about the (re)making project

Please feel free to take the plays from this project and use them freely as a resource for your own work: that is to say, don't just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results.
But, if you would like to perform the plays essentially or substantially as I have composed them, they are protected by copyright in the versions you read here, and you need to clear performance rights. For professional performance rights, contact Thomas Pearson of International Creative Management at tpearson@icmtalent.com or 212-556-5600. For amateur performance rights, contact Libby Edwards at charlesmeeplays@yahoo.com.
- Charles Mee

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Orestes 2.0

by C H A R L E S L . M E E


Based on the play by Euripides





(Thrilling sounds of bombs, rockets, whistle flares, and other
explosions and sonic marvels make the theatre rock and shudder.

A green fog covers the stage, gradually clearing, and revealing a
palatial white Newport-style or Palm Beach-style beach house whose
facade we see, across a broad expanse of grass, from the oceanside.

The lawn is ruined, with dug up sections of dirt and water.

And we hear a radio--as though it were the only thing still working in
a backyard in which all life has been recently annihilated--going on
with the weather report, local traffic, news, and music.

But the setting is both inside and out.

Four very bright white hospital beds are set out on the lawn, in two of
which are damaged war victims--William and John--who wear camouflage
hospital gowns. They have occasional nightmares. Nod, similarly
dressed, sits nearby in a wooden chair, his head hanging down.

Orestes, in one of the other beds, hands covered in dried blood, wears
a red satin hospital gown.

There are three nurses in attendance. They wear basic black.

A person is tied up in a wheelchair with tape over his mouth. From time
to time he is able to work free of the tape to speak.

A yellow police line tape surrounds the stage. The stage is lit with
yellow tungsten outdoor parking lot lights. Overhead operating room
lights hang over the beds.

Chair and table center stage. A radio is on the table. Microphones are
scattered about.

It is six days after the murder of Clytemnestra.

Electra sits at the table, smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee. Her
hands are covered in dried blood. She wears an Armani-designed pink
ensemble, which she hasn't changed for a week.

A forensics expert in gray suit stands downstage, pointing to a cut-up
female corpse on a silver autopsy slab.)



FORENSICS EXPERT
White female, age 38, presented to pathology with a slashed throat.

The subject was in good general health at the time of death.
Approximately 5'7", 110 pounds. Skin unremarkable. Breasts small, no
masses, everted nipples. Lungs clear to P & A. Abdomen sound--no
masses.

We made a circular incision with a sharp razor around the umbilicus,
deep enough to penetrate the skin, then from the middle of the pectoral
bone a straight, lengthwise incision to the umbilicus, and from the
lower region of the umbilicus as far as the region of the pubic bone
between the little mounds of the vulva. We found no abdominal
abnormalities or complications of the genitourinary system.

The fatal wound to the neck was initiated with considerable force in
the anterior and posterior triangles, in the levator scapulae and the
scalene muscles and through the posterior belly of the digastric and
the stylyhyoid muscles. The blade proceeded through the carotid artery
on the left side of the head and thence through the larynx and the
vocal cords and on into the cervical vertebrae where the blade lodged
and remained embedded.

Since the subject had presumably been in a warm bath, she hemorrhaged
into the warm water and bled out rapidly.

The cause of death was heart failure.

ELECTRA
(Completely shattered and spent, having been awake for six days and
nights drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes; long silence as she
stares off into space; then as though speaking for the hundredth time