Marionette (an extract monologue)

[The stage has a black backdrop. In the centre left of the stage is a painting propped on an easel. A short wooden stool with a paint pallet on top is beside it. 

Dahlia, angled towards the canvas to the side and the audience, raises a paintbrush to the canvas, pauses, then lets it fall through her fingers]

Dahlia: If only I could place the brush on the canvas. But what would I paint, in which direction would I move? I see in my mind the colours and the compositions, how the emotion of blue would jar with red. 

[She picks up the paintbrush again, poised to begin] 

Dahlia: My mind is failing me. I feel like a puppet in limp suspension, with all strings cut but one. My limbs will not do as I instruct. What am I if I cannot paint? If the inspiration that sparks has been extinguished forever? Before I am yet to construct my masterpiece – heaven! The thought strikes me with greater fear than my death. That I would go quietly into oblivion with a whisper, not a bang. If I cannot live on in my paintings, have I really lived at all? I must sit before this canvas like a marionette until something operates my mind again. 

[Dahlia rises and spins the canvas 90 degrees on the easel, then spins it again, frowning and muttering]

Dahlia: Van Gogh created his most revered works while in an asylum – his mind in pieces and yet still his brilliance shone through. Maybe I should go insane. Maybe I am going insane. I imagine people already think me to be mad. I would sacrifice my sanity for a painting, just one. For that, I would bargain most things to the devil.

[Enter a procession of 3 hooded figures in black. They circle Dahlia twice then huddle behind her]

Dahlia: Obscurity I feel is worse than death, for the artist at least, the writer, the painter, the singers, and dancers. While societies wheels are greased by money and people seek houses and pretty things to be content, we are the cursed ones that exist on another plane. We want, not glory – that sounds vain. No. I would more aptly describe it as be remembered. We want our work to live beyond us. To have something of us that succeeds our departure. It is survival this desire, to keep us from drowning. 

I would give anything to paint this final one. 

[The first hooded figure hooks his fingers around her wrist, lifting it to the canvas. The second figure holds her head steady. The third one lifts the paint pallet to her, kneeling on the ground while doing so]

Dahlia: Take anything from me but my painting! I have no use for the rest if I cannot paint. And once I can paint I will need only that. 

[The hooded figures begin to operate her limbs, dipping the paintbrush in the colours exaggerating every movement slowly]

Dahlia: I have now six fingers on my right hand. The brush is me and I it. 

[The hooded figures guide Dahlia who begins to paint]

Dahlia: Now I may paint. 

[Dahlia paints some brush strokes. Then her and the figures and when the stage goes dark. They exit

A spotlight illuminates the canvas facing the audience. It shows a painting of a clock face with a green single eye in the middle]