For several months I have been working on a play dealing with environmental issues. The working title of this full length two-act play is The Hummingbird. The Hummingbird may be thought of as a kind of sequel to the first book I came out with in 2008 entitled Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat. I’m calling the new work a sequel, but in some important ways it is not a sequel at all.
First of all, The Hummingbird is a full length two-act play whereas Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat is an epic poem arranged in 12 books or chapters. It was not conceived as a work meant to be performed, but of course as an epic poem it could be performed just as the original epic poems attributed to Homer (The Iliad and The Odyssey) were performed—that is, recited or sung in public.
The Hummingbird is designed to be presented not by a single narrator, but by six characters, of which one, not surprisingly, is called Homer and serves as the narrator. The six characters of The Hummingbird are Homer, who as indicated serves as narrator, Murdoch, a poet and inventor, Emma Jean, Murdoch’s lover, Frank, a close friend of Murdoch and really his chief antagonist, Ashante, a beautiful West African princess, and Luke Invictus, a political leader in West Africa and a dedicated opportunist and exploiter.
The play opens with Murdoch on the New Paradise, his windmill boat, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The boat is being wrecked by the action of high winds and rough seas. With him are Emma Jean, his lover and inspiration, and Frank, his best friend and harshest critic. Murdoch is facing the hard reality that his invention, the windmill boat, has failed, and he tells us that he is committing himself to coming up with a new invention—that is, just as soon as he manages to get himself ashore.
What follows is the beginning of The Hummingbird, a play in two acts.
THE HUMMINGBIRD
A Play in Two Acts
HOMER
Enters stage rear. He is dressed like ancient story teller bard, blind, has drum and guitar. Pounds on drum to establish a rhythm and bring attention to the stage and himself.
I blind Homer, dead for so long,
in my grave these eons compiled on to eons,
have heard the cry of desperation and have awakened
come back from the dead, risen from the grave
suddenly alive like the Phoenix from the ashes
suddenly alive like some author genius’s monster
zapped with a billion volts of harnessed lightning,
suddenly alive like some god or venerated person
known through the exploitation, the fruits of electricity
who the people can never accept has ever died,
have brought my instruments—lyre and my drum—
and am now ready to tell my story.
CHORUS
As chorus (made up of actors not otherwise assigned in this first scene) takes a position stage front left, Murdoch appears on stage, stage rear center. Murdoch stands at the helm of a ship, presumably the New Paradise windmill boat, which itself is affixed to a titter-totter platform. Wind machine (fan) keeps the air stirred up. Over the sound system is heard the sound of a fierce storm at sea.
Let us sing then again of poet inventor Murdoch McLoon,
he of maniacal energy, he of boat powered by windmill,
he driven by the rage of wind and churned up ocean
from the protection of his schooner filled cove
out into the open, out into the vast wine dark sea…
MURDOCH
Wears kilt, some kind of loose shirt, looks wet and disheveled.
To help those needing help. To feed the starving millions.
Heal the sick. Bring hope to the hopeless. To find an answer
for an overheating earth in which the polar ice caps are melting.
That was my purpose. And now look at me. All day, all night,
fighting the sea. Not knowing if I’ll ever make landfall.
Not knowing if the next huge swell will overwhelm me,
send me and the New Paradise to the briny depths for good.
FRANK
Enters stage left, moves as close as possible to Murdoch at helm of vessel on titter-totter platform.
Serves you right, you who thought you had all the answers,
you with this strange contraption called a windmill boat
which you had the gall to give such a highfalutin name,
New Paradise! New Paradise? New Floating Wreck,
New Flotsam, New Jetsam—now they’re the names for you.
MURDOCH
Shut up, Frank! Remember, down on myself,
filled with dread when first I got washed out to sea
from my home in the beautiful harbor of Golden Cove,
not knowing where I was being blown to,
not knowing if I had a chance for survival
I created you, created you from need, from thought.
You were the figment of all my failures.
You were the embodiment of all the ways
that I was convinced that I had fallen short.
Now I want you to keep your big mouth shut
while I try to get us ashore.
FRANK
Get us ashore? Where? We’re five thousand miles from land.
How do you propose to get us ashore from
the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
MURDOCH
I want to survive. Don’t you? If I go down,
you go down. We’re both lost.
Somehow we’ve got to get ourselves ashore.
FRANK
Murdoch, how did I get stuck with you—a poet, a dreamer
someone with an oversized imagination, Mister Fantasy Man,
but with not a practical bone in your whole body?
MURDOCH
It’s at a time like this that I need my Emma Jean.
Emma Jean enters stage right, moves just stage right of Murdoch on the titter-totter with ship’s helm.
Emma Jean, my Emma Jean, my beautiful Emma Jean
I created you when sunk to my lowest point.
I created you when what I needed was hope.
I tried to give the world a panacea for the crisis to come.
And then the storm came up. My parrot was torn from a shoulder,
drowned in a seething turbulence, My light was gone.
The wind blew fierce. The water turned hateful and angry.
I’d lost my bearings, could see nothing at all.
FRANK
Hope? Here we go again. Again the silly idealist
is using that four-letter word H-O-P-E hope.
The next thing we know he’s going to be
talking about truth and beauty.
If I’ve told you once—Mister Poet, Mister Inventor—
I’ve told you thousands and thousands of times.
These are all just made-up words to hide
the brutality of what is. This slap-in-the-face,
this howling wind, this mean whipped up surface
that knows nothing of flatness, of quiet, of calmness,
of peace, this rancorous, cantankerous this
always stirred up ocean, now that is what is.
That is honesty. Murdoch, give me honesty.
EMMA JEAN
O give me the world as we want it to be.
Give me the reason to move onward.
CHORUS
Hope!
EMMA JEAN
That is all we mean by hope, the sense of being able
to move toward the something else, the something better,
toward the something else that is the something better…
CHORUS
Hope!
EMMA JEAN
the sense of being able to move beyond ourselves,
the sense of being able to move forward.
Thank you for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website. You can call the publisher directly at 888-795-4274 ext. 7876 or use the publisher’s website Xlibris.com.
Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft
