WAYNE L. FIRESTONE

The Mirror

                    

FATHER and SON approach two sides of a mirror (with no glass). The audience sees the two enter the stage and begin a dialogue with each other both seeing themselves as their reflections in the mirror.          

SON: I did not realize that this is what I look like... now. FATHER: The mirror is hostage to his image.
SON: Maybe it was obvious. For years, people have told us we look alike. We grew up in the same house after all. FATHER: A house is not a poem.
SON: Then what is a house?
FATHER: A house is something people live in.
SON: And what is a poem? 
FATHER: A poem is something that people live out.
SON: I like that.
FATHER: Jack and Jill were just looking for a poem.
SON: Maybe they found it rolling down the hill.
FATHER: I mean my life is not a map of the world.
SON: Everyone sort of needs to draw their own map. Some do it their whole lives.
FATHER: My life isn’t a sanctuary from the future. I can’t even remember my own history.
SON: Maybe better to look at your future than remember your history sometimes.
FATHER: I keep strokin’.
SON: What would you like to know?
FATHER: Why he looked at things the way he did.
SON: Like what?
FATHER; What about Aesop’s fables?
SON: I didn’t know you read them. They are kids stories. What else?
FATHER: Being Batman or even Robin.
SON: More kids stories.
FATHER: A guitar playing Texan who was afraid to leave Texas.
SON: I don’t think I ever heard about him before. Is that Mr. Gray?
FATHER: No, I never saw the Texan again after hearing him play acoustic guitar. Mr. Gray is another story.
SON: He lived right here near us right?
FATHER: He tried to live in a house and a poem.
SON: And how did that work out?
FATHER: The straw man talks to the Pope of Fools.
SON: And what does the Straw Man tell the Pope of Fools? FATHER: Quit your job at the morgue and follow the moon... SON: Funny, that is exactly what I did.
FATHER: You’re no fool.
SON: Neither are you.  
FATHER: He’s mixing politics with barley soup.
SON: The Pope of Fools?
FATHER: He’s a good ol' fashioned pioneer of aesthetic grave digging.
SON: I see. 
FATHER: He’s got a list of questions about the day of judgment.
SON: I’d like to see that list some time. 
FATHER: Just ask him.
SON Who would you ask about Judgment Day?
FATHER: The Cherokee who told me to sky paint flowers. SON: In a perfect world, maybe.
FATHER: The world is perfect when there is no victory and no loss, only hope.
SON: People are struggling without hope now. They need a place to find hope.
FATHER: Pablo found a place to find it, but he understood that the only way to see the Guernica is to feel oneself into its center. 
SON: Some just need food, shelter, and a little love.
FATHER: I believe an equally challenging trial for a father is providing food when the children ask for it, but then giving nothing when asked serious questions related to life.
SON: I should be more careful in the questions that I ask.
FATHER: It’s easier in person.
SON: Or when you are looking in a mirror. 
FATHER: And see something familiar. 
SON: That you might have missed along the way.
FATHER: Or merely forgotten you had asked the right questions, even if they were not asked in the right order.
SON: Seems like something the Cherokee might understand. FATHER: Or maybe his son. 

END OF PLAY

 

 

Dedicated to my father Bruce Firestone

 

 

 

 

                                                                          

       

           

         

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