“There!” the hand points. “That’s where.” BHC looks, incredulous and getting tired of this game. “Anywhere but here,” says the garbage can. BHC listens. “Don’t look at me,” says the garbage. BHC is confused, and looks kind of askance, showing the garbage he is listening to him and not looking, darting his eyes to and fro.
“I…” says Blackhearted Clown.
“Talk about something else… the weather… sports… how the food tastes…” BHC dips his finger into the garbage can to taste a piece of food. “Not my food!- other food- look away! Here comes a cop! Look away… do it now!” BHC jerks his head away from the trash, looks up and down, all around very unsuspiciously.
The cop walks past noticing him, sensing “an anomaly in the matrix,” so to speak, but continues on his way finding nothing to pin BHC with. BHC relaxes and turns back to the garbage, who says, “What do you look to me for?!”
BHC: I’m… I’m just waiting for your cue… tell me what to do, how to be… I’m not sure what you want- or what I should…”
“I don’t want anything!!” snaps the garbage back at him. “Look away!”
“Ok…” BHC looks away. “At what?”
“I don’t care- but don’t look at me.”
“Ok,” he looks away, playing along with the garbage can’s directions. A few seconds go by. “At what? Look at what?” he’s feeling frustrated.
“I don’t care- just don’t look at me,” says the garbage.
“Ok…” he looks away, sighing. BHC starts to leave, defeated.
“Don’t go away and leave me all alone!” cries the garbage can, begging for pity.
“Ok…” looking back at the garbage can.
“Don’t look at me!”
“Ok… why?!” shouts BHC, looking askance.
“Stop saying that! And you don’t have to shout, it’s bad enough that you are here!”
“What?!”
“Shut up!!!” shouts the garbage can.
BHC looks mournful, slumping over, starts to leave and offers one last glance at the garbage who replies: “I never wanted you here in the first place but you needed me so I let you sift through me to find what you want…. If you go away, you’ll die.”
BHC is in shock, not leaving, but not looking directly at the garbage can, stock still.

“But here… I will give you things. Stay here with me and survive.”

BHC looks heartbroken, then resolute, then turns and bows to embrace the stiff, unfeeling hand in the garbage who only tolerates, for this one moment, his affection, and never, again.

4th Piece

The Accused and Black-Hearted Clown

Black-Hearted Clown
by Jason I. Stutz
A homeless clown sifting through garbage like a connoisseur.  He rips up a half-eaten banana victoriously and accidentally hits a woman passing with it on her head.  (AW1) She screams.  She hurls accusations at him, inclusive of which were “robber!” “assailant!” and “cheat!”
He is stricken by her accusations, even as (AW1) she walks briskly and triumphantly off, swearing “I’m going to call the police!” who listen very interestedly, nodding heads, saying (C1 and C2) “Hmmm,” and “Mmmm” multiple times each.
The homeless clown sits on a bench in profound self-reflection, dropping the banana to the ground at his feet, his head bends onto his hands.
“What if I am?” he cries.  “What… what if I am a robber?  Why did I hit her if not on purpose?  What if I… I stole that banana from the trash someone else could have eaten from?!”  He sits and mourns.  But, soon, he feels his belly aching and he has to decide.  He chooses to eat, despite it all! “Ohh,” he says, rubbing his belly.
“It doesn’t matter if I am all that she swore!  I am hungry!” and he eats the banana, feeling shame, but also fear.  “If I am a robber, an assailant, and a cheat, as I obviously am after I have done the deed of eating that banana, what does that mean? If I am. An assailant, a robber, a cheat?”  Without thinking, he moves, again, toward the trash can before which he bends into child’s pose, then rises to search into it again, where he finds a discarded child’s toy, a gun with a fist that extends from it when you pull the trigger.  He holds it.
(Man1 and Wife) He turns at random, pointing the toy gun, squeezing the trigger, inadvertently slapping a passer by, a man and woman.  (Man 1 and Wife) They shriek and pull back, pointing their index fingers at him with furious intent.
They walk ahead quickly and call the cops. (Man 1 and Wife) (shouts and accusations into the phone, gesticulating and saying accusatory words)
The cops respond: (C2) We are already on our way to assess the situation with this assailant.” (nodding his head at his partner (C1)
The two cops (C1 and C2) come to take the Black-hearted Clown by each arm and march him to the police station where they bring him into questioning and close the door. One cop (C1) has his foot on a chair standing imposingly above him, one cop (C2) sits leaning back with his hands on his belly, looking very knowing and serene.
(C1) “Ok, you, mister, what did you do, huh?” says the standing cop.
“I… I am not sure,” says the Blackhearted Clown.  “I… I guess I’ll tell my story from beginning to end:
I was hungry, and… I was looking through the garbage can… and I saw a banana… half-a-banana…”
(C1) “In the trash?!” shouts the standing cop.
“I… yes,” says Blackhearted clown.
(C2) “Go on,” says the seated cop after exchanging looks with his partner.
“Well- first, I hit a woman with it.”
(C1) “The banana?”
“I… yes.”
(C2) “Why would you do that?”
“I… didn’t know I meant to until after I had already done it and she accused me of all kinds of things that I must have done, for otherwise why would she have said it? I went and I sat down on the bench, and felt very sore from what I must have done…and I felt… horrible.  How could I have done such things?  And I said to myself, ‘If this is the kind of person I am, well… what would I do? I deserve to be punished, for sure,” he nods his head and he meekly extends his wrists to be locked away if they so choose.
(C2) “Ok,” said the seated officer, dismissing his last statements. “So you ate the banana- is that right?”
“I sure did… I ate it!  I was sore hungry but ate it anyway despite that it was probably someone else’s by right. And I thought- If I am such things as that woman said I am, and I can’t control myself but to eat when I’m hungry… well, what does that say about me? So I went straight to the garbage can to find out.. achem… the garbage can… has… uh… gifts for me sometimes… you might not understand… achem… but I went to the garbage can to see what it would give me, and I found…. this!! (pulls out toy gun and swings it out to full extension at random).  The cops shirk back comically afraid and then laugh in relief together in unison, (C1 and C2) “Oh, is that all?!  ahhh…” they say.
(C1) “It certainly seems that you are innocent,” says the standing cop.
After two solid moments where they all collect themselves, the seated cop thoughtfully reveals, (C2) “But there’s just one problem,” he says.  “Why did you go looking to find in yourself that which you were accused of, when you had no intention of doing it begin with?”
“I… I don’t know!  I-I don’t know why?  I think… because… there must be something wrong with me… and I had to find out what it was!” cries Blackhearted Clown.
(C1) “That’s it!” says the standing cop, looking repulsed.  “You’re a very sick man.” Reaches to put one handcuff on BHC.  The two cops ((C1 and C2) agree and nod their heads at each other.  (C2) “Framing yourself for crimes you wouldn’t have committed to begin with?  (Stands him and turns him so he can put the other one on him with his hands behind his back.  “Something is wrong with you, that’s for sure!”
(C1) “We have to clean our streets of people like you!”
And they rose (C1 and C2) and took him arm and arm *to lock him up for two days until he realizes his innocence.  But his detainment did not reform Black-hearted Clown as the two cops would have wished…
(TA) Tattoo artist in prison: Black-hearted Clown receives a black heart tattoo around his left eye while the two well-meaning cops mourn his dark transformation.
(C1) “Some day, Captain,” says the standing cop, crying, facing his Cop 2 (C2) who feels the same hope. (C1) “Some day, imprisonment and isolation of citizens away from those who could possibly love them, will work- it will work, I swear it, Captain.(pounding his fist into his palm) It will reform them- it will, I swear it!”
Narrator: Sadly, imprisonment did not generally result in reform of criminals, no matter how they wished it were true.  His time was served and they had no choice but to release him, despite that he became even more convinced of who he was that he wasn’t really, and went out to infect the world with his skewed self-image. Have mercy on us!

*(forward into the cell where awaits him his cell mate) 

5th Piece

The Clown of Life and Death Presents Herself to the Audience

6th Piece

Part A: The Clown of Life and Death Meets Her Foil

Heather: Give extended introduction to your Clown of Life and Death. Then, I traipse in, joyous with all darkness.

I have already failed to be loved. Even the moment I tried to be loved has been removed from the mind of God. A perfect failure, I. Love me, and compensate for my deficiency.

“I, the Clown of Life and Death, love everyone.”

Oh. Me? (laughs) I am a wretch, poison to the earth; my feet are a burden to the soil.

“Spend time with nature, let her run tendrils up through the veins of your legs. She cools you and soothes all ills.”

Oh. No. I am a worthless clump of clay. Even the earth is ashamed of me.

“Let her embrace you, child of Love. The air is tickled in your lungs; the song of the earth is heightened by your voice.”

No. No. No, let the darkness overcome me and obliterate the idea for my existence. Hide me from the Light. Bury me that my voice can not sound in earthly ears, again.

(grabs script, confused, puts glasses on)(says to herself curiously) “Is he supposed to be going on like this?”

Dark: I am an unutterable sin…

Light: (reacts to this statement, unlike her ordinary character) Hush! Oh, dear…(becoming highly irritated) What– what is the matter with you??

Dark: (incredulous- as if it weren’t obvious)

Light: (offstage to audience who offer no practical guidance) (tries to love, again) Well… you know you have some good qualities… you know… (achem) (starting to wonder, herself, if there is anything redeemable in him) Hmm…

Dark: Will you cease deluding yourself? The warts of my soul are grotesque. They consume my flesh as I sleep rotting in darkness!

Light: (erupts, throws script at his body and advances upon him with fists flying) (he tumbles backward from her force as she steps mightily on his chest and hurls a broomstick into his heart) It is love to shut your mouth! Truth when you do not speak!

Dark: (worms out from under her foot, worms another black mood from his tongue) Kill me and my doubts are proven! Thrust me further into darkness and the world is dragged with me, where it belongs! Love to me is blackest fate. Beauty is wretched joyless poverty! (mumbles…) scarcity and crime and hunger and… and… rape… rape?  (raises hands vexed and resolute)… (turns to look at CLD)  rape…

Light: (cries, heartbroken, kicks him with her might as he careens across the floor laughing) (she moves to sit on a square stone block near a pathway in a park and laments deeply) (He skips gaily offstage as she laments to the audience alone) (Shortly, he returns, if only to squelch her remaining joy, looking rather arrogantly and weirdly triumphant) At least he wants to world with him… that’s love… isn’t it? (He smiles and does not offer her an answer)

I have lost. (Perhaps add this phrase if it feels correct)—> My heart… (weeps, weeps, weeps…)

Dark: (stares laughing, laughing, laughing, running in circles around her small, lamenting frame)

Part B: Later, during a later Act, the Clown of Life and Death is called upon, expectant that she would save them with high hopes- she enters on her high forklift, but with her countenance flat, defeated, her confidence (for now) destroyed. “I have nothing for you, do you not see this!” she cries, wretching tears.

CLD: Why can I not love, today?

Black-hearted Clown: Something is wrong with you. It is as though you glanced away, for one moment, and were forever changed- a forgotten clown, whose light has vanished. Poof! (almost crying, himself sympathetic to her demise)

CLD: I? No… no.. it cannot be! How? Th- the Sun!… it must rise tomorrow! And… and, the sky must stay its shade of blue. And… (she bends as though surveying a wide field, hemmoraging loss of heart)… the flowers… they must be fed by my nourishing breast or they will fall as to a thief into his sack. How, if I cannot love this one… (points weakly over to Blackhearted Clown) (re-turns to herself)… will I love any?!

Blackhearted Clown: You are a failure- nothing good can come of you. (as though it were the irredeemable, tacit truth)

CLD: Aghast, my jaw falls to my feet to step on any words- I have failed to love…

BHC: Run!! (he alerts the audience) Your lives are not your own! Run… (when audience does not run, he drops his arms and shakes his head : Fools… (shakes head) trust no one…

CLD: (to audience) I was afraid of the worst and it has come. As soon as I draw back my face from the sky…

BHC: seconds from now (looks at his watch)… 3,2,1..

CLD: through the hole of my insufficiency comes the maelstrom of what won my heart in darkness, evil tornadoes ripping at my soul!! Who, then, can I love, if not (points again meekly) this one…

Time is black, like an eraser, covering only shame- but shame, now, is all.  (She tells the audience) Nothing- no one escapes, If I cannot love this one (she looks over at him).
And, the people… (she cries) when they all find out by whom was the great demise- they will say, “If only she could have loved. For… I have tried to love, (turns to face to Blackhearted Clown, repulsed) but could not.
Surely, the winter will increase upon the Earth only to subside when- (shakes head) by accident– some ages hence- (puts out her hand offering this thin promise) a ray of light will re-appear in the dawning sky.
But, today, a thousand sided dice has been rolled… and, on a bet… I lose everything. All… is lost.

Blackhearted Clown: Would that you died, already. Your crying voice, using the air… Your ashes, at least, will cover our shame until the frozen wind moves you off and scatters you. (entheusiastically, as though an idea came to his mind) But for you to serve us for that half-second would bring momentary relief!

CLD: Harsh!! (stricken in her heart) The wind blows! No longer does the wind speak, it only tears at what used to love- me. The wind, it does not speak- it has a razor for a tongue! Harsh!!! Harsh! Harsh!!!!!

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7th Piece

Barbie

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8th Piece

The Clown of Life and Death Scolds Black-Hearted Clown

I don’t have to love you. Love lives ever, even as it dies, and lives forever more by that death. The breath you use to breathe extends into you by that love, and those words you use to lie are broken pieces of that love. For you to blame your own soul is a lie…. for you to lie at all is a lie. You are the full complexity of the Universe and an infinity beyond. In you is the original Light, a seed hoping to flourish while all around it breeds contempt for it. In you, is the original Light born into a man and emerged as a twisted mouth speaking through punched holes in his heart. Why? What? Who are you trying to heal in maneuvering about the world as you have just demonstrated? Ahh… I understand you, now. I mourn your forgetfulness of self. I understand, I understand. Black-Hearted Clown- those who misused you never knew you. They misplaced you in themselves when they saw you in their own eyes. They would that they gave you the pain they stored in their own soul, and that that would relieve them of it, somehow. And you were so generous to them, dear clown, that you considered- if you did so, if you took their pain from inside of them and put it into yourself, and became the source of their pain, apart from them, then you could be worthy of love. But you forgot the love from whence you came. And here I am, loving you, knowing you completely, giving you the very gift that you sought to have. But, if you open your palms, and receive it, you will let fall the pain from your body and you won’t know who you are… for a minute… remember?  (space) (silence a few seconds) Remember who  you are?(silence, waiting, watching as BHC looks agitated on his black box at center stage, turning in sharp gestures as though each turn is a punctuation of an agitated thought) (He is silent of speech and does not acknowledge a thing) (CLD stands still, holding impeccible space, waiting)

BHC speaks, at last: I chose not to believe any good about me, in favor of the dark and sooty grime that covers my soul, tar thrown upon my rainbows from without. That I might be the reason for their pain- surely, there are few places more exhalted by the human heart than the one I occupied.   And I invested myself like a comet through the night to be that which I was sure that I am.  How can I now, believe that which I had already decided to spurn? My loveliness? Dare a single thought of my goodness be expressed.

I have been on a low and spiraling road to hell for so long I have grown conformed to its borders, like a plant growing in a specific pot. To turn back, now… unwind the ball of roots and loose myself of all I have known myself to be… goodbye? I tremble at the uncertainty offered by this field of light you are showing me.

(silence) (BHC considers)

Let us say, that, by experiment, I put on the brakes and turn this wheel around. (looks behind him, around him as a vast distance reveals itself). I see I am walking now, as a thousand mile desert opens all around me, wide and endless as the sky. My will cannot fill it, as I could the spiral road down. I don’t feel my end, such comfort was the eminence of death, waiting, an eye, a dark beacon, giving me blackest hope. But what… what, I step, one step upon this dusty earth, away from all I knew? Gasp! This lack of death confuses me! (turns, looks again) And yet I’ll die of thirst before I meet the love that is promised to me. (turns and sucks upon the rear wall as though upon a teet of death)

CDL: Dear Clown, as I am before you, can you see your image in my heart?

BHC: (turns, looks, toughens, shudders) Aye… yes, I see. (turns away in shame) You show me well… (cries)

CDL: It is not the image that I love, but the soul from which all your life derives from.

BHC: (in tears) All that I am was inverted by lies!!! I took the outside for the in and the inside for the out. I lied to myself to confirm for others their lies were good and I was what they wished me to be; and thus I tripped us both over the cliff of sanity falling in to a bottomless hell!

(considers) (peers back and forth from death to her heart which holds his reflection)

At the end of this 1,000 mile walk… ah… I see- I see the cliff.  That is the cliff I fell from- splattered with gore and slime, slipperiest of slopes still, a sheer face of rock I will need to climb- for the path of descent is the path of return, yes?

(BHC continues to consider)

Do the waters of love and truth await me there? Tell me, please, oh Clown of Life and Death? Or have they all dried without me there to drink of them?

CLD: The waters flow out the mouth of the one who loves you.

(lifts her eyes upward, then to returns them to him)

Drink those waters deep into the driest ventricles of your heart’s caverns.

BHC: (resisting) No… no. It is too much for me to drink! No! I feel I will die before a drop survives in me.

CLD: Drink.

BHC: (looks up as the waterfalls of light and love flow into him for the first time and he sobs) I’m sorry….

CLD: (thinks he is refusing all love and turns away)

BHC: (turns to her as she walks away) (says, again, from a deeper place) I’m so sorry. (he sobs)

End scene. The curtain closes, but before it does, you hear Black-Hearted Clown sob the words ‘Thank you’ as he drinks the waters of light flowing into him, “Thank you.  Thank you,” and the joyous feet of Clown of Life and Death leaping once, twice, three times to reach him in all joy as stage extras emerge with black wings and white wings that they gently cover him with as the curtain completes its closure.