Play Excerpt: Denmarked

Select scenes from 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival play, a one-woman clown show loosely based on Hamlet

TWEED speaks Prologue from behind the drawbridge. YORICK is onstage with The Strickery.

TWEED: One deathly mark, devoid all dignity,
In hyper Denmark where we lay our scene,
It came in vengeance, swift in brevity,
One ill-fated eve, now the memory be green.

This night it makes the wise ones become fools,
Extinguishing the wick of soul and sense,
Dividing city into good and ghoul,
This story’s wacky unfolding events.

But feast is found and Denmark digs a grave,
The dark mark snuffs out love and laugh and light,
And casts its night upon our star-crossed knave,
The clown: our bravest, golden, shining knight.

But prologue does not make a prophecy,
So ‘tend what Yorick’s skull cannot foresee.

___________________________________________________________

TWEED makes a short ticking sound with her mouth. She ticks again. She reaches for her flashlight. Her hand shakes and outstretches; TWEED slowly begins to transform into the DENMARK, moving from her upright position to a crouched, curved, menacing one.

DENMARK enters the audience and surveys, insults and mimics them. The DENMARK pulls out a miniature Casio keyboard and turns on a beat. It is the wrong beat (a nursery rhyme and something suitably sweet plays), so DENMARK turns around to adjust it to the right beat.  DENMARK raps.

DENMARK:   Time is out of joint, so here’s my drift.
                       Hear my bad tune, it ain’t no sonnet.
 I be rottin’ your state of Denmark,
Haunting your dreams in the deep and dark.

                        I crack an egg on your Hamlet,
turn her into an omelette,
‘Cause she’s too much in the sunnyside,
All Carebear clown and wide-eyed.

                        Your bloke is yolk, all runny at the core.
Why did you give her that princess crown for?
Your Tweedy bird all she does is chirp chirp.
Goes to roar, comes out a burp.

Her best friend’s a skull, a jester at that.
Sad mentor, hang up your sonneteer’s hat.
You are flapping your gums without a jaw.
Heed my words to give you something to gnaw.

You’re all so nice.
If you had apple pie you'd give me a slice.
Castle Elsinore, more like Elsi-Snore.
Wanna have fun? Step through my door.

___________________________________________________________

TWEED grabs a fistful of pasghetti and offers it to YORICK. (Pause) He can’t exactly chew it himself so she stuffs the giant wad in her mouth, chewing it for him like a mother with a baby bird. She pulls it out and shoves the pasghetti in Yorick’s mouth. It falls right through him and onto the floor. She shoves the pasghetti into his skull forcefully, but with the intention to be kind and helpful. She pulls out YORICK’s meatball eye and throws it in the air and onto the floor.

TWEED gnaws on the tail end of the wad that’s in YORICK’s mouth. She continues to draw more of it into her mouth until the strand connects them in an awkward but sweet kiss. They separate and the pasghetti falls out of her mouth in a messy, drool-filled puddle on the floor.

She picks up the tail end of the pasghetti strand and uses it as a microphone.

TWEED (into the pasghetti microphone): Hi.

She listens into the pasghetti microphone end and jumps at what she hears. The pasghetti microphone is now a telephone and YORICK is on the other end.

She can now channel the voice of YORICK through the pasghetti telephone.

TWEED (into telephone/microphone): Yorick.

YORICK:         Tweed, my most best friend, my clown iron chef,
                        Did you remember my food allergy?
                        Is this rice pasta? Buckwheat? Maybe teff?

(TWEED shakes her head ‘no.’)

YORICK:         Alas no, now the gluten will kill me.
                        Gouged out my eye like a big pizza pie,
                        Rolled onto the floor like a meatball glare.           
                    Poor Yorick dies again. I choke. I die.
                        ‘Twas not the way to go. Poo. How unfair.
                        Promise to remember me, swear swear swear.
                        Lean in close as I make my one last breath
                        To tell you the meaning of life, beware,
                        To tell you what happens after our death.
                        O! splutter splutter cough cough and splutter. . .

(YORICK makes horrible wrenching noises.)

TWEED taps the telephone, listening to see if there’s any sign of YORICK. Nothing. She frantically pulls out all the pasghetti that’s in him. She goes back to listen. Nothing. TWEED takes YORICK and the telephone out into the audience:

TWEED (to an audience member): Can you hear anything?

TWEED (to another audience member): Can you hear anything?

TWEED asks one more audience member. Eventually, she should hold the pasghetti strand like an ECG line, perhaps even getting the audience member to do it with her. This becomes YORICK’s dying heartbeat.

TWEED: Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Pause.

TWEED sings: On top of pasghetti all covered with cheese,
                         I lost my poor Yorick to food allergies.
                         He rolled off the stage and onto the floor             
                         And then my poor Yorick was Yorick no more.