Fallen Petals Read online

  FALLING PETALS

  BEN ELLIS

  Currency Press, Sydney

  Ben Ellis is a Gippsland-born playwright and columnist, whose previous plays include Eclipses, Select Committee for Imagining a Certain Maritime Incident, 360 Positions in a One Night Stand (co-writer), Loading Zone, Outpatients, Post Felicity (winner of the 2001 Malcolm Robertson Prize), Falling Petals (winner of the 2003 Australian National Playwrights’ Centre / New Dramatists Award, and shortlisted for a 2004 NSW Premier’s Literary Play Award), These People (shortlisted for the 2004 NSW Premier’s Literary Award: Community Relations Commission Award) and an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

  Falling Ashes

  John McCallum

  This is a play from the front line of a new generation war. As a baby-boomer parent I’m not too happy with everything it has to say but it is extraordinarily powerful and its parable is alarmingly believable.

  A generation that received a free liberal education decided to charge their children for training for jobs that kept disappearing. A generation brought up in a Keynesian world in which governments tried to regulate the conditions under which people could be exploited suddenly abandoned their children to wolves. A generation that celebrated the ideals of personal liberation, freedom and community created a world that they then allowed to be taken over by rapacious corporations. This is the world that Phil, Tania and Sally face so desperately in this play.

  One of the hardest things for me is to watch Phil and Tania, the protofascist children who are the core of the play’s story. These hard, cynical victims of the ’90s have learned their lessons well: look out for yourself, jump through the hoops, crawl through sewers if necessary to do what you’ve been told you have to do in order to get what you’ve been told you ought to want. Everything they have been taught is bullshit—from the ‘Mindpower’ motivational programs to the new economics. They happily watch other children die, they torture their friend Sally when she gets sick, they have sex only because it helps them drill into their tightly-focussed minds a few of the rudimentary catchcries of the new orthodoxy that has ruined their community.

  Ellis’s other plays explore this bitter new generational crisis. In Post Felicity a baby-boomer couple are completely unable to acknowledge, let alone understand or care about, the disappearance of their daughter. Not even her death is enough to bring her to their lapsed attention. With the help of a mysterious employer they casually and brutally invent a new story for her and then dismiss her from their lives.

  In These People, Ellis’s response to the refugee scaremongering of the early 2000s, a traditional Australian family tries to deal with their fear of the aliens who are detained behind razor wire at the nearby detention centre. The Daughter of the family, writing an essay for school, captures the insanity of the world she is being raised in by creating a parable in which cute waddling penguins flee an eco-ravaged Antarctica and arrive on Australian shores seeking asylum. In a chilling moment one of the hungry penguins, played by the Daughter, is asked by a brutal detention centre guard to take off her penguin suit if she wants to eat. She does, and reveals underneath a woman in Islamic purdah, who has to keep undressing.

  Ellis writes with a theatricality that is quite astonishing—a comic surrealism full of playful savagery and sudden shocks, all rooted in the real world that his characters and his audiences inhabit. It is, in Australian drama, a completely new way of writing about society and politics, based partly in powerful images: the penguins in These People and, in Falling Petals, the sakura tree under which the desperate and defiant children huddle. Each falling cherry-blossom represents another dead child. When the bodies are burned the falling blossoms are replaced by a rain of greasy ash that the surviving children cannot wipe off.

  The strange disease that strikes Hollow, the ravaged country town from which Phil and Tania are so desperate to escape and to which Sally is condemned by her mother’s poverty and intransigence, might be a metaphor for AIDS, or perhaps for the effects on ordinary people of economic rationalism, or perhaps for the New World Order. One of the smooth-talking evasive adults, Marg, calls it ‘a truly postmodern disease’. The vital organs that it attacks survive individually but they suddenly stop co-operating with each other. The victims die from a failure, inside their own bodies, of community.

  The plague ravages the town and the social fabric is torn and burnt. No-one understands what is going on. Families fail and parents and children stumble on blindly, calling on whatever friends they can find to give them support. The only close relationship is between Phil and Tania and the most savage moment in the play is when Phil abandons Tania to sexual slavery and crawls alone into the sewer that he believes will take him to the big city where he thinks he will be able do his exam and find his success.

  The parents retreat happily to the safe country outside the fence that they have erected around the disaster area of the world that they have created for their children. The dying Sally, caught between two worlds, is left at the end, barely holding on but still fiercely defiant.

  These three are part of the group in Hollow rejected, betrayed and destroyed at the very moment when the world should become theirs.

  FIRST PRODUCTION

  Falling Petals was first produced by Playbox Theatre at The C.U.B. Malthouse, Melbourne, on 2 July 2003 with the following cast:

  TANIA

  Caroline Craig

  SALLY

  Melia Naughton

  PHIL

  Paul Reichstein

  MALE

  James Wardlaw

  FEMALE

  Melita Jurisic

  Director, Tom Healey

  Designer, Anna Borghesi

  Lighting Designer, Daniel Zika

  Sound Design, David Franzke

  Dramaturgical Consultant, Louise Gough

  CHARACTERS

  PHIL MOSS, 17

  SALLY WOODS, 17

  TANIA CARRIAGE, 17–18

  A number of ADULT CHARACTERS (to be played by one male and one female actor.)

  SETTING

  The township of Hollow, population approximately 10,400 and rapidly declining. The present.

  The action centres at a spot on the outskirts of this rural suburbia, part of a neglected (city-resident-owned) hobby farm, where a large tree, still alive and untouched by rising water tables or the persistent and almost permanent drought in the area, stands occasionally shedding petals. It is a cherry blossom tree, or ‘sakura’. Most of the action takes place at this tree’s trunk.

  However, the action also spreads out around localities in the town, such as parts of the characters’ homes, doctors’ rooms and school offices, as indicated. This action takes place on the fringes of the sakura space, sometimes bleeding over it.

  The ‘sakura’—or the cherry blossom tree—in Japan is considered a very special tree, for it is the only tree there that blossoms in winter. In Hollow, an ongoing drought has confused it.

  FIRST

  At the sakura. Only part of a branch above is visible to the audience, plus part of the tree’s trunk.

  PHIL, TANIA and SALLY are gathered there in school dress code—all shades of the one colour. The grass around them is brown-green-yellow. PHIL lies on the ground. SALLY is sitting up near him. TANIA is standing at the trunk, trying to shake the tree, but the trunk doesn’t move.

  PHIL: Keep trying. It’s ready to drop off, ready to cark it. Just like Vaughan.

  Bring him down and we’ll have another funeral.

  TANIA: A proper funeral.

  She laughs and shakes the trunk.

  SALLY: Don’t want another funeral today, thanks.

  TANIA: What about tomorrow? We’ll get us another day off.

  PHIL: Here he comes. Woo-hoo!
<
br />   A petal from above slowly floats down to the ground.

  TANIA: I did it!

  PHIL: You didn’t do anything. It was the forces of nature.

  TANIA: We’re all a part of nature and so anything we do is part of nature, so anything we do to nature is just nature taking its course.

  PHIL: Please. You’re letting Literature get too far into your head.

  SALLY: [to PHIL] And you’re letting Economics get way into yours.

  PHIL: Economics gets me out of Hollow. Economics and Law, and in the long run, I might come back and buy a holiday house.

  TANIA: In the long run, we are all dead.

  PHIL: Keynes said that.

  SALLY: Keynes is out of date.

  PHIL: Mr Worboys likes him.

  SALLY: Mr Worboys said that.

  PHIL: Fucking alco.

  TANIA: Do you reckon in the city they would let Mr Worboys teach?

  PHIL: No way. [He jumps up and scatters to the petal. He crosses himself like a priest.] Dear Lord, please forgive the fallen for his sins—

  SALLY: Phil, you’re sick—

  PHIL picks up a handful of dirt-dust which he scatters upon the petal.

  PHIL: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  SALLY: Phil…

  PHIL: See ya, Vaughan-y, baby!

  SALLY: Stop it! We’ve had enough of that. Months of sickness.

  PHIL: He was seven.

  TANIA: That kid was sick before he was born.

  PHIL: A real local.

  SALLY: You’re not even sorry for his mum? All the threats? People ringing up the house and being bastards over the phone?

  PHIL: They’re just the town of Hollow’s Fuck Knuckles squad. Fuck Knuckles do Fuck Knuckly stuff.

  SALLY: But to the mum of a sick kid? A dying kid?

  TANIA: I heard he was a real shit, played it for sympathy.

  PHIL: Dad taught him. Hated the kid. Trouble. [Looking around] Tania… I mean, [crossing himself] Vaughan’s mother. Would you like to step up and say a few words about your son?

  TANIA: [wiping at her eyes] Yes… yes, I will.

  TANIA laughs.

  SALLY: Oh, guys. Stop it.

  TANIA: My boy… my boy… was a g-g-g-good boy! [To PHIL] Why did you take him away, God?

  PHIL: [still being the priest] Hey, I only work for the guy.

  TANIA: Oh, God! [She gets down on her knees and beats the ground.]

  Why did you take away my son? I w-w-w-w-waaaant him baaaaaack!

  SALLY: It was nothing like that.

  PHIL: It’s close enough.

  TANIA: [still going] Why me? Why will nobody give meeee a foot masssssage?

  SALLY: She didn’t say that.

  PHIL: It’s what she meant.

  TANIA: [wailing] Foot massage! Foot massage!

  PHIL runs around and pulls TANIA’s leg. TANIA yelps and falls to the ground. PHIL pulls off her shoe.

  PHIL: Here’s a foot massage.

  He massages her foot.

  TANIA: That tickles.

  SALLY: How come I never get a foot massage, Phil?

  Beat.

  PHIL: Fuck, I hate this place. Can’t wait to get out. Four more months.

  SALLY: If you’re unlucky.

  TANIA: Did you see his practice exam marks, Sal?

  SALLY: S’pose.

  PHIL starts tickling TANIA’s foot. She screams and scurries away.

  PHIL stands, crosses himself and stands over the petal.

  PHIL: Dearly aggrieved… Normally in times of distress I take off all of my clothes, grab a bottle of whisky, and dance around this chapel to ‘Eagle Rock’. However, today there are people in attendance, and it’s not even a Sunday. So, here’s the next best thing. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit Vaughan’s pitiful collection of CDs. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Central Hotel is just over the road. Let’s bury this little shit and get tanked. Anyone into leather is especially welcome. Amen.

  TANIA is pissing herself laughing. SALLY just stares at the petal.

  SALLY: At the service I thought Vaughan was still breathing.

  PHIL: You couldn’t see the body. We were all put up the back.

  SALLY: [pointing to the petal] Is he breathing?

  TANIA: Yeah. Go up close to him and listen. Go on.

  SALLY stays still.

  SALLY: I’m not going near him.

  TANIA: Hey, Sal, get a grip.

  PHIL: Sally. That’s not Vaughan’s body. [Beat.] God, this place is small and nasty and fucked.

  SALLY moves again.

  TANIA: We’re all in hick town.

  SALLY: You’re a hick, Tania.

  TANIA: I’m moving out.

  SALLY: With your practice exam marks, Tan?

  TANIA: I wasn’t motivated. I am now. You watch.

  PHIL: I’m going to transcend this hickdom. Get into uni. Fuck off outta here.

  SALLY: As if.

  TANIA: That’s right, Sally. No one leaves Hollow alive.

  SALLY: Yeah, that’s right, Phil. They end up dead.

  The two girls converge slowly on PHIL.

  PHIL: Hey, stop joking.

  TANIA: No one leaves Hollow. The sickness gets you.

  SALLY: And you never leave!

  The two girls jump on PHIL and wrestle him to the ground. He laughs, barely putting up a fight.

  [Doing a Dracula] I’m going to suck your blood!

  TANIA: All of your organs will stop working and your brain will expand.

  PHIL: Sounds like my study technique.

  TANIA: And explode! Kaboom!

  SALLY: It haemorrhaged.

  PHIL: I’m going to transcend hickdom!

  SALLY: Not if I can help it, mate.

  TANIA runs and grabs the petal, while SALLY holds a fairly comfortable PHIL down.

  TANIA: Here comes the sickness, Phil. Vaughan’s special Hollow mystery illness!

  She rushes at him with the petal, holding it in front of her. SALLY sees the petal coming and jumps back in fright.

  SALLY: Don’t fucking touch me with that. Fuck off.

  TANIA: Okay. Hey, did you hear that three more kids might have that disease?

  SALLY: Vaughan’s disease?

  PHIL: This has so freaked out Mum and Dad.

  TANIA: [laughing] Yeah. Hasn’t it?

  SALLY: When?

  TANIA: When I was round at Phil’s place studying.

  SALLY: When was that?

  TANIA: Just some Economics stuff.

  SALLY: Where was I?

  PHIL: You don’t want to go to uni, do you?

  TANIA: Phil’s mum and dad are like…

  PHIL and TANIA put on falsely deep ‘adult’ voices.

  PHIL: Terrible, terrible just watching a kid waste like that.

  TANIA: The whole life a waste.

  PHIL: Sometimes, you know, you see a kid dying, and you see them with a positive outlook, and you think, well, they had a nice life.

  TANIA: But with this one, yes, it was all despair.

  PHIL: Despair…

  TANIA: The whole life, from start to finish, nothing enlightening about this death.

  SALLY: Enlightening?

  PHIL: I mean, you hope to find some hope in sick kids—

  TANIA: But this kid knew—

  PHIL: Stunted from the start—

  SALLY: That’s sick. The whole day’s sick.

  PHIL and TANIA drop the ‘adult’ bearings.

  TANIA: Hollow’s sick. That’s why it took the day off.

  SALLY: Now three more kids have got it?

  TANIA: Or something like it.

  SALLY: Do you reckon it’s contagious?

  PHIL: It’s just little kids; like mumps, isn’t it?

  TANIA: This place is a hole. Uni’s going to be so cool.

  SALLY: What’s all this hating the place you come from all of a sudden?

  PHIL: Look around you, Sally. We’re nowhere.

  SALLY: There’s plenty to like. Plent
y of space.

  TANIA: Space, like outer space.

  SALLY: Fresh air.

  PHIL: [sniffing] Fresh is diesel and cow shit?

  SALLY: You can’t hate the place you come from. It’s not natural.

  PHIL: You know—tell any of the teachers that you want only the best results and only the best for yourself, and here—and only here—they knock you down. [Impersonating a teacher] Let’s look over your tertiary choices… what’s your name… Phil… and let’s look—look, you’ve put Commerce-Law as your first choice. Why would you go and do a thing like that? Every three years, if we’re lucky, we send a kid from this school to that course—and I really hope it’s you—but pull your fucking head out of your arse—

  TANIA: Are they allowed to say that?

  PHIL: Look. I have to find kids jobs in supermarkets, service individual pathways, and if they want to do well in the supermarkets, then they ought to think about the local TAFE. What’s your name again—Phil—why haven’t you put down a TAFE choice? You’re cutting your own legs off. That won’t help you walk down your pathway, cutting your own legs off.

  TANIA: Did he really say all this?

  PHIL: [breaking out of it] Yes— [Back into it] Now times have changed. If this was the sixties, maybe you might have been justified in making such a choice; I did. Look where it’s got me. I’m a has-been. There’s AIDS all over the place and I can’t fuck as much anymore. So neither should you. I wish I was still a communist free-lover motherfucker, but you have responsibilities now. Take the supermarket job, Phil. Take it—

  SALLY: He didn’t say all of that.

  PHIL: Maybe not all of it, no.

  Beat.

  TANIA: Hollow is shit. Sandcastle is shit.

  SALLY: Now, Sandcastle sucks. Hollow rocks.

  PHIL laughs.

  TANIA: You’ve got to expand your horizons.

  SALLY: Have you thought about how much it’s all going to cost? Rent for one room is more than a four-bedroom up here!

  TANIA: I’ve saved. I’ll get a job.

  PHIL: I’m happy. Mum took a package to leave teaching.