Part 4 had what is usually called the best song of the musical -- but more songs to come and don't forget reprises!!!!
* * *
Okay everyone, warning!!!!!
Watch the dates, times carefully -- we now split the present as well as the future. The schizophrenic author in me appearing. Hope you like this!
* * *
From part 4
And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!
The audience at the Martha Kent Theatre on that evening in April of 2121, all rose to their feet as if one person; and sounds of bravo echoed throughout the auditorium.
Claire wiped the tears from her eyes and beamed with pride, as her father and mother basked in the warmth of the love that flowed from both sides of the footlights.
Now part 5
“Mommy?” the little boy asked, worried, as he climbed up on her lap. “You’re crying.”
“I always cry at this part. Remember?”
##########
Smallville, Kansas
Wednesday,
March 16, 1994
Keith and Anne looked at each other then at Claire. “Are you all right?” Rod asked her, realizing by the catch in her voice that she was close to tears, if not crying already.
“Yes,” Claire insisted. “I’m fine. We’ve got to get started. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“We’ve plenty of time,” Anne told her.
“Miguel Cervantes said,” Claire told the group, “‘There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.’ This *is*...” she emphasized, “...the time for great things.”
Utopia
April,
2121
Back on the stage of the Martha Kent Theatre, the metal dungeon stairs, painted to look rusty began their slow and halting descent as the chains clanged together finally looping around the winch.
Cervantes/Wil: (Uncertainly) That sound...?
The Governor: The Men of the Inquisition.
Cervantes: What does it mean?
Prisoner #1: They’re coming to fetch someone.
Prisoner #2: They’ll haul him off--put the question to him.
Prisoner #3: Next thing he knows--he’s burning!
Cervantes/Wil: Are they coming for me?
The Duke: Very possibly. What, Cervantes? Not afraid?
Cervantes shook his head dumbly.
The Duke: Where’s your courage? Is that in your imagination, too?
Cervantes retreated away with The Duke following inexorably.
The Duke: No escape, Cervantes. This *is* happening. Not to your brave man of La Mancha, but to you. Quick, Cervantes--call upon him. Let him shield you. Let him save you, if he can, from that!
The Duke pointed dramatically toward side of the dungeon which seemingly held the only entrance and exit.
On the stairway the men of the Inquisition appeared. They were robed, hooded, frightening in aspect. Cervantes, paralyzed with fear, only his eyes moving as the two somewhat sunken orbs followed the Inquisitors as they descended into the vault. As the formidable jailers approached Cervantes, the guards paused menacingly, then turned abuptly to open a trap in the floor and drag out a different prisoner. They hauled the enslaved captive up the stairs while the terrified man yelled and struggled. Cervantes sank down on a bench, shaken.
The Governor brought a goatskin of wine to Cervantes who took it with trembling hands and drank deeply.
The Governor: Better?
Cervantes/Wil: (Faintly) Thank you...
The Governor: Good, let’s get on with your defense!
Cervantes/Wil: If I might rest a moment...
The Duke: (With tolerant contempt) This La Mancha--what is it like?
The Governor: An empty place. Great wide plains
Prisoner: A desert.
The Governor: A wasteland.
* * *
Dystopia
December,
2121
The sun came up, yet it was still bleak both within and without the jail cell. Wil Kent walked slowly over to the window. It was too high to look out. If he only had the power to fly--fly? If he had his ancestor’s powers, he could tear apart the cell and leave.
He turned and pulled a wooden stool toward the window and stepped upon it. He looked out.... Nothing. There was a wide expanse of barren earth--no trees, no grass, no flowers--not like the... the world he.... But he was forgetting.... No, he couldn’t let himself forget the Utopia--the Elysium that his family had helped create. It had been a Mecca for the arts; and through the arts, a vision of truth and justice.
Now it had become a wasteland, a shadow of the world he had known. It had metamorphosed from a place of beauty and light to one of desolation and darkness--a void so empty of all he believed in, all he treasured, all he loved.
He heard a sound, a vulture flying by searching, searching. Then another sound, this time not animal--a metallic sound far away. A cell door was opening--not his--perhaps the door to the courtyard that led to the row of cells.
The sounds came closer. Trudging feet, jangling keys once again, whispers.
Several men appeared in front of his cell. They were all dressed in long black robes, their arms folded within the opposite sleeve, hoods covering their heads. He had seen these men before or men like these--somewhere before. Why was it getting harder to remember? Harder to hold on to that dream. He had to remember. Without that memory, he was lost. He had to force himself to remember lights, music, words.... Was he going crazy? Crazy? He had been there--not crazy but...but...
* * *
Utopia,
April,
2121
The Duke: La Mancha apparently grows lunatics.
Cervantes/Wil: I would say, rather...men of illusion.
The Duke: Much the same. Why are you poets so fascinated with madmen?
Cervantes/Wil: I suppose...we have much in common.
The Duke: You both turn your backs on life.
Cervantes/Wil: We both select from life what pleases us.
The Duke: A man must come to terms with life as it is!
Cervantes/Wil: I have lived nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, hunger...cruelty beyond belief. I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets. I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle...or die more slowly under the lash. I have held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words...only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question: ‘Why?’ I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived.
Claire stood in the wings beside her mother who was waiting for her next entrance, their arms around each other. Silently, they were acknowledging the power that Claire’s father and Karen’s husband was holding over the audience. The soul of the actor and the souls of the audience were joining as they all moved from the reality that was the dungeon, to the irrationality, yet singular truth of the madness of Quixote.
Quixote/Wil: When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams--this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be...
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Friday,
March 18, 1994
Clark looked at his government class and picked up a book. “On June 8, 1968, Ted Kennedy gave the following eulogy for his fallen brother, Robert,” he began. Clark opened the book, flipped a few pages and read:
"...Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
Clark perched on the edge of his desk and continued.
“These people moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance..."
Claire stared at her teacher as he continued reading. Clark Kent was exactly as depicted in all of the history books. Imagine a history teacher being written up in history books. But he was so much more than that. Clark Kent was a hero, but not because he was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive or able to bend steel in his bare hands. He wasn’t a hero because he flew around in tights and a cape and foiled the bad guys and rescued those in need. He was a hero because he stood up for what he believed. Although it was the acts of Superman and Lois Lane that founded the Utopia she lived in, it was the spirit of Clark Kent and Lois Lane who created its core values.
Clark stood up and began walking up and down the aisles of his classroom.
Claire refocused on what their teacher was reading.
"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.
"Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."
* * *
Dystopia
November,
2121
“It’s the only way we can live,” Wil said to the members of the underground movement known as ENCORE.
“Yes,” Kia agreed. “We *have* to put on the play again. Even though we will be arrested, we have to do it.”
Kia looked around at her fellow actors. “Remember Augusto Boal and his book ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ where he described a new way of understanding and using theatre. In it," the inflamed woman continued, "he rejected the classical notions of theatre in which the audience's cathartic experiences immobilized them and subjected them to the status quo. Instead...instead..." she said, forcing back the tears, "...he urged oppressed people to become actors instead of spectators, to create solutions by using theatre as a tool--to take solutions rehearsed on stage to political and legal chambers by seeking the creation of laws that will benefit marginalized people who have little to no political representation.”
Larry shook his head. “Of course, Boal’s ideas rouse us to action. But in this world?” he pointed out, as he glanced around at the theatre which lay in ruins around him. “Perhaps the pursuit of art in this world of massive economic, social and legal inequality is simply privileged playing and bemusement? Perhaps art has no value, but as marketable, profitable entertainment? And now it has come to be seen as even less--as not worthy of this world at all.”
“Art and specifically theatre can change this world, any world.” Kia insisted.
“A world without choice, a world without beauty, a world without truth is not *our* world,” Claire told the group.
“We have to stand up to them,” Scott said moving over to take Claire’s hand. “By acting out the parable, we let the people know that they don’t have to live under oppression.”
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Friday
March 18, 1994
Clark looked around at his class as he made his way to the front of the class, and then, although still holding the book, spoke from memory.
"...This is the way he lived. My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
“Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
"As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."
* * *
Dystopia
November
2121
The members of ENCORE held hands and sang the last four lines of ‘The Impossible Dream’.
The sun was setting and the orange hues began casting long shadows on the Smallville Players of 2121. As the dark of night enveloped them, several men broke into their hide-out, grabbed the activists, bound their hands and led them away.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Saturday
March 19, 1994
Jonathan Kent was up on the catwalk adjusting the lights. Two fresnels needed to be gelled again, and one of the elipsoidals’ barn doors needed to be pulled in.
“Do you need some help,” a voice yelled out.
Jonathan looked down from above to see a girl staring up at him.
“I’m Claire Kennedy,” she told him. “Your wife told me you’d be here.”
Jonathan entered the cherry picker and pushed a button. The machine whirred and the box moved down, bringing Jonathan from forty-five feet up to stage level. He stepped out and looked at her, and then glanced around before he spoke.
“You’re the one that H.G. Wells, the writer who supposedly died in 1946, brought with him, right?” he asked incredulously, taking off his work gloves. “I’m still not sure that I believe in....”
“Please believe, Mr. Kent. We need you to.”
“Martha needs to believe. I know that,” he said putting his gloves on a stool nearby. “She wants to be a grandmother and she needs to know that you’re part of her family. Family is so important to her.”
“Well, you have a son from Krypton who flies. That was a hard pill to swallow for some people in your time. Is it so hard to believe that I’m his great, great, great granddaughter come here from the year 2121?”
“And your world has changed because of something Dr. Post is going to do in the next month or so,” Jonathan summed up.
“That’s right.”
Jonathan looked at her. Something in her eyes...
“Please help us.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“You can employ this diagram and assist me to construct an alternative time device,” Wells said as he walked down the aisle of the auditorium. It will take some time to gather the needed commodities, but we are equal to the task and will accomplish this.”
“Clark can help...”
“No, I consider it ill advised that Lois and Clark should informed quite...quite yet,” the writer cautioned. “When I arrived once before, in April of 1994.”
“April?” Jonathan questioned. “It’s only March now.”
“Time Travel is not linear, Mr. Kent. It’s chaotic at best. Be that as it may, when I was here, Dr. Post’s depravity was already at work. His vile undertaking had consequences of cataclysmic proportion--not the least of which was to alter the genetic characteristics of Lois’ unborn child.”
“Lois is pregnant?”
“Not yet, but very soon. And we must prevent that dastardly villain from destroying the future,” he said, taking out his pocket watch and looking at it. “Now I’m here on time. We have an interval of space now provided us to strategize and put this blueprint into action. But before, before...” he ruminated, sadly. “I was too late. The last time I....”
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Wednesday
April 27, 1994
Martha Kent had gotten to the bookstore quite early that morning. Something told her that it was going to be an eventful day and she had much to do. She hadn’t even had a chance to unpack her last shipment of books and shelve them.
Jinx number five, relaxed now in his new home, curled up beside Martha who had squatted down on the floor to begin her work.
Martha opened the box and began to take out the books one by one. This was one of her favorite parts about owning a bookstore--the anticipation as she touched each book and perused the titles that would soon open a child’s eyes to the wonder of the world around him, or bring back bittersweet memories to an older person’s life, or challenge the opinions and beliefs of a stagnant society to see the options that creativity could invoke.
This shipment was no exception. She gazed at the book titles and thought back on the events of the last few months: Chekov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’, Hawthorne’s ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ and H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’.
Martha opened the last book and read a quotation by H.G. Wells on the inside cover of the book jacket. “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
The bell over the door tinkled and Martha looked up surprised. She hadn’t thought she had unlocked the door.
There in front of her stood a diminutive man in a dated suit, and bowler hat. Jinx scooted over and rubbed against the legs of the visitor, welcoming him. The stranger leaned down and stroked the cat, then walked over to the window and opened the curtains to let the spring sunshine in and, smiling turned to cross toward Martha.
“Mrs. Kent,” the man said. “I see you’ve been reading my book.”
“Your book?”
“Yes, Mrs. Kent. I’m H. G. Wells and I’ve come from the future to stop Dr. Post from...”
“Oh, Dr. Post!” Martha exclaimed. “He’s a darn nice guy,” she finished, apparently now totally unconcerned about the man from the future who had appeared suddenly in her bookstore.
“A darn nice...” Wells began and looked over onto the counter where an amber vial labeled: ‘Take three a day for arthritic inflammation -- Dr. Tim Post’, stood next to a carafe of water and a recently used glass.
Martha got up from her position amidst the books and looked at the worried man. “Can I help you find a particular book?” she asked, dazedly and oblivious to Wells’ prior comments.
The diminutive man took out his pocket watch and stared at the dial. “Too late, too late...” Wells intoned and scurried out the door as if he were the white rabbit.
* * *
Utopia
April
2121
On stage of the Martha Kent Theatre, the Smallville Players were reaching the climax of their last performance of ‘Man of La Mancha’.
Aldonza was backing away from the gang of muleteers. As she moved, a pain shot through Karen Kent’s body. Something was wrong. She was only four months pregnant, barely showing; but in the flowing, yet tattered, costume she wore, the audience was unaware of the wonderful condition she was in. Karen and Wil had been surprised when at age 47 and 44, they found they were expecting another child.
Karen clutched her abdomen, and took a deep breath. Her important scene was coming up. She had to get through this.
The muleteers pushed Aldonza to the ground and ran out.
Aldonza crawled toward a pail of water and putting in a cloth, wet it and then washed her face. The cool water felt good on Karen’s brow. The pain began to subside somewhat. She bit her lower lip. <Just let me make it. I have to!!> she thought, looking into the wings and seeing her husband standing there.
A shot of concern flashed in his eyes as he awaited his entrance.
Karen took another breath.
Innkeeper: (Horrified at Aldonza’s bruises and her tattered rags) Aldonza! What happened?
Aldonza/Karen: (Seeing Quixote enter) Ask him.
Don Quixote/Wil: I shall punish them that did this crime.
Aldonza/Karen: Crime! You know the worst crime of all? Being born. For that you get punished your whole life!
Don Quixote/Wil: Dulcinea--
Aldonza/Karen: Enough of that! Get yourself to a madhouse. Rave about nobility where no one can hear!
Don Quixote/Wil: My lady--
Aldonza/Karen: (Passionately) I am not your lady! I am not any kind of a lady! (Singing)
I was spawned in a ditch by a mother who left me there
Naked and cold and too hungry to cry;
I never blamed her, I’m sure she left hoping
That I’d have the good sense to die!
Then, of course, there’s my father--I’m told that young ladies
Can point to their father with maidenly pride;
Mine was some regiment here for an hour,
I can’t even tell you which side!
So of course I became, as befitted my delicate birth,
The most casual bride of the murdering scum of the earth!
Don Quixote/Wil: And still thou art my lady.
Aldonza/Karen: And still he torments me! Lady! How should I be a lady? (She rises to her knees and sings)
For a lady has modest and maidenly airs
And a virtue I somehow suspect that I lack;
It’s hard to remember those maidenly airs
In a stable laid flat on your back.
Aldonza, still on her knees, moved closer to Quixote.
Won’t you look at me, look at me, God, won’t you look at me,
Look at the kitchen slut reeking of sweat!
Born on a dung heap to die on a dung heap,
A strumpet men use and forget!
If you feel that you see me not quite at my virginal best,
Cross my palm with a coin and I’ll willingly show you the rest.
Don Quixote/Wil: (Kneeling down across from her and saying tenderly) Never deny, thou art Dulcinea.
Aldonza/Karen: (Standing up and even more frantically, walking away two steps and then turning back to face him.) Take the clouds from your eyes and see me as I really am! (Singing)
You have shown me the sky, but what good is the sky
To a creature who’ll never do better than crawl?
Of all the cruel bastards who’ve badgered and battered me,
You are the cruelest of all!
Can’t you see what your gentle insanities do to me?
Rob me of anger and give me despair!
Blows and abuse I can take and give back again,
Tenderness I cannot bear!
So please torture me now with your ‘Sweet Dulceneas’ no more!
I am no one! I’m nothing! I’m only Aldonza the whore!
Karen clenched her fists and sank to the floor.
Wil watched her and although the direction called for her to collapse, this was one line too early.
Don Quixote/Wil: (Crawling toward her) Now and forever thou art my lady Dulcinea!
At this point, Aldonza was to scream out ‘Nooooo!!!!’. There was a scream, but it came from Wil’s lips.
* * *
Smallville, Kansas
Wednesday
April 27, 1994
H.G. Wells knocked on the door of Lois and Clark’s home. He looked down at his watch. He knew he was late--but maybe there was a chance.
Clark opened the door. The little man pushed his way in. “I’ve no time to explain. Where’s Miss Lane errr Mrs. Kent?”
Not knowing why, but sensing the alarm in the man’s eyes, Clark allowed him in. “She’s upstairs. What is it?”
“She hasn’t...she hasn’t..."
The sound of Lois’ body hitting the floor, brought the two men up the stairs. Using super speed, Clark arrived before the older man.
“Nooooo!” Clark shouted and knelt beside her.
Alongside Lois’ outstretched hand was the amber bottle that read: Take one a day with breakfast. Dr. Tim Post.
tbc
***********
