Truth and Reconciliation

So, this is a piece I wrote for an upcoming drama assessment. It was to be in the Theatre of the Absurd Genre and was to centre around injustice. I used Hilltop Hoods' Fifty In Five, which is a song that gives the history of the past 50 years in five minutes, Linkin Park's Wisdom, Justice and Love, Martin Luther King Jr, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK and Plato as inspiration. If you don't like it, please tell me. This is just me trying to exert some frustration with a muddle of ideas that don't quite fit together, as I'm the one who usually writes my groups pieces due to my involvement and experiments in writing. There's room to make it more absurdist and I'm not exactly sure if it's long enough (meant to be 8 - 10 minutes). Anyway, give it a read and please critique.

Everyone is sitting in the middle of the stage, around an invisible fire. It is cold, and they are obviously exhausted.

ETHAN: We’ve spent a thousand night times in this desert.

BRIDEY: (without effort) What are we fighting?

Everyone is confused, and no one can answer.

HARLAN: Something that we can’t find.

CHELSEA: (annoyed) Well, that’s convenient, that makes it something that we can’t fight!

RILIEGH: We fight for justice!

ETHAN: Against justice?

RILEIGH: In favour of justice.

Everyone contemplates this for a while before sharing a loud and heavy sigh.

HARLAN: (blankly) This is the second time.

BRIDEY: We’ve been here before?

HARLAN: We have, but I haven’t.

ETHAN: Nor have I.

CHELSEA: I haven’t!

BRIDEY: I’ve never!

HARLAN: But, we all agree we’ve been here before, without being here.

ALL: Ahhh, heeereee!

Everyone shares a laugh before going back to being bored.

BRIDEY: What’s justice?

No one is quite sure.

ETHAN: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

ALL: Eisenhower!

RILEIGH: I know not what justice is, only what justice is not.

ALL: Plato!

HARLAN: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

ALL: Martin Luther King!

CHELSEA: Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, fairness, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics.

ALL: Wikipedia!?

BRIDEY: No good, I’m afraid, won’t do at all.

CHELSEA: And why?

BRIDEY: How can we fight for justice if we don’t know what it is?

Everyone is rather melancholy, they take their seats again and ponder. HARLAN has drifted to upstage.

HARLAN: We fight to gain justice.

ALL: Yes?

HARLAN: And we always fight.

ETHAN: We fight often.

RILEIGH: Frequently.

CHELSEA: Repeatedly.

BRIDEY: Habitually.

HARLAN: So, one follows, that if we always fight to gain justice, and never cease fighting, justice is never gained.

RILEIGH: I know not was justice is… Justice never has been…

ETHAN: We fight for something that has never been?

CHELSEA: Of course. No two men are born equal! Birth is not just, or fair. Imagine.

(BRIDEY and ETHAN become a mother and son, while RILEIGH and HARLAN become another mother and son. CHELSEA speaks whilst watching them.)

CHELSEA: Both are boys. Both are human. He, (she points to ETHAN happily) Will be a decorated war hero, a vegetarian, will not smoke or drink, and will never have any extramarital affairs. He, (she points to HARLAN and her words turn to venom) will be fired from his adult job twice, rise from bed at 11am, use opium in college and drink champagne, brandy, and whiskey to excess every day.

The mothers, at hearing the prophecy of their sons act accordingly. CHELSEA approaches the boys and leads them to the centre.

CHELSEA: What are your names?

HARLAN: Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.

ETHAN: Adolf Hitler.

BRIDEY: What makes something like that happen?

RILEIGH: Two people start out equal, diverge so greatly…

ETHAN: And come to represent the most polar opposites of good and evil.

HARLAN: It’s simple.

Everyone looks for an explanation.

HARLAN: We can’t even look at ourselves.

ALL: We’ve got Saline, Botox, eighteen; fake tits, nineteen; detox.

Don’t stop, get it, get it.

Can’t afford it? Get it, credit.

Buy it, spend it, try it, getting fat?

Better shed it.

RILEIGH: And we’re here, trying to fight for justice, when there’s none back home.

BRIDEY: The injustice we fight isn’t confined to just the big things on the news.

ETHAN: It’s the little injustices that destroy us.

CHELSEA: Why are we so… (pause) ignorant?

HARLAN: (yells ferociously) RUN!

Look. Didn’t even move. Don’t even realise they’re in danger.

RILEIGH: Don’t even realise their own injustice.

BRIDEY: We can fix it!

CHELSEA: Reconcile it!

ETHAN: Conquer it!

Each step forward, and begin to recite the following quote. As they repeat the final words, the voices become louder, more and more robotic and electronic. One by one, they shut down like robots with their batteries pulled out in the order that they joined the quote, with HARLAN. Eventually only Ethan remains until he drops out too.

HARLAN: I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice... A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, (joined by BRIDEY) 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, (joined by RILEIGH) of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, (joined by CHELSEA) of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields (joined by ETHAN) physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love...

ALL: Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love...