Sandchair Cantata was originally produced as a staged reading by Actors & Writers, Olivebridge, New York, on October 19, 2002. It was directed by Nicole Quinn with the following cast:
| WORRIER | Sarah Chodoff | |
| PRAGMATIST | Sigrid Heath |
CHARACTERS
WORRIER
PRAGMATIST
Two forty-something women in sand chairs at surf’s edge. They wear bathing suits and baseball caps, each with a book in her lap, watching their respective kids in the water. The conversation ebbs and flows, the rhythm of waves.
WORRIER: (A lament.) I’m old.
PRAGMATIST: We’re well preserved.
WORRIER: Pickled.
PRAGMATIST: Pears.
WORRIER: Pairs?
PRAGMATIST: Luscious fruit.
WORRIER: (Indicates the ocean.) You think they’re okay?
PRAGMATIST: Yep.
WORRIER: Really?
PRAGMATIST: Yep.
PRAGMATIST: Seaweed.
WORRIER: Sunscreen, SPF thirty.
PRAGMATIST: (Thrilled.) Vacation.
WORRIER: (Thrill shared.) Vacation.
(They take it in, the beach.)
PRAGMATIST: Good book?
WORRIER: It’s okay. Yours?
PRAGMATIST: Better in bed.
WORRIER: Who?
PRAGMATIST: The book.
WORRIER: Oh.
PRAGMATIST: (Nods her head toward the water.) Or him.
WORRIER: (Wrinkling her nose.) No.
PRAGMATIST: (A minor wound.) Why not?
WORRIER: Boring.
PRAGMATIST: Looks or personality?
WORRIER: Both.
PRAGMATIST: (Reassessing.) Grumpy maybe.
PRAGMATIST: Nice smile.
WORRIER: (Revelation.) Oh, yeah. Laughing eyes.
PRAGMATIST: Great butt!
WORRIER: (Doubtful.) Really?
PRAGMATIST: (Indicating someone else.) No, hers.
WORRIER: Buns of steel.
PRAGMATIST: Youth.
WORRIER: (Devastated.) I’m middle-aged.
PRAGMATIST: Yes we are.
WORRIER: When did it happen?
PRAGMATIST: Every day.
WORRIER: Every day.
(Each retreats, reverie, water as lodestone.)
PRAGMATIST: (Confession.) I hate my book group.
WORRIER: (Surprised relief.) I hate mine too!
PRAGMATIST: The dynamic’s …
WORRIER: … All wrong.
PRAGMATIST: Too social.
PRAGMATIST: No.
WORRIER: You’re sure?
PRAGMATIST: Yep.
WORRIER: (Whimsical.) Your kids are so happy.
PRAGMATIST: (Pleased.) Yeah.
WORRIER: (Poor me.) Mine are so whiny.
PRAGMATIST: Don’t say yes so much.
WORRIER: (Startled, miracle cure.) Really?
PRAGMATIST: You’re a paper tiger.
WORRIER: (Defensive.) Am not.
PRAGMATIST: Are too.
WORRIER: (Anger rising.) Am no …
PRAGMATIST: (Loud, in her face.) Are too, are too, are too!
(WORRIER backs down, fairly cringing.
A breath.)
See?
(They sit in silence, watching the waves of children.)
PRAGMATIST: And french fries. (She indicates the kids.) They’ll fly if we buy.
WORRIER: Alone?
PRAGMATIST: It’s not far. We can watch them from here.
WORRIER: I don’t know.
PRAGMATIST: Don’t know what?
WORRIER: If it’s a good idea.
PRAGMATIST: Give them a budget and let them work it out. We get chair service.
WORRIER: But …
PRAGMATIST: Or you could go.
WORRIER: (A large life question.) What am I doing!?
PRAGMATIST: Getting lemonade? French fries?
WORRIER: Children. Raising children, that’s what I’m doing.
PRAGMATIST: My treat.
WORRIER: I’m always the bad guy. “You can’t do this,” “Don’t do that.” I make them go to bed. I take them for shots.
PRAGMATIST: You take them for ice cream.
WORRIER: (Hopeful.) Ice cream.
WORRIER: (Squinting out front.) What’s that boy doing?
PRAGMATIST: (Yelled out front.) Hey, you! Orange trunks! Blue Warhead mouth, get off my kid!
WORRIER: Jerk!
PRAGMATIST: He’s a kid.
WORRIER: But he …
PRAGMATIST: He wanted someone to tell him to get off. I did. He did.
WORRIER: (Okay, smarty pants.) Like the one you threatened to bite?
PRAGMATIST: Like that.
WORRIER: Did you ever bite her?
PRAGMATIST: Nope.
WORRIER: (Smug.) Who’s the paper tiger?
PRAGMATIST: I didn’t have to. But I would have.
WORRIER: Sure.
PRAGMATIST: She believed me.
WORRIER: She was three.
PRAGMATIST: They can be very cunning at three.
(The WORRIER glances around, then panics, dancing in all directions from her chair.)
WORRIER: Where are they!!!
PRAGMATIST: (Calm.) Down there. The tide carried them.
WORRIER: (Screeching, hand gestures, basic mania.) Olivia! Over here! Move, back, back! Get your brother! Now!
PRAGMATIST: (Sure she’s come unhinged.) You okay?
WORRIER: (A breath, a confession.) Every day in the papers, there’s another kid taken. And teenagers.
PRAGMATIST: (Sympathetic.) It’s too much.
WORRIER: Is everybody a pervert or a victim?
PRAGMATIST: We just hear about it more. The media.
WORRIER: It’s not right. Not fair. Priests. Teachers. Relatives. Strangers.
PRAGMATIST: We do the best we can.
WORRIER: Living in fear is the best we can do?
PRAGMATIST: This isn’t the projects, or Auschwitz, we’re at the beach. Lighten up.
WORRIER: It could happen here.
PRAGMATIST: Sure it could.
WORRIER: (Self-righteous.) Kids are snatched from their homes.
WORRIER: Oh, please.
PRAGMATIST: … Lives half lived.
WORRIER: (Blurts it out.) I bought a gun.
PRAGMATIST: (Many answers come to mind, to mouth, but she says:) Be sure you can use it.
WORRIER: (Launches into it, living it again.) This crazy guy, or maybe it was drugs, he pushed his way past the pizza delivery man under our stoop. The kids and I were terrified. “Who are you?!!” I screamed it at him till the pizza man dragged him out by the collar yelling at me to “Lock de gate, lock de gate!” We were prisoners in our own house, watching the crazy guy try to pull the ironwork out of the concrete, while the pizza man pedaled away as fast as he could.
PRAGMATIST: (Wow.) The pizza guy was great.
WORRIER: And our neighbor across the street, he came out to help too.
PRAGMATIST: (Wow again.) He did?
WORRIER: He brought a baseball bat, but his back was out so he had to use the bat as a cane to hobble across the street.
PRAGMATIST: One crazy guy versus you, the kids, the pizza man, and the bat-cane avenger. Not too shabby.
WORRIER: (Revelation.) Yeah.
(They retreat into themselves, the ocean as a dodge.)
WORRIER: Oh.
PRAGMATIST: Could be years.
WORRIER: Okay …
PRAGMATIST: Years of cutting and radiating and cutting … you know.
WORRIER: Oh.
PRAGMATIST: I’m trying to figure out how not to be paranoid when I’m old, like my mother was. My sister’s just trying to figure out how to get old.
WORRIER: (Reassuring herself.) Middle age is looking pretty good.
PRAGMATIST: (To herself.) I’m glad it’s not me.
WORRIER: (To herself.) Me too.
PRAGMATIST: (Comfort food.) French fries.
WORRIER: (Yells to the kids.) Hey, guys, you fly, I’ll buy!
(A breath.)
(Curtain.)
END OF PLAY