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    Blood: A Scientific Romance
    Blood: A Scientific Romance
    Blood: A Scientific Romance
    Ebook181 pages1 hour

    Blood: A Scientific Romance

    By Meg Braem

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    About this ebook

    Twin sisters Poubelle and Angelique are bonded in both biology and shared tragedy after a car accident leaves them orphaned along a prairie highway in a pool of blood. But the young twins are brought home with Dr. Glass after their remarkable recovery, and quickly find themselves the subject of endless experiments. In a quest to study Poubelle and Angelique's undeniable bond, Dr. Glass's questionable practices are soon scrutinized by a young doctor who might be the twins' only hope for a normal life. Blood: A Scientific Romance probes the questions: Do relationships take on new meaning when they begin to shape not only our experiences, but our biology? And do we, in fact, complete one another?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPlaywrights Canada Press
    Release dateSep 19, 2013
    ISBN9781770911734
    Blood: A Scientific Romance
    Author

    Meg Braem

    Meg Braem’s plays have won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama at the Alberta Literary Awards and the Alberta Playwriting Competition, and Blood: A Scientific Romance was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Her work has been presented at the Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Lunchbox Theatre, the Belfry Theatre, Sage Theatre, Sparrow & Finch Theatre, Theatre Transit, Atomic Vaudeville, and Intrepid Theatre. She is a past member of the Citadel Playwrights Forum and was a playwright-in-residence at Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre. Her next book, Feminist Resistance: A Graphic Approach (co-authored with Norah Bowman and Domique Hui), will be published by University of Toronto Press in 2019. Meg currently divides her time between Edmonton as the Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta and Calgary as the co-director of the Alberta Theatre Projects Playwrights Unit.

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      Book preview

      Blood - Meg Braem

      Blood: A Scientific Romance premiered at the Pumphouse Theatre in Calgary on September 30, 2010, produced by Sage Theatre, with the following cast and crew:

      Poubelle: Nicola Elson

      Angelique: Ellen Close

      Dr. Glass: Christopher Youngren

      Max: Tyrell Crews

      Director: Valerie Planche

      Stage manager: Rachel Parris

      Apprentice stage manager: Michelle Kennedy

      Assistant director: Dylan Metcalfe

      Set, properties, and lighting designer: Cimmeron Meyer

      Costume designer: Julia Wasilewski

      Costume assistant: Anastasia Vogl

      Composer and sound designer: Andrew Blizzard

      Production manager: Carla Ritchie

      Technical directors: Ajay Bondoni and David Smith

      Production assistant: Marcia Liber

      Set construction: Jed Tomlinson

      CHARACTERS

      Poubelle: Fraternal twin to Angelique. Seventeen years old.

      Angelique: Fraternal twin to Poubelle. Seventeen years old.

      Dr. Glass: Sixty-five-year-old scientist/doctor. He has been worn and damaged by his life.

      Dr. Max Street: Twenty-seven years old. A recent graduate from medical school.

      Maman and Papa: These voices are heard and may be pre-recorded.

      SETTING

      A farmhouse on the Canadian prairie, 1962.

      A NOTE ABOUT STAGING

      Blood is meant to be performed without blackouts; scenes should flow effortlessly from one to the next. Directors and designers are encouraged to approach the physical production of the play with imagination and a certain abstract sensibility.

      Scene 1

      ANGELIQUE and POUBELLE walk on stage and sit down in two chairs set side by side. The chairs represent the car at times throughout the scene. We hear MAMAN and PAPA's voices throughout.

      POUBELLE

      The rhyming couplets,

      ANGELIQUE

      Our lovely set of twins,

      BOTH

      God knows where one ends and the other begins.

      ANGELIQUE

      A double of everything sweet to pleasure the eye,

      BOTH

      Of breath,

      They inhale together.

      ANGELIQUE

      Of breath and of softness of thigh.

      The girls are in the back seat of the family station wagon.

      POUBELLE

      Maman, Angelique is pulling my hair!

      ANGELIQUE

      Non, Maman, Poubelle a commencé.

      POUBELLE

      Non! Papa, est-ce que vous pouvez dire à Angelique d'arrêter!

      PAPA

      Arrêtez, les filles! Why don't you look outside your windows? Garde le beautiful, big sky. Garde ça instead of ripping each other apart back there.

      POUBELLE

      Papa, where are we? It's so terribly flat.

      PAPA

      The prairies, ma chère.

      POUBELLE

      Flat like a pancake. Pancake land.

      ANGELIQUE

      Flapjack land!

      POUBELLE

      You're a flapjack.

      ANGELIQUE

      You're going to marry a flapjack!

      POUBELLE

      Well, at least I'm getting married. Who'd want you?

      PAPA

      Ça suffit, les filles!

      Lights change.

      BOTH

      Two little girls, one brunette and one blond,

      ANGELIQUE

      Capillaries, cartilage, strengthening bond.

      POUBELLE

      With eyes set in hazel

      ANGELIQUE

      And eyes bathed in blue,

      POUBELLE

      Begging the question, one soul or two?

      ANGELIQUE

      To find the answer we'll use science to gage

      POUBELLE

      What keeps two together in this day and age.

      ANGELIQUE

      No questions for heaven and the powers above,

      POUBELLE

      We'll distill this bond, this liquor called love.

      In the car.

      Maman, ARE WE THERE YET?

      MAMAN

      Why don't you open up your colouring?

      PAPA

      But les filles, do I want to see wax on the upholstery?

      BOTH

      Non, Papa.

      Lights change.

      ANGELIQUE

      Cut it up, dissect it, drained and wrung dry.

      POUBELLE

      In the name of science, we must always ask, why?

      ANGELIQUE

      Slaughter it, butchered like the finest-cut meat.

      POUBELLE

      Love's but a word, we need proof how hearts beat.

      In the car.

      POUBELLE is drawing.

      ANGELIQUE

      Can I see your colouring book?

      POUBELLE shows her.

      You're going outside of the lines, you know.

      POUBELLE

      Je sais. I'm making it better. I'm making it into our house in Montreal. C'est le tree in the front yard. Tu vois?

      ANGELIQUE

      Ah, oui. Can I try one?

      POUBELLE rips out a piece of paper and gives it to her sister.

      This is going to be the car because it feels like we live in here. We've been driving forever! Papa, when are we going to be there?

      PAPA

      At least another twelve hours, ma bleue.

      POUBELLE

      You make one of the car and then we can park it on mine of the house.

      ANGELIQUE

      Okay.

      Lights change.

      POUBELLE

      What's between those twins is where we'll start.

      To find it! Love! We must pull them apart.

      ANGELIQUE

      And the parts joining them one were made two.

      POUBELLE

      Science unkindly undid all of God's glue.

      In the car.

      ANGELIQUE

      Fini!

      POUBELLE

      Let's see. Pretty good. Like my house?

      ANGELIQUE

      Don't forget to put Puss Puss in.

      POUBELLE

      Ah, oui! (draws in the cat) Finis!

      ANGELIQUE

      Maman, 'garde ça! Regarde qu'est-ce qu'on a fait!

      POUBELLE

      Papa, look at Ange and me's drawing.

      MAMAN

      Ange and I, Poubelle—and don't bother your papa when he is trying to drive.

      POUBELLE

      But I just want to show him my drawing.

      She waves it in her father's face.

      ANGELIQUE

      Me too!

      ANGELIQUE waves her picture in her father's face. They are both waving them so it's impossible for him to see the road.

      PAPA

      Arrêtez, les filles! I can't see the road!

      MAMAN

      POUBELLE! ANGELIQUE!

      Lights flash and we hear the sounds of a car crash. The girls fly out of the car in slow motion. The scene is one of horror and confusion. The girls end up lying on the ground, separated. Their parents are gone.

      POUBELLE

      Bruises blushed purple, yellow, and blue.

      ANGELIQUE

      Blood pooling where severed in two.

      The girls are dazed

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