January 30 Play: GREEN HARVEST

30: GREEN HARVEST - by Ed Valentine
© January 30, 2010 * ed@edvalentine.com

LIGHTS: Morning. Fading into night by the end of the brief play. Dirt. Set into it, one small shoot of green leaves, not too large.

2 WOMEN in flowered dresses. Floppy hats. WOMAN A is tending to the soil. WOMAN B is watching from behind.

A: How’s your harvest?

B: Poor this year.

A: Mine as well. All the frost.

B: Ayup.

A: The frost was early. Not good for nothing.

B: Or nobody.

A: Ayup.

B: But mine isn’t ever any good. Been years since I’ve grown anything. Years. Don’t know if you knew. Did you know?

A: -

B: Still, you have a fertile plot of land. If anyone can grow anything –

A: Let’s hope!

B: If anyone can grow anything, it’s you.

A: We’ll see.

B: I wish I had your prowess.

A: It isn’t easy. Growing, I mean. It isn’t easy to do this. It isn’t easy to bring forth from seed to reaping. Year after year, season after season, through the frost and the flood, the heat to the harvest. It isn’t easy what I do.

B: At first, it seemed to me like the easiest thing in the world. At first. But its mysteries elude me.

A: Well, what can I say. Some do, some don’t, is all.

B: I suppose.

A: Some do, some don’t.

(Small rustling in the dirt, under the green shoot of leaves.)

Here.

(She pulls on the leaf: a green man comes out of the earth, wet and panting. The leaf is his hair. Strange lights. He lies on the ground.

First of the season.

(The 2 WOMEN approach the green man. He flinches. They back off.)

B: Oh how I envy you.
I envy you, and how.

A: Some do, some don’t.

(She cradles and coos to the green man.)

There there. There there.

(Lights fade.)


END OF PLAY.