by Tony Kushner
PRIOR: I thought the twenty professional Sicilian mourners were a bit much.
A great queen; big fucking deal. That ludicrous spectacle in there, just a parody of the funeral of someone who really counted. We don’t; faggots; we’re just a bad dream the real world is having, and the real world’s waking up. And he’s dead.
(Little pause.)
BELIZE (Concerned, irritated): Lately, sugar, you have gotten very strange. Lighten up already.
PRIOR: Oh I apologize, it was only a for-God’s-sake funeral, a cause for fucking celebration, sorry if I can’t join in with the rest of you death-junkies, gloating about your survival in the face of that . . . of his ugly demise because unlike you I have nothing to gloat about. Never mind.
(Angry little pause.)
BELIZE: And you look like Morticia Addams.
PRIOR: Like the Wrath of God.
BELIZE: Yes.
PRIOR: That is the intended effect.
My eyes are fucked-up.
BELIZE: Fucked-up how?
PRIOR: Everything’s . . . closing in. Weirdness on the periphery.
BELIZE: Since when?
PRIOR: For three weeks. Since the night when— (He stops himself)
BELIZE: Well what does the eye doctor say?
PRIOR: I haven’t been.
BELIZE: Oh for God’s sake. Why?
PRIOR: I was improving. Before.
Remember my wet dream.
BELIZE: The angel?
PRIOR: It wasn’t a dream.
BELIZE: ’Course it was.
PRIOR: No. I don’t think so. I think it really happened.
I’m a prophet.
BELIZE: Say what?
PRIOR: I’ve been given a prophecy. A Book. Not a physical book, or there was one but They took it back, but somehow there’s still this Book. In me. A prophecy. It . . . really happened, I’m—almost completely sure of it.
(He looks at Belize)
Oh stop looking so . . .
BELIZE: You’re scaring me.
PRIOR: It was after Louis left me. Every night I’d been having these horrible vivid dreams. And then . . .
(Little pause.)
BELIZE: Then . . .?
PRIOR: And then She arrived.
Scene 2
Three weeks earlier. The Angel and Prior in Prior’s bedroom. The wrecked ceiling, Prior in bed, the Angel in the air.
As the scene shifts, Prior changes out of his prophet garb and into his pajamas onstage. He does this quietly, deliberately, forcing himself back into memory, preparing to tell Belize his tale.
At first, Belize watches from the street, but soon he’s drawn into the bedroom.
ANGEL: Greetings, Prophet!
The Great Work Begins:
The Messenger has arrived.
PRIOR (Terrified): Go away.
ANGEL: Attend:
PRIOR (Still terrified): Oh God there’s a thing in the air, a thing, a thing.
ANGEL: I I I I
Am the Bird of America, the Bald Eagle,
Continental Principality,
LUMEN PHOSPHOR FLUOR CANDLE!
I unfold my leaves, Bright steel,
In salutation open sharp before you:
Prior WALTER
Long-descended, well-prepared.
PRIOR (Even more terrified): No, I’m not prepared, for anything, I have lots to do, I—
ANGEL (With a gust of music): American Prophet tonight you become,
American Eye that pierceth Dark,
American Heart all Hot for Truth,
The True Great Vocalist, the Knowing Mind,
Tongue-of-the-Land, Seer-Head!
PRIOR: Oh, shoo! You’re scaring the shit out me, get the fuck out of my room. Please, oh please—
ANGEL: Now:
Remove from their hiding place the Sacred Prophetic Implements.
(Little pause.)
PRIOR: The what?
ANGEL: Remove from their hiding place the Sacred Prophetic Implements.
(Little pause)
Your dreams have revealed them to you.
PRIOR: What dreams?
ANGEL: You have had dreams revealing to you—
PRIOR: I haven’t had a dream I can remember in months.
ANGEL (Stern): No . . . dreams, you—Are you sure?
PRIOR: Yes. Well, the two dead Priors, they—
ANGEL: No not the heralds, not them. Other dreams.
Implements, you must have—
One moment.
PRIOR: This, this is a dream, obviously, I’m sick and so I—well OK it’s a pretty spectacular dream but still it’s just some—
ANGEL (A flash of anger): Quiet. Prophet. A moment, please, I— (Looking up, addressing unseen forces; severe) The disorganization is—
(She coughs, looks up, rises higher in the air)
Yes.
(To Prior) In the kitchen. Under the tiles under the sink.
PRIOR: You want me to, to tear up the kitchen floor?
ANGEL: Get a shovel or an axe or some . . . tool for dislodging tile and, and grout and unearth the Sacred Implements.
PRIOR: No fucking way! The ceiling’s bad enough, I’ll lose the lease, I’ll lose my security deposit, I’ll wake up the downstairs neighbors, their hysterical dog, I—
Do it yourself.
ANGEL (A tremendous, unearthly voice): SUBMIT, SUBMIT TO THE WILL OF HEAVEN!
(An enormous gust of wind knocks Prior over. He glares at her from the floor and shakes his head no. A standoff. The Angel coughs a little. There is a small explosion in the kitchen offstage. A cloud of plaster dust drifts in.)
PRIOR: What did you— What . . .? (Exits into the kitchen)
ANGEL: And Lo, the Prophet was led by his nightly dreams to the hiding place of the Sacred Implements, and—Revision in the text: the Angel helped him to unearth them, for he was weak of body (Pissed-off) though not of will.
(Prior returns with an ancient leather suitcase, very dusty.)
PRIOR: You cracked the refrigerator, you probably released a whole cloud of fluorocarbons, that’s bad for the, the environment.
ANGEL: My wrath is as fearsome as my countenance is splendid. Open the suitcase.
(Prior does. He reaches inside and produces a pair of bronze spectacles with rocks instead of lenses.)
PRIOR: Oh, look at this.
Like, wow, man, totally Paleozoic. (He puts them on)
This is—
(He stops suddenly. His head jerks up. He is seeing something)
OH! OH GOD NO! OH— (Horror-stricken, he rips off the spectacles)
That was terrible! I don’t want to see that!
ANGEL: Remove the Book.
(Prior removes a large Book with bright steel pages from the suitcase. There is a really glorious burst of music, more light, more wind.)
ANGEL: From the Council of Continental Principalities
Met in this time of Crisis and Confusion:
Heaven here reaches down to disaster
And in touching you touches all of Earth.
(Music. She points to the spectacles.)
ANGEL: Peepstones.
(Prior retrieves them. He’s understandably reluctant to put them on.)
ANGEL: Open me Prophet. I I I I am
The Book.
Read.
(Prior starts to put on the peepstones and then stops.)
PRIOR: Wait. Wait.
How come . . . How come I have this, um, erection? It’s very hard to concentrate.
ANGEL: The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence.
PRIOR: Well maybe not to you but—
ANGEL: READ!
(More music, more light. Prior puts the glasses on, and reads.)
ANGEL: You are Mere Flesh. I I I I am Utter Flesh,
Density of Desire, the Gravity of Skin:
What makes the Engine of Creation Run?
Not Physics but Ecstatics Makes the Engine Run:
(Continue below:)
; (She begins to glow with intense sexual heat.)
PRIOR (Hit by a wave of intense sexual feeling): Hmmmm . . .
ANGEL (Continuous from above): The Pulse, the Pull, the Throb, the Ooze . . . (Continue below:)
PRIOR: Wait, please, I . . . Excuse me for just a minute, just a minute.
OK I . . .
ANGEL (Continuous from above): Priapsis, Dilation, Engorgement, Flow:
The Universe Aflame with Angelic Ejaculate . . .
(Continue below:)
PRIOR (Losing control, he starts to hump the Book): Oh shit . . .
ANGEL (Continuous from above): The Heavens a-thrum to the Seraphic Rut,
The Fiery Grapplings . . . (Continue below:)
PRIOR: Oh God, I . . .
ANGEL (Continuous from above): The Feathery Joinings of the Higher Orders,
Infinite, Unceasing, the Blood-Pump of Creation!
(With a rough gesture, she causes Prior to flip over on his back.
She’s directly above and parallel to him, close.)
(Pause. The peepstones have fallen off, or he removes them.)
PRIOR: Oh. Oh God.
ANGEL: The Body is the Garden of the Soul.
PRIOR: What was that?
ANGEL: Plasma Orgasmata.
PRIOR: Yeah well no doubt.
BELIZE (He’s heard enough; stepping into the bedroom): Whoa whoa whoa wait a minute excuse me please. You fucked this angel?
PRIOR: She fucked me. She has . . . Well, She has eight vaginas.
ANGEL: REGINA VAGINA!
Hermaphroditically Equipped as well with a Bouquet of Phalli.
I I I I am Your Released Female Essence Ascendant!
BELIZE: The sexual politics of this are—
PRIOR: Very confusing. I know.
(As Belize challenges Prior, the Angel, unthreatened, intrigued, lands and listens closely.
From the moment Belize enters the bedroom, Prior is simultaneously with him, on the street, three weeks hence, trying to tell what happened, and present in the bedroom with the Angel, where he’s very frightened, with no idea of what’s about to happen.)
BELIZE: What . . . So what, um, gender is God? According to—
PRIOR: According to Her: male. God is a—
BELIZE: No shit? Seriously? You don’t think that’s sorta sexist or—
PRIOR: He’s not an old man or anything, He’s a—from what I gather He’s a Hebrew letter.
ANGEL: THE ALEPH GLYPH.
PRIOR: A . . . male Hebrew letter.
ANGEL: Deus Erectus! Pater Omnipotens!
PRIOR (To Belize): Each Angel is an infinite aggregate myriad entity, They’re basically incredibly powerful bureaucrats, They have no imagination, They can do anything but They can’t invent, create, They’re sort of fabulous and dull all at once, and They copulate, ceaselessly, apparently, the Angels, They—I mean I—
BELIZE: They get fucked by a Hebrew letter.
ANGEL (To Prior): READ ON.
(Prior gestures to the Angel to wait.)
PRIOR: When Angels cum They make something called, um— (Continue below:)
ANGEL: Plasma orgasmata!
PRIOR (Continuous from above): —plasma orgasmata which makes some . . . other thing called— (Continue below:)
ANGEL: Protomatter.
PRIOR (Continuous from above): —protomatter. Right. Which is what makes . . . Everything else.
ANGEL: Creation.
PRIOR: Creation. Heaven’s, like, a lot, um, livelier than we were led to—
ANGEL: Heaven Is a City Much Like San Francisco.
(Prior puts on the peepstones and returns to the floor, reading at first from the Book, and then, as the Angel continues, he stops reading, removes the peepstones and listens to her. Belize is also listening, watching, bewildered and increasingly scared by the way Prior’s sounding.)
ANGEL: House upon house depended from Hillside,
From Crest down to Dockside,
The green Mirroring Bay.
Oh Joyful in the Buckled Garden,
Undulant Landscape over which
The Threat of Seismic Catastrophe hangs:
More beautiful because imperiled.
POTENT: yet DORMANT: The Fault Lines of Creation!
(Coughs)
When He, ALEPH,
GLYPH From Whom All Words Descend,
Tearing Glyph from Auto-Generative All-Adoring Gaze,
He Would Come Down to Us ABLAZE!
THEN: Heaven’s Walls would Ring with the
Glad mad moaning of the Winged Throng.
Hot Wet FIRE would flood the Cosmos,
And Igneous Gases Enflame the Voids,
And lights revolve, and spheres resolve,
As ALEPH Burns.
He burns . . . forever, He . . .
(A deep sorrow wells up. She can’t speak. Little pause. Prior looks at her.)
(A far-off, deep rumbling.)
PRIOR (To the Angel, hearing something in her story that’s recognizable): He changed.
BELIZE (To Prior): God?
(Prior nods.)
BELIZE: Changed how, honey? If He’s God, how can He—
PRIOR: I don’t know. But He did. He—
ANGEL: He grew weary of Us.
Our Songs and Fornications.
His Angels: Who cannot Imagine, who lack that Faculty.
Made for His Pleasure, We can only ADORE.
Seeking something New,
He split the World starkly in Two
(A mounting fury directed at Prior:)
And made YOU—
PRIOR (To Belize): When God made people He created . . . division.
ANGEL: Human Beings:
Uni-Genitalled: Female. Male.
PRIOR (To Belize): He awakened a potential in the design for change—
ANGEL: In creating You—
PRIOR (To Belize): —for random event.
ANGEL: Our Father-Lover Unleashed
Eternal Creation’s Potential for Change.
PRIOR (To Belize): For movement forward.
ANGEL (Bitter disgust, envy): In YOU the Virus of TIME began!
YOU Think. And You IMAGINE!
Migrate! Explore—
BELIZE: Uh-huh, but . . .
ANGEL: And when you do:
BELIZE: But so like you know none of this is, um, real, right?
ANGEL: Paradise itself Shivers and Splits—
PRIOR (To Belize): I, I didn’t say it was real, I said it was what She told me, and She’s, well . . .
ANGEL: Each Day when You Awake—
PRIOR: Real enough, I guess, I don’t know!
ANGEL (Her fury now directed at Prior and Belize): As though WE are only
The dream of YOU.
PRIOR: Everything’s come unglued, right? So is . . . (The room, the world) this any less plausible than you know than—
(A low but powerful tremor stops Prior. The Angel hears it, too; Belize doesn’t, but he sees Prior hearing it.)
ANGEL (With loathing): PROGRESS!
BELIZE (To Prior): We’re not supposed to migrate? To progress?
(Another tremor, louder and more powerful.)
ANGEL (Furious, with deep sorrow breaking through): Shaking HIM!
PRIOR (To Belize): When we move around, heedless of, of—When the human race began to travel, intermingle, then—
(A much bigger, nearer, rolling tremor begins and builds. Belize hears it, or imagines that he hears something.)
PRIOR (To Belize): There began to be tremors in Heaven. Earthquakes or, or rather—
BELIZE (To Prior): Intermingle?
PRIOR: Heavenquakes.
BELIZE: Are you hearing yourself?
(Another deep, rolling tremor. All three look up.)
ANGEL: He . . . began to—! HE who never was begun, was always IS and
Unbegun! He . . . began to
Leave Us!
Bored with His Angels, Bewitched by Humanity, in Mortifying Imitation of
You, His least creation, He would sail off on Voyages, no knowing where. Quake follows quake, Absence follows Absence: Nasty Chastity and Disorganization; Loss of Libido; Protomatter Shortfall . . .
(A huge tremor.)
ANGEL: UH. OH.
Then:
PRIOR (To Belize): April 18, 1906.
ANGEL: In that day:
PRIOR: It’s the Great San Francisco Earthquake.
ANGEL: In That Day:
Father-Lover of the Million Unutterable Names,
Deus Erectus, Pater Omnipotens, King of the Universe:
He left—
PRIOR: He. Abandoned Them.
ANGEL: —And did not return.
We do not know where He has gone.
He may never . . .
And bitter, cast-off, We wait, bewildered;
Our finest houses, our sweetest vineyards,
Made drear and barren, missing Him.
(She coughs. There’s a pause, then:)
BELIZE (To Prior): Abandoned.
I smell a motif.
(Prior looks at Belize, then nods.)
PRIOR: Well it occurred to me.
BELIZE: The man that got away?
And I think the time has come to let him go.
(Little pause.)
PRIOR (To Belize, forlorn): And then?
(To the Angel) And then what?
ANGEL: Surely you see towards what We are Progressing:
(Prior goes back to the Book. He takes up the peepstones but doesn’t put them on.)
ANGEL: The fabric of the sky unravels:
Angels hover, anxious fingers worry the tattered edge.
Before the boiling of blood and the searing of skin comes the Secret catastrophe:
Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible,
It will for a long time before have become completely unbearable.
(Coughs, then, with great passion and force:)
YOU HAVE DRIVEN HIM AWAY! YOU MUST STOP MOVING!
PRIOR (Quiet, frightened): Stop moving.
ANGEL (Softly, rapidly): Forsake the Open Road: Neither Mix Nor Intermarry
Let Deep Roots Grow: If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress. Seek Not to Fathom the World and its Delicate Particle Logic: You cannot Understand, You can only Destroy, You Do not “Advance,” You only Trample.
Poor blind Children, abandoned on the Earth,
Groping terrified, misguided, over
Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain:
HOBBLE YOURSELVES!
There is No Zion Save Where You Are!
If you Cannot find your Heart’s desire—