CHARACTERS:

Peter - a playwright

Angela - a painter

Kimki - a dancer

(NOTE: these roles need not be gender specific, their names can be changed to fit whatever available casting)

As the audience walks in to find their seats, Kimki, an impoverished dancer, stands center stage. She is completely still and unflinching, arms at her side, staring straight ahead. Lights dim on the audience and come up on stage. Angela enters.

Angela: (Gesturing with paintbrush) This isn't emotion. (Gesturing to blank canvas) This isn't art. (Back to the brush) There are miles between those who can use this and those who can't. But there's an additional galaxy between the people who hold brushes and the artists. A galaxy is a long way to cross - so you start walking and you hope for a wormhole. (She sits down and paints)

Kimki: Movement. Line. Rhythm. Texture. Balance. Strength. Simplicity. Action. Emotion. The fountainhead. Life. The purpose of life. This body. This (she makes a movement, pauses, smiles knowingly to the audience).

Lights shift. Peter enters. As he gives his passionate mission statement, Kimki begins an interpretive dance.

Peter: I tread in worlds that never were - existing always in a place that is all places. I am the theatre and the theatre is me. I thrive in the brilliant illumination of shadows and cry the tears of all past centuries.

     I am a writer. I have given my life so that I may create others. I have given my life and been granted a universe in return. I long to live on an epic scale. But I am insignificant. I am ugly. I am a flickering shadow of inferiority desperate to steal the tiniest glimpse at those magnificent souls I long to write about. I am not them, nor could I be, but because I make them possible, of them I am a part.

Peter disappears, Kimki goes back to her original position. A gunshot is heard - Kimki crumples to the ground. The lights shift. Peter returns, covers Kimki with a sheet... Apartment.

Peter: Kimki's dead.

Angela: (turns to stare at him) What?

Peter: She's dead. Shot. Drive by...pointless.

Angela: Oh god. That's terrible.

Peter: She was the best among us. She was...a true artist. So much better than the rest of us. She was good and kind and amazing - she didn't just hear a piece of music - she could be it.

     I'll always remember her - always moving. She was so passionate about movement. It was her reason to exist.

     We shouldn't have lost her.

Angela: (wiping a tear from her eye) No.

Peter: Her parents are flying down. They'll be the ones to bury her. God - a church and then a graveyard. The two places that Kimki would never go, and there she'll say good-bye and lay down forever.

Angela: Peter...

Peter: You know, people from all over the city have signed up for the dance class she used to teach. People she knew and people the people she knew knew. She brought them together - shared her art with them. Funny that it only happened after...

     That's why she was so amazing. She died for her art. She's a champion for her art. We could all learn so much from her.

Angela: It's sounds like you're going to make a martyr of her.

Peter: She deserves it.

Angela: Peter, she didn't die for her art. She just died.

Peter: (pause) Yes. That's the worst part! In a month that dance class will be just as empty as it was a week ago. All that blood - all the tears - it'll mean nothing.

When I die, I want it to be for a reason. I want to die for my plays. For my art. I think every artist deserves that.

Angela: To die for their art?

Peter: Yeah.

Angela: I think you're being ridiculous.

Peter: Okay, what would you die for?

Angela: I don't want to die for anything. Why are you being so morbid?

Peter: Not morbid! Don't you understand? She's gone! She's dead! And what does it mean? What did her life amount to? She was an artist that never had the chance to create anything lasting. She'll get a month-long memorial and then nothing. Was she even here - did she exist? No one will know because she never left anything behind. No, you're right, she didn't die for her art, she died before her art.

Angela: Calm down. That's just life.

Peter: Oh my god. You don't care at all. She's dead and you don't care.

Angela: I do -

Peter: You don't understand. No one does. Well, it's not going to happen to me. I won't let it.

Angela: Peter -

Peter: No - stop! (he grabs her paintbrush and throws it across the room) You couldn't possibly understand what I'm going through. You're not an artist - you can't be. How can you create art when you feel nothing? You go against everything that makes art sacred. Telling me to calm down - to accept death - to not make my friend's life mean something!

     You're not an artist. Not now. Do you even want to be? Do you have what it takes? Are you ready to give your life to be a painter? Are you ready to let it consume your entire being? Are you ready to die for it? Ha! A bunch of empty paintings. That's your life's work.

Peter storms out and Angela is left alone. She continues to paint for a moment. Her strokes become more and more ferocious until she is attacking the canvas in her anger, misery, and grief. Lights out, she exits. Lights shift. As Peter begins to speak, Kimki stands up and begins to dance across the stage. If it's possible, she should be wearing something that suggests wings.

Peter: I am the theatre and the theatre is me. I am the roar of opening night, I am the blood pumping through nervous veins. I am the passion of death and the revelry of laughter. For the nobility of this art I would give my entire existence - for what else is art but the ripping apart of one's soul to reveal the blood and guts of a beautiful story. Art does not exist without this self-mutiny. But art is worth it.

Kimki dances off stage. The lights shift. Angela and Peter return to their apartment.

Angela: You're back. I haven't seen you since...

Peter: No. (long pause)

     I was in the hospital for awhile. Too many pills. I came so close to dying. Strange. It seemed like living at the time.

Roger died. And Yvonne. AIDS. Pointless.

Angela: Oh god.

Peter: They're telling me something. I can almost hear them screaming at me - to hurry. Kimki was twenty-three. Roger was twenty-six and Yvonne was twenty-five. I'm twenty-five. I'm twenty-five and I still haven't written a great play. I could die at any moment, I nearly did, and I haven't written a great play. I'm so afraid.

     I've been going out every night. I need something to write about so I've been looking. Watching. But I can't find a story. I've looked in alleys, in homes, in parks. In drugs. I'm looking for a story, but all I find is death. I can't write about death.

Angela: You're not making any sense. You can't live your life being transfixed with death. Write about life. Tell me about all the people you've seen.

Peter: (scoffs) There you go again, being completely insensitive. Hey, I know the lives of your friends mean nothing to you. Don't mind me, I'm just dying.

Angela: You're not dying -

Peter: I am! You still don't get it! Every moment I'm not writing my play is another moment that I'm dying! I can feel my brain boiling inside me until all I can hold in there is one thought - I must write. It's insane! I want to write, but I can't find anything worthy. So, I'm dying. Can't you smell the decay?

     I'm a flower wilting, I'm a river being polluted. I'm a fallen leaf, shaken and brittle, moments from being stepped on and ground into oblivion.

Angela: There you go again, speaking poetry instead of writing it. Tell me what you're -

Peter: I can't write that. My plays can't be about that. I need an epic - I need love that would topple all of New York. I need flames and desires and betrayal and a hero so strong that the morning quakes -

Angela: Why, Peter? Why are you doing this to yourself? You can't wait for something worthy to come along - you want to spend your life writing, so fucking write already.

Peter: You're missing the entire point of inspiration -

Angela: You can't be inspired if you're not working to begin with.

Peter: Don't be an idiot. I'm a writer - I don't work, I observe.

Angela: Okay, observe! What else have you been doing but watching people and letting them live for you? Maybe you are dying, but it's your fault.

Peter: Christ, what do you know? I can't just write anything. I have so much to do. I have so much to live up to - Kimki's death. Roger's, Yvonne's. I want to give my life to them - you can't possibly understand.

Angela: No, you don't understand. You're trying to give your death to art. That makes no sense. Art isn't something we extract from the corpses we find on the streets - it isn't something we create by draining our own blood. Find me ghosts that make use of art - find me graves that contain inspiration.

     Why are you doing this to yourself? You're storing up everything as though to hog it for yourself - how is that art? Share it with everyone - share it with me. Show me what's out there. Show me its beauty and its pain. Show me. Teach me. Include me.

     Art is life. Do you understand? Stop thinking about their deaths and write about their lives. You want to create? Be here. Be now. Be what she didn't get to be.

She exits. Peter is frustrated. He walks to her paintings and violently goes through them - and finds a portrait of Kimki, blurred with motion and full of passion. He is awestruck, it is a portrait full of life, he cries. The lights shift. Kimki returns, strikes a pose.

Peter: (faltering, with difficult) I am the theatre and the theatre is me. I...I'm...

     My god, I'm wasting time.

He can't continue and Kimki comes to him, gives him a hug and going offstage. He is inspired, he has so much to say suddenly that he doesn't know which direction to run first. He sits down with paper and writes feverishly. Lights out.