black girl: Stop, stop!
black bearer: Get outta the way.
black girl: (to black bearer) Wait.
(to black mamba) How are you alive?
black mamba: You don’t live as long as I have without learning to play dead. Now move.
black bearer: You know this thing?
black mamba: This thing is a vertebrate just like you!
black bearer: But cold-blooded!
The black bearer raises the rod.
black mamba: Ssssssss!
The black girl grabs the rod out of the black bearer’s hands.
black girl: Stop it. Both of you.
black bearer: She’s the one trying to bite me.
black mamba: I thought he killed you.
black girl: What?
black mamba: He had the rod I gave you.
black bearer: You really think I’d kill someone for a stupid stick?
black mamba: It’s a rod, not a stick!
black bearer: Stick, rod; potato, po-tah-to.
black mamba: Do you know how many snakes have been turned into rods in the past year alone?
black bearer: No, but I wish there were one more!
black girl: man, this is the worst birthday ever!
The black girl moves away from the black mamba and black bearer. She sits and bangs the rod into the ground. She’s pissed.
black mamba: (mouthed / whispered) Now look what you did!
black bearer: (mouthed / whispered) me!
black mamba: (mouthed / whispered) Go talk to her.
black bearer: (mouthed / whispered) you go talk to her. You’re the one who —
black mamba: (mouthed / whispered) Okay okay fine!
(to black girl) Lemme guess, you didn’t find God.
black girl: Nope.
black bearer: If you ask me, that’s probably for the best.
black girl: How’s that?
black bearer: What if you found God but then didn’t like him? You’d have to spend the rest of your life avoiding him.
black girl: But I have so many questions for God. Way more now than before.
black mamba: Then ask them.
black girl: Huh?
black mamba: God is at your tail and has been there the whole time.
The black girl hits a loose piece of ground while banging the rod.
black bearer: Humans don’t have tails.
black mamba: It’s called a metaphor.
The black girl continues banging and more ground crumbles away.
black bearer: Don’t talk down to me. / Just ’cause I’m a bearer —
black mamba: Why are humans always so sensitive? Does that just come with being so weak?
The black girl stops banging the rod and begins digging with it.
black bearer: Weak! You know how many bags I can — I bet I could carry you times twenty, times fifty. times fifty twenty!
black mamba: all i’m saying is that God is close by.
The black girl gives up digging with the rod and starts in with her hands.
black bearer: Okay. Where?
black mamba: God’s not gonna go and reveal himself just like that. We’d all go crazy and he knows it.
The black girl digs deeper and deeper.
black bearer: if you ask me, God’s not properly made and finished yet!
black mamba: Well it’s a good thing no one asked you then —
The black bearer notices the black girl digging.
black bearer: (mouthed / whispered to black mamba) What’s she doing?
black mamba: (mouthed / whispered) I don’t know?
black bearer: (mouthed / whispered) Well ask her.
black mamba: (mouthed / whispered) No, I asked her last time —
black bearer: (mouthed / whispered) okay okay fine!
(to black girl) What are you doing?
The black girl stops digging and looks around at the remnants of her happy birthday Bible.
black girl: Starting over.
The black girl goes back to digging.
black mamba: Need help?
black bearer: How you gonna help? You don’t even have hands.
black mamba: You are such a verteb-racist.
black bearer: A what-sist?
black mamba: Just because I’m a snake doesn’t mean I’m inferior to you; we’re both vertebrates.
black bearer: If you all would quit biting us, we’d treat you better!
The black girl keeps digging. The lights fade out as she speaks.
black girl: I’ve been wondering about that. Like . . . if you’re a snake, that bites . . . do you just hang with other snakes who bite . . . or do you hang out with non-biters too. And if like you do hang out with non-biters . . . is there like tension, or is everybody cool . . .
The end.
Curtain call.
Clap clap clap.
Postface
All the actors exit except for the black mamba and gbs.
black mamba: Pssssst, GBS.
gbs: Uh yes.
black mamba: I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . I love what you did in the first play of Back to Methuselah.
As they exit.
gbs: Thank you. What did you think of the / preface?
black mamba: Now that was an interesting depiction of a snake. We should talk about adapting it:
(reciting) Soon there will be as many snakes in Eden as there are scales on my body . . . This snake and that snake will die, / but the snakes will live.
gbs: (joining in) but the snakes will live.
(reciting Eve’s following line in Back to Methuselah) And then there will be nothing but snakes, / snakes, snakes everywhere.
black mamba: (joining in) snakes, snakes everywhere.
The end. For real.
* * *
1 This line is a bit of an inside joke that perhaps only select audiences will get. For that reason, I’ve got an alternative below.
black girl: Sure, it’s called the “Shaw Festival,” but it’s been like over fifty years since they’ve done an entire season of just Shaw. I mean nowadays you’re lucky if your plays even make up a fifth of the season there. Even then, one of the two they do do might end up being an “adaptation.”
2 Come back here. We have work to do! You cannot hide from me!
3 Where did he go? Where did he go?!
4 I can see you! Come out and get back to work! Lazybones.
5 Your break was over.
6 Dying Malefactor.
7 Pain; suffering.
8 He’s a magician.
9 Stretched.
10 Legs.
11 Head lower!
12 Perfect!
13 Yes.
14 Good, good.
15 Great, great!
16 More blood!
17 He’s an Asian guy —
Just a reminder that the conjurer can be played by any person of colour who can pass for white in sunglasses and a wig. If you choose someone who is not Asian, feel free to change the line accordingly.
18 Mother of God! Why do I have to do everything myself?!
19 No more breaks!
20 Come back here, you lazy bastard!
About the Author
Lisa Codrington is a Toronto-based actor and writer. Her writing has been produced in Toronto, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Winnipeg and Barbados, and has been published by Playwrights Canada Press, McGraw-Hill Ryerson and in Canadian Theatre Review. Select writing credits include The Aftermath, The Colony and Cast Iron, which was short
listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Lisa is a recipient of the Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights and the K.M. Hunter Theatre Award. She has been playwright-in-residence at a number of theatres, including Canadian Stage, Nightwood Theatre, the Blyth Festival and the Shaw Festival.
Up the Garden Path & The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God © Copyright 2017 by Lisa Codrington
The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God Copyright © 1932, 1934 by George Bernard Shaw, Copyright © 1959, 1961 the Public Trustee as Executor of the Estate of George Bernard Shaw
First edition: October 2017
Cover art, Along the River’s Edge, by Mary Wong, www.marywong.ca
Author photo © Matthew Wiley
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Codrington, Lisa
[Plays. Selections]
Up the garden path ; & The adventures of the Black girl in her search for God / Lisa Codrington. -- First edition.
Plays.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77091-826-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77091-827-6 (PDF).--
ISBN 978-1-77091-828-3 (HTML).--ISBN 978-1-77091-829-0 (Kindle)
I. Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950. Adventures of the Black girl in her search for God. II. Codrington, Lisa. Adventures of the Black girl in her search for God. III. Codrington, Lisa. Up the garden path. IV. Title. V. Title: Up the garden path ; and The adventures of the Black girl in her search for God.
PS8605.O337U6 2017 C812’.6 C2017-905225-X
C2017-905226-8
We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.
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