What if literature and spoken words could help us understand ‘what is’ in a way that western science never could? What if freedom of thought and expression was what we needed to break our mind-frames and build new connections? Happy strolling through our Word Forest!
An excerpt from Ushuaia Blue – A play by Caridad Svich
Ushuaia Blue premieres in July 2020 at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival
SARA
So, your great-great-great uncle Luka was a sailor?
PEPA
Sheep farmer, actually.
SARA
What?
PEPA
In my family, there are two kinds: fishermen and farmers of sheep.
SARA
So, you…
PEPA
I stopped farming a long time ago. Hurt my back.
And the fish – I leave them alone now.
SARA
You’ve given up?
PEPA
I don’t give up on nature. Perhaps nature has given up on me. Like with you.
SARA
What do you-?
PEPA
You come here looking at nature, looking for answers.
SARA
It’s not like that
PEPA
But nature knows. It knows more than all us put together.
Our job is to wait. To listen. To perhaps not understand
SARA
Do nothing?
PEPA
I didn’t say that.
SARA (continuing)
When right here, folks are extracting more oil than they should, destabilizing what’s already fragile and you’re-
PEPA
I’m not talking about what we poor miserable humans do.
I’m talking about nature.
SARA
What we do affects-
PEPA
Look, when you trek through the ice, out there on the peninsula, what do you hear?
SARA
Sorry?
PEPA
What do you hear?
SARA
Wind.
PEPA
Whoosh, whoosh?
SARA
Sometimes.
PEPA
Uncle Luka heard it too. Even though he was tending to his sheep.
The same wind, the same sound.
SARA
So, you’re saying no matter how hard we try to-?
PEPA
My mother used to say to me “Pepa, don’t try to divine the world.”
SARA
In science-
PEPA
In science, in math, in music, in sheep and fish and even penguins,
there will always be something that will remain unknown. Take comfort in it.
Caridad Svich is an American playwright based in New York. She received the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement, 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits, based on Isabel Allende’s novel, and NNPN rolling world premieres for RED BIKE and Guapa. Her works in English and Spanish have been produced internationally. She is founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, and is associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review for Routledge UK. She is published by TCG, Methuen Drama, and Intellect UK, among others.