Let it begin.
Act I stages the emergence of the heretic known as Joan of Dirt in the early years when she corrupted the rebellion against Jean de Men’s armies and tricked the resistance forces into following her. It’s fairly consistent with CIEL propaganda doctrine. A series of soliloquies with minimalist pantomimed war in the background. As Act I finds its conclusion, her prize pupil—the grafts not quite losing the last pink tinges of pain—emerges center stage, naked and lined with the writing: “In the beginning, then, was her body bound to dirt and organic life, to trees and sea and minerals.” And then a great hum emanates from the different actors, various pitches and notes fill the room, a tune finally remembered, an epic melody, the trace of which every last human yet carries in the gray folds of memory, the song that rang them all like human tuning forks when they still had a choice: earth and Joan, or saving a self.
The audience leans forward in their chairs, their very DNA subconsciously recalling things they already decided to condemn.
As Act II is performed, the highlights from the trial of Joan of Dirt, Christine’s heart further fractures. The story of Joan and the body of her beloved Trinculo wind their way around her internal organs. Amidst the reenactment of the trial dialogue, her players erect a kind of scaffolding, so that the tension of the oncoming staged execution can be rendered, even anticipated. Nothing like a good execution story to make the audience salivate. It is the sum total of all entertainment—to drive the viewer to the cusp of their own existence, to heighten it, to leave their mouths open in a gasp shape. And yes, yes, she can tell from their body language, the shapes their mouths are making, they are all want.
She wishes them all dead.
She is already anxious for Act III, for Act III embeds a simple gesture that interrupts the expected climax—the moment before Joan of Dirt’s death by fire. In this borrowed time leading up to the execution of her beloved Trinculo, Christine will detour the story.
Christine steals a glance at Trinculo, who seems to smile in a kind of lipless gory grin, or that’s what she hopes anyway, and then she looks at Jean de Men, whose face puckers and twitches. As the actress-warrior Nyx continues her soliloquy Christine thinks she sees the woman on the metal slab stir. Christine can see plainly now that she is working her hand toward a place below her thigh, stretching it beyond reason, fingers straining. Is it possible she has a weapon?
Christine circles the stage as benevolently and submissively as possible, bowing now and again silently to audience members and hunk-of-junk minions and even to Jean de Men as she sweeps past him and sees that—yes!—the woman on the floating metal slab has managed to retrieve a knife—a knife the size of a finger. Christine’s chest flutters alive.
In the heat and almost of things, Christine’s sphincter clenches. Until now, all was seduction. But from this point forward, into Act III, the plot involves deceit. Though the word deceit feels inadequate: the real word is coup. Christine produces an antique opera spyglass—one she’d hidden amongst her salvaged Earth treasures; she hears a murmur of admiration from the audience. She leans into the performance, the insatiable action on its way.
By the end of Act II, the specially constructed faux-scaffolding is clicking with sparks; Christine even smells the burn of electricity. The audience takes this burning smell as a special theatrical effect, not as what it is: the collected energy of Olms building a structure. The ensuing dialogue nearly achieves the sacred sphere of prayer or song. Dead silence rises within the audience’s listening. Nothing is more enticing to watch than death.
What comes next is the pièce de résistance: Christine makes her way again to the cusp of Jean de Men’s grotesque train of flesh, splayed out on the floor. Trinculo, though bound like meat, is within arm’s reach. The last line spoken transitions from a soliloquy devised to bridge the play both closer to the present—or at least to their memory of the execution of Joan—and the player giving the soliloquy closer to the audience, right to the lap of Jean de Men. Near enough to Jean de Men that the player’s knees are nearly touching when they speak the following lines:
“Remember the Maid above all, alongside all we have recollected here, for her might outmights even the great Iliad, as her fight is meant not to bestow power, but to murder it in its false consciousness and return it to dirt, to compost, to worm’s meat—worm’s . . . meat . . .”
Christine presses her attention in.
The audience’s attention changes shape . . . something in the plot twists.
The words Maid and worm’s meat suspend in the air.
When Jean de Men speaks he barely moves, his voice, barely audible and elongated and reptilian: “Yooouuuuuuuu . . .”
He turns on Christine. The play’s ending arrested. He aims his words with measured venom: “You will not live to see an ovation. And no one and nothing you care about will breathe again.” He strikes her head so hard several of her teeth finally do shoot loose. Her nose and mouth bleed.