The Unnatural and Accidental Women. Marie Clements

unfold. Colours of personality and spirit, life and isolation, paint their reality and activate their own particular landscape within their own particular hotel room and world. Their deaths are a drowning-down of hopes, despairs, wishes. The killer is a manipulative embodiment of their human need. Levels, rooms, views, perspectives, shadow, light, voices, memories, desires. REBECCA’s journey through Act 1 should be a growing up through memory. Being in a memory, but present in time. Walking. Seeing. Time going by. Life—colour of memory and the searching. AUNT SHADIE and ROSE are on the top level from the beginning. In their own spaces and places. They are in their own world. Happy hunting ground and/or heaven.

       Elements: Trees falling, falling of women, earth, water flowing/transforming.

      ACT 2

       Scenes in REBECCA’s apartment are present and in Kitsilano, but reflect the symptoms of urban isolation even without being on Hastings Street.

       Flow: Scenes of hearing, shadow-seeing, consciousness, unconsciousness of what is around us/within us.

      DEATH BY ALCOHOL The Vancouver Sun, October 22, 1988

      “‘She was found lying nude on her bed and had recent bruises on her scalp, noses, lips, and chin … There was no evidence of violence, or suspicion of foul play,’ noted Coroner Glen McDonald.”

      “——, a native Indian, had been drinking continuously for four days before she died … Coroner Larry Campbell concluded her death was ‘unnatural and accidental.’”

      “—— drank enough to kill her twice. That’s the conclusion of a coroner’s inquiry into the native Indian woman’s death. She was found dead, lying face down on a foam mattress with a blanket covering her, in Jordan’s barbershop … At the time of her death, Coroner Campbell said there was no indication of foul play.”

      “To get the blood-alcohol reading that—— had at the time of her death, experts say she would have had to drink about 40 ounces of hard liquor all at once. The mother of four died at Jordan’s barbershop … Coroner Mary Lou Glazier concluded—— ’s death was ‘unnatural and accidental.’”

      “‘She had the highest blood-alcohol level reading of all the women.’ … He believes Jordan was finally stopped because he killed his daughter, who was not an alcoholic and who has family that insisted police look into her death. ‘He picked the wrong person. She was someone that someone cares about’ … No coroner’s report has been issued.”

      ACT 1

       SFX: A collage of trees whispering in the wind.

       SLIDE: THE UNNATURAL AND ACCIDENTAL WOMEN

      SFX: The sound of a tree opening up to a split. A loud crack—a haunting gasp for air that is suspended. The sustained sound of suspension as the tree teeters.

       SLIDE: FALLING BACK—Beacon Hotel

       Lights dim up on a small room covered with the shadows of tree leaves and limbs. Lights up on a LOGGER looking up at a tree, handsaw in hand. He shouts across time.

      LOGGER:

      TIM-BER…

      AUNT SHADIE:

      Re-becca …

       A big woman suddenly emerges from a bed of dark leaves. Gasping, she bolts upright, unfallen. Nude, she rises, leaving the image of herself in the bed. She follows the sounds and images of the trees.

       SLIDE: Rita Louise James, 52, died November 10, 1978, with a 0.12 blood-alcohol reading. No coroner’s report issued.

       SFX: Real sound of REBECCA slamming a glass of beer on her table.

       SFX: The sound of trees moving in the wind increases.

       SLIDE: TIMBER

       Lights fade up on REBECCA as she sits, and thinks, and drinks at a round table with a red terry-cloth cover. She takes her pen and writes in her journal.

       The LOGGER continues sawing …

       SFX: Sound of a long saw sawing under softly in lengths.

       AUNT SHADIE walks through the forest, covered by the leaves/branches in them.

      REBECCA:

      Everything here has been falling—a hundred years of trees have fallen from the sky’s grace. They laid on their backs trying to catch their breath as the loggers connected them to anything that could move, and moved them, creating a long muddy path where the ends of trees scraped the ground, whispering their last connection to the earth. This whispering left a skid. A skid mark. A row. Skid Row.

       The LOGGER lays down his saw and picks up a chainsaw…

       SFX: Sound of a chainsaw under.

      Throughout—a blizzard of sawdust chips swarms the backdrop, covering AUNT SHADIE and tree parts. One by one, the trees have been carved into a row of hotels.

      REBECCA:

      Hotels sprung up instead of trees—to make room for the loggers. First, young men sweating and working under the sky’s grace. They worked. They sweated. They fed their family for the Grace of God. And then the men began to fall. First, just pieces.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      Fingers …

      REBECCA:

      … chopped down to the palm.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      Legs …

      REBECCA:

      … chopped up to the thighs.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      Years …

      REBECCA:

      … went by. You never knew what might be fallen. A tree. A man. Or, a tree on its way down deciding to lay on its faller like a thick and humorous lover, saying …

      AUNT SHADIE:

      “Honey, I love you—we are both in this together. This is love till death do us part—just try and crawl out from under me.”

      REBECCA:

      Some of the men survived their amorous lover. Rows of men sweet-talked that last fallen tree into moving an inch to get that human limb out. Maybe just a leg—or part of it. Whispering …

      AUNT SHADIE:

      “God, if you just do this for me. Jesus, just get this log off me … and …”

      REBECCA:

      Well, a whole crew of men sitting in their rooms drinking and thinking of the weight of that last tall love.

       The LOGGER finishes and looks around and looks right at REBECCA. REBECCA mouths “I love you” to him silently.

       The LOGGER cups his ear and shouts towards her.

      LOGGER:

      Eh? (he waves his hand a “never mind” and continues)

      REBECCA:

      Saying “Eh”?

       The LOGGER continues the buzz with the chainsaw. Wood chips blizzard on the backdrop. The chainsaw buzzes under transforming to a bar buzz.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      (laughs) Saying