At the Rise: A three-note chord struck on a lyre, cues an overhead light that flickers just long enough for the Audience to wonder whether it has seen a female figure. The chord cues the light again - and again - and again; each time growing a bit stronger until Centered in its glow, a woman has materialized before us.
She is HELEN - and she wears the glittering, golden Mask of The Most Beautiful Woman Who Ever Lived.
She stands immobile for a moment, trying to get her bearings, shakes her head to clear it, then queries a First Row Audience Member)
HELEN: (ancient Greek) Ego -- ou? -- (sees Audience Member doesn't understand, tries Latin) Quis? -- Quo? -- (French) Ou est-ce que je me trouve? -- (Italian) Dove sono? -- (German) Wo bin ich? -- (stamps foot) For the gods' sake, somebody say something! (sees Audience reaction) At last! You understand. (beat) Can anyone tell me how I came to be here? (when no one answers) I was sitting in my garden -- the same one I've sat in every evening for who knows how many centuries - - - "Islands of The Blessed," my foot! The gods tell you they're walled to keep people out. But don't you believe it, those walls may be transparent but they are there to keep people in.
So! I was sitting there as I do every evening - - - fretting about the awful sameness of my lot, when I fell into a kind of meditation - a wondering if I - or anyone - would ever find a way through those same walls -- and I - - I - -(astonished) - here I am. (beat) - And if I am here, wherever this is, Father Zeus or his minions - (looks to see if they've caught up with her) are sure to be not far behind. No one has ever escaped his reach for long. And I have never escaped his reach before. Been under his thumb forever.
(a flicker of lights - as though struck by lightning - followed by distant thunder. HELEN cocks her head toward the sound)
That means Father Zeus has discovered I'm missing - (a trace of anxiety) - and is angry. (reasoning it out) It will take him a little time to find out where I've gotten to - he's not the brightest of the gods, merely the strongest. (beat) And the most unforgiving. Look what he did to poor Prometheus for disobeying him. Gave him the task of making Men out of mud, and when Prometheus gave the mudlings Olympian fire to warm them and provide decent meals, Father Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle still tears out his eternally-restored liver. No. You don't want to cross Father Zeus. (beat) And it won't make any difference to him that I don't know how I got here, and don't know how to get back. (beat) I've never been on my own, you know. Kept on a short leash. Like a dog. Always watched over. And never allowed to speak my mind to anyone like this, before - (growing realization) - Never - allowed - to speak my mind - to anyone like this - before... Never the chance to - to contradict my masters! --- So, Father Zeus be damned. He'll have something nasty in store for me, anyway, let him get another eagle ready. (beat)
To begin, you should know who I am. I am Helen. (beat) And I was never called Helen of Troy. (eyes them) Helen the Bitch, often. Helen the Temptress, sometimes. And always, Helen the Adulteress. (beat) I am that Helen. Wife of Menelaos - (wry) - and Paris - (beat) - and Deiphobus, his older brother. Yes, that Helen. (derisive) Immortal Helen. (beat)
And I am Immortal. What else could I be with Zeus for a father? (paces slowly) But those with a malicious turn of mind say that nobody knows for certain who my mother was - - - Leda, or as some claim, Nemesis. Yet all insist that I was hatched from an egg! I, who have been fought over by the most powerful men of my age, hatched. From an egg! (beat) That is one of the three constants in the stories that the Poets sing about me. The second is that whichever woman was my mother, Zeus took the form of a swan to seduce her. (beat) Which, if one thinks about it, poses more questions than it answers. (beat)
Third constant, my alleged lust, I'll get around to after I deal with that Nemesis thing. I would never have believed that one - and neither should you. Changing from one kind of bird to another to elude the Master Seducer, and he changing just as fast as she to pursue? Phhhh! Only to be impregnated as a duck - and then, to fit all the prophecies that I had to grow up under Leda's care, she'd have had to find some way to place her egg between mother's legs to be hatched. (waves dismissive hand) Such nonsense is bruited about by mere gossip-mongers who,because of what happened years later, would mindlessly impose upon reality the idea of my being the child of The Goddess of Vengeance. That's trying to be too neat about life, putting too narrow a construction on what led to events of great moment. (beat)
And there are other considerations. Just think for a moment what it would have meant if Nemesis had really been my mother: Klytemnestra wouldn't have been my half sister. No, no, no. What people say - and what people believe - is important, but what they say and believe ultimately has to comply with certain known facts. In my case, as we shall see, the facts deal with tragedy, not melodrama. And no matter how snicker-inspiring that hatched-from-an-egg business is, the sacking and burning of Troy was not the result of the randy capering of a couple of heavenly birds.
So! -- egg or no egg, my mother was Leda. Her husband, King Tyndareus, was my earth father. And who is to blame for the sacking of the richest city on earth? Let's look at the facts. Not the legends - the facts.
That won't be easy. I've been blamed for The Fall of Troy for so long, and in so many ways that the accusations have taken on the solidity of marble. But there are chinks in those forgeries. Doubts, in spite of what the High Priests of this and that Cult will tell you. Else why would so many esteemed writers have argued the case for so long, and put forward so many different accounts of my alleged life.
Alleged! Yes, I say alleged! I insist upon it. For when was my life ever really told? One poet wrote three plays about it, each with a different story line. And always in the telling, what is put forward as my life, is invoked to explain something else! The telling is never really about my life! And why? Because each of them was really writing about what was important to him and using me to "prove" his point. Even the one that says Zeus, himself, caused the War to relieve the earth's overpopulation, says he did it by arranging for my birth.
But nobody ever took the trouble to know what my life really was. And all any of them ever saw was this damned Mask, not me! Never me. Only this mask, which I was forbidden to take off. Ever. From my birth I was proclaimed "The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth! Woman! Before I was even out of that bloody egg. Woman! And this mask certified that proclamation. And for that "womanly" beauty I was kidnapped and raped. By Theseus - a man hailed everywhere to this day as a Hero!
Oh, yes! The Great Hero! Who took me by force from my father's house and raped me! When I was 12! Not because of me - no - he had never even seen me before he took me - but because he wanted it known that he had possessed "The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth."
Imagine! A child rapist and he remains Theseus the Hero, while I am Helen, that Bitch. That Strumpet! (pauses to recover herself) He had a second reason as well. He hoped that if he lay with a daughter of Zeus before he died - he was 52 when he did it, remember - he might attain Immortality. (beat) But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Chroniclers and Poets- those great Guardians of Orthodoxy - have filled libraries with their stories about me. Stories formed from speculations and imaginings, twisted like threads of multi-colored yarns woven into tapestries with fantastical designs. Passed from generation to generation. Repeated so often they take on the authority of Truth. Yet wrong - excepting for certain undeniable facts. Facts so few they can be numbered on one hand: (she ticks off the points) Paris did abduct me. His father, Priam, did refuse to let me be returned to Menelaos. The Greeks did besiege Troy for 10 years. Many brave men on both sides were killed. And Troy was, ultimately, sacked and burned.
But what the Poets have written about those facts, and all the deaths that were the result of those facts, were mere justifications of what cannot be justified. The Poets had to find an explanation that fit their sense of what was proper. "Honor,"for instance, was very important to them. But what was this idea of honor? Phhh! It was concerned only with men's idea of what honor is. And that idea is always wrapped in absurdities. And bias. Some of them even assumed that I shared their idea of my own "immorality," and one writer with an overheated imagination even had me wishing that "on the day my mother brought forth my abhorred and sinful self, a whirlwind had caught me up and borne me to mountaintop for eagles to pluck at me, or that the waves of the roaring sea had swept me away before I could wreak mischief upon both the Acheans and the Trojans."
How absurd. I had no idea of "self," neither virtuous or sinful. To myself, I hardly existed at all, and I was more observer of my life as it unfolded than participant. Until I was no longer able to conceive, my thoughts were of two classes, how best to be obedient, to do what was expected of me, and whenever possible, to stay out of sight. (beat)
And did any of my critics consider my honor? Mine or Klytmnestra's? Women's honor! Phhh! what was that! Even I didn't think of it until I had sat in my garden retreat in the Island of the Blessˇd for a century or two. But in my time, when others thought of it at all, it was confined to upholding the honor of the men in whose houses Klytemnestra and I lived. We weren't women to them. We were objects of convenience. That could move, and talk - when spoken to. That could prepare meals, keep the house and linens clean. And occasional objects of necessity for carrying on the line or mere lust. We were considered old at 37 - worn out from child bearing. Remember that, I'll come to it again later.
So! We were trained by our mothers in all the arcane arts that supported an honorable house. And the art most impressed upon us by our mothers was obedience. Not because they regarded it with any more affection than we did, but because it was necessary for survival. And even obedience didn't save my niece, poor little Iphigenia, from murder by her father. (beat)
Don't take my word for it. If my charge is not true why are there so many elaborate re-constructions of events? Why so many different assessments of blame for the indefensible? For I was not the only one charged with fault in the 10-year Trojan tragedy, Klytemnestra came in for her share, too.
To be fair, those who found Klytie's murder of her husband more horrible than his murder of their daughter, were unable to think otherwise. Being men, themselves, they think "reason" is the way they and their colleagues think. (beat) When they see events begin to go against the side they are for, they think it "reasonable" to settle those events in their favor, first by threat, then by breaking things: men like to break things - heads, walls, whatever stands in the way of their goal or those whom the writer champions. For though men believe that they should start to settle any issues of great moment with polite shows of ceremony - that ceremony is always backed by the shadows of their armies and navies.
FOR PERFORMANCE RIGHTS:
DAN WRIGHT ( DANWRIGHTLIT@aol.com )
ANN WRIGHT REPRESENTATIVES
165 W. 46TH ST. SUITE 1165
NY, NY 10036
Ph: 212-784-6770
Or me, at 10120 240th Place SW, Edmonds, WA 98020
206-542-7300
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