Wakefulness of a Winter Morning Alchemical Intergenerational Song

grown-ups

We follow brother Žaži and sister Lenka, caught in the story of a family they don’t really know but remember through premonitions. The text jumps between their childhood, when they grew up without a mother, and the present, when their father is at the maternity hospital with his new wife expecting the newest member of the family. The birth of a new soul is getting closer, and Žaži must get in touch with his sister, who hasn’t spoken to her father for several years and has fled abroad as a rebel to a war-torn country. Through poetic play and Old Slavic symbolism and rituals, the text searches for connections between the unspoken memories of ancestors and the helplessness that permeates the present. It wonders about the pain that is invisibly carried through time, imagination and delusion and about the love that is supposed to exist between those closest to us.

WILD WOMAN
It was during the Shrovetide.
And yes, he was a bit bleak,
but it was the carnival.
That's when he came to take my hand me.
 

HORNY MAN: That’s how it used to be done. We took the time for a wedding to chase away winter and to make a family.

Perhaps the drunken crowd is cheering. In their essence, they resemble a kind of a choir supporting HORNY MAN’s story. Meanwhile, YOUNG SOUL is watching.

Unlike today, when everyone just shacks up, and families fall apart overnight, right?

GOLDEN FATHER: Yes, Papa, everything’s different now. Grandpapa always has to have the final word.

HORNY MAN: I’m the one who tamed the animal in the heart. I’m the master.

DRUNK AUNT: Our papa is, how shall I put it...
DEAD GRANDPAPA: The hero of our valley. The king, Vladimir - Vlado, Theseus, Grandpapa, or to her, just Husband.

WILD WOMAN is dancing.

DRUNK AUNT: ...an enterprising man, he’s a self-made man, and although he was an orphan, he knew he’d get a good girl to be his wife.
LENKA: papa, papa, what’s going on, who’re these people?
GOLDEN FATHER: That’s how people used to dress up for Shrovetide. That one is called a kurent, but I don’t know the others.
DEAD GRANDPAPA: These are the carol singers from all over the country who put on scary masks of demons and animals to chase away winter.
LENKA: papa, I want to be a kurent too.
HORNY MAN: Only men are allowed to wear these masks because the old gods hide in them and take over their bodies. It’s too dangerous for girls.
 

The crowd cheers and chants drunkenly. Perhaps they notice PALE MOM and start to focus on her. YOUNG SOUL is watching.
 

WILD WOMAN: That’s what tradition teaches us.
LENKA: But why? Why is Žaži allowed to dress up like that?
ŽAŽI: I don’t want to. They’re scary.
LENKA: It’s not fair. He doesn’t even want to.
PALE MOTHER: I can’t take it anymore.
 

WILD WOMAN
I’m the one who knows the secrets
whispered to the first woman
the one who knows
what is Father birth and what is
Mother death
When we should worship each of them

when curse them

These mysteries my flesh holds

my palm burns them into my veins   
my eyes bring them back to my memory
my love bestows them to eternity

Vesna.
I used to be Vesna.
Perhaps the crowd of people begin to woo PALE MOTHER with their gestures

DEAD GRANDPAPA: The Queen, Spring, Amazon, great-grandmother, or, for him, just his Wife.
HORNY MAN: What a name. She comes from an old family, blood older than the woods, they would say. She caught my eye at once. How heads would turn if one were to marry her. She will be mine, I said to myself. The last unmarried daughter. All her sisters already had a couple of children each.
DRUNK AUNT: Good genes, they’d say today.
DEAD GRANDPAPA: They also say: never say never.
DRUNK AUNT: She had bright ginger hair and she would turn the men down as soon as they turned up on her doorstep. She didn’t care about how much they were worth nor how many children they wanted from her. She looked them in the eyes without a shadow of shame and saw it clearly. And her father let her do that.
DEAD GRANDPAPA: Until he turned up.
 

The crowd of people cheers loudly and continue to woo PALE MOTHER

WILD WOMAN is dancing
YOUNG SOUL is watching

WILD WOMAN
The little man had no idea of the magnitude
of his own impotence
outside his time
he thought that the times determine his rights
that reach into the lungs
that he could see the truth instead of the show

DEAD GRANDPAPA: The first hour was passing by.
DRUNK AUNT: I find it so nice that people used to meet at masked balls! All the bodies spinning around and around, trying to finding their chosen one on the dance floor!
HORNY MAN: She would dance and spin with anyone who dared to approach her. But sooner or later, each of them would give up. And I just kept watching.
GOLDEN FATHER: My grandmother, your great-grandmother had incredible eyes. I never heard her speak, but she had a way of looking at me that made me feel her underneath my skin.

WILD WOMAN
A peasant, I thought.
Not the right kind.
The suburban kind.
The kind that thinks he can dance,
but all they do is squirm.
The kind that thinks he knows how to deal with people,
but all he does is spin them around.
LENKA: papa, why do the women in our family keep dying younger and younger?
 

We see the crowd of people holding up PALE MOTHER, worshipping her and passing her to each other as they dance

GOLDEN FATHER: That’s not true at all. Your great-grandmother lived to be almost seventy. And her sisters all lived to be a hundred.
LENKA: But what about auntgranny? What about your mother? Their lives were much shorter. Will I also die young?
GOLDEN FATHER: That’s enough, Lenka, you’re too young to be asking such questions.
DEAD GRANDPAPA: The third hour was passing.
 

Some of the people in the bunch slowly stop dancing with PALE MOTHER. WILD WOMAN is dancing.

DRUNK AUNT: She saw her father sitting at a table with hunched shoulders.

DEAD GRANDPAPA: The fifth hour was passing.

The last one of the bunch puts PALE MOTHER back into her seat and moves away
 

DRUNK AUNT: As the party was slowly ending, when she was almost left alone on the dance floor, papa put on a mask and joined her.
WILD WOMAN
He threw his gold at my feet
he spoke of new stars
and I nearly puked all over him
while he was forcing himself on me
as he was trying to find a way into my heart

with his metal tongue

DRUNK AUNT: She was playing coy.
DEAD GRANDPAPA: The hero of our valley.
DRUNK AUNT: And they danced.
GREEN GEORGE
A single whisper
in the right moment
can break the fiercest dog

and quell the flame of the craziest party.

what is the step of a young dancer

to such a whisper

WILD WOMAN is dancing
HORNY MAN: Your father served me sausages.

The crowd of people are cheering
The YOUNG SOUL is watching
DEAD GRANDPAPA: If the parents served tea or sour milk, this meant that they rejected the groom’s offer. But if they served sausages...
DRUNK AUNT: I adore weddings!
DEAD GRANDPAPA: The deal was sealed.