Broken (excerpt)
by
Mary Anne Butler
AWARDS
2018 Chief Minister’s NT Book of the Year
2016 Victorian Prize for Literature
2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama
2016 Sydney Theatre Award Best Ensemble
2014 Northern Territory Literary Award Best Script
SHORTLISTINGS
2016 AWGIE Awards
2016 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting [NSW Premier’s Literary Awards]
2014 Griffin Theatre Award [NSW]
Broken - © Copyright, Mary Anne Butler, 2016
‘Emptiness is the beginning of all things’
– Raymond Carver
Cast: ASH – a woman
HAM – a man
MIA – a woman
Set: Central desert, near Hermannsburg, NT
A house and block of land, 20 minutes Northside of Alice Springs
Red Centre Highway, central desert
Era: Now.
The playwright actively encourages diverse casting across all her works.
***
ASH: Late evening
a car; rolling, rolling.
In slow motion.
Side, roof, other side, wheels / side, roof, other side, wheels
being hurled through the air
like in the Mondial Rollover
strapped in, mouth open in silent scream
upside-down terror.
The slow-ness of it. The dream-like tumbling; whip-aired and wondrous.
Oddly predictable rhythm:
side
roof
other side
wheels
side
roof
other side
wheels.
Headlights pick up the world outside: turning, churning over and over and the ground’s coming up to meet my face, my eyes, and the windscreen smashes in and the drivers window
implodes and there’s glass in my face, my hair, my mouth. Shards of glass between my teeth.
Something solid hits my forehead.
MIA: Ghaaaaaaaa
ASH: Whips across my chin.
MIA: Ghaaaaaaaaaaa
ASH: …and I wonder…
MIA/ASH: how long can this go on / how long can this go on
ASH: before it finally ends.
And then the last measured tilt as a three thousand kilogram troop carrier pirouettes on an axle; trying to make up its mind whether it’s going to land on its wheels or roof,
sways slightly from one point to the other; finally tips roofside and does a sluggish roll.
MIA: Breathe.
ASH: The sudden stillness.
MIA: Breathe!
ASH: The silence.
A roo stares in at me through the upside-down night, red-eyed and frightened.
Moon outside the window frame, hanging there all yellow and pocked.
MIA: Nothing for miles.
No-one.
ASH: You know this road. Just biologists and mad people.
The odd tourist following a GPS into nothingness.
Council workers, once a year, to grade the road where it turns to dirt.
Vast tracts of emptiness.
…just…
me.
MIA: Out of nowhere.
ASH: Hanging upside down in a twisted Troopy.
MIA: Serrated dagger slicing through my belly
ASH: ...and the space sets in around me…
MIA: from navel to cunt and back again.
ASH: like a snowdome of terror.
MIA: Slower.
Deeper.
Cramping pain through to my coccyx.
Jagged. Double over with it.
Breathe.
Breathe!
Then another. Barbed. Grip-gripping. Angry. Pain.
Surging. Carving into my back. Bowels impaled. Rectum breaking open.
Waves. Regular, rhythmic.
…and I know what this is…
HAM: Midnight. Central desert.
MIA: Stop. No.
HAM: Full moon shines its neon light across the world.
MIA: Hold it in, hold it in.
HAM: …something’s not right.
MIA: Wait, little one.
HAM: Nights like this, you can smell it.
MIA: Hang in there.
HAM: That porous feeling in my bones.
MIA: Angry blood clot gushes out.
HAM: Luck, or chance, or choice, or fate.
MIA: Knot of death.
HAM: Foreboding.
Something bigger than us, out here.
ASH: Click-clack of a car indicator pulses through the night.
HAM: …something bigger than anything…
END EXCERPT
