Directed by Adam Sussman
Featuring Anna Bullard and Melissa Ortiz
ANGELA A female employee at a marginal restaurant.
CARLIE Her friend; also a female employee at the same restaurant.
CARLIE and ANGELA in the back of a marginal restaurant:
CARLIE
Sorry. I still completely don’t believe in angels.
ANGELA
But what about my mom, and that time she saw–
CARLIE
Nope.
ANGELA
Or that time when I was driving back from LA, and–
CARLIE
Nope.
ANGELA
I’m not sure I can work with you anymore. I’m really sad.
CARLIE
Well, you got about… (checks) five minutes to work that out, ’cause we’re almost off break.
ANGELA
Fine. I wasn’t going to show you this because this is kind-of my special secret, but actually now I am. I’m going to show you my secret angel place.
CARLIE
Okay.
ANGELA
But you have to be serious.
CARLIE
I’m serious as a retaining-wall right now. Look at me.
ANGELA
I don’t actually honestly know what happens. There’s just a place next to the walk-in fridge where when I stand there, the world kind-of disappears, and I don’t know what happens, I just wake up feeling very… emotional.
CARLIE
Uh huh. Isn’t that just your normal state?
ANGELA
And actually I was going to show it to you because I want you to tell me what it looks like from outside my head, but now that you don’t believe in angels I don’t even know if I want to, except maybe it will make you believe me so I guess I will.
CARLIE
Be my guest. If you do anything weird I’ll take pictures.
ANGELA walks to a special area next to the walk-in fridge. For some reason, she starts speaking some lines from Richard III. She does this without irony:
ANGELA
…Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
CARLIE
Uh… Ang?
ANGELA
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
CARLIE
Angela.
ANGELA
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time —
CARLIE slaps ANGELA.
ANGELA (continued)
Ow!
CARLIE
Why the fuck were you being Richard the Third?
ANGELA
Who?
CARLIE
The Shakespeare character. The one you were just saying the lines of.
ANGELA
I don’t know. Why did you slap me?
CARLIE
I panicked.
ANGELA
I totally didn’t know I was doing Shakespeare. Shakespeare angels!
CARLIE
It’s not angels.
ANGELA
You try it.
CARLIE
No way.
ANGELA
Chicken?
A pause. CARLIE goes to the spot. Again, un-ironically:
CARLIE
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
ANGELA
Carlie?
CARLIE
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north–
ANGELA considers slapping, doesn’t want to… gives CARLIE a peck on the cheek. CARLIE snaps out of it.
CARLIE
What was I saying?
ANGELA
Something about the frozen bosom of the north?
CARLIE
Mer-fucking-cutio. I hate that play and love it at the same time.
ANGELA
This is just the best. My turn.
ANGELA goes back to the spot.
ANGELA
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
CARLIE is about to smack her, then figures out another way to snap her out of it.
CARLIE
Midsummer Night’s Dream this time.
ANGELA
How do you know all this stuff?
CARLIE
Liberal arts. How come we never found this spot before?
ANGELA
It’s winter. We finally moved the heat lamps out. They used to be back here.
CARLIE
I’m going again.
ANGELA
Wait. First. Admit it.
CARLIE
Admit what?
ANGELA
Angels.
CARLIE
It’s not angels. It’s a spot in a commercial kitchen where you start speaking Shakespeare for no reason.
ANGELA
That’s the same thing!
CARLIE
Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it can be anything we want!
ANGELA
Well, what is it then?
CARLIE
I don’t know. It’s about the nature of art of some shit.
ANGELA
I thought you didn’t believe in anything.
CARLIE
I don’t believe in nothing.
ANGELA
(A pause, to work out the double negative, then:) But you believe in art?
CARLIE
Of course I believe in art. Everybody cries at fuckin’ TV commercials, so everybody believes in art whether they want to or not.
ANGELA
I don’t cry at TV commercials.
CARLIE
Just because I don’t believe in “angels” doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the ineffable.
ANGELA
I completely don’t believe you.
CARLIE
Well I don’t have to prove it to you.
ANGELA
Well I’m not asking you too.
CARLIE
Look at this. (Tries to show her pictures on her mobile phone.)
ANGELA
Maybe I don’t want to.
CARLIE
Don’t be a C-bag. Look.
ANGELA
What is that?
CARLIE
It’s pictures.
ANGELA
What is that thing you’re taking pictures of?
CARLIE
The… deep-fat fryer. Around six o’clock every night the light comes right through the window and the oil just shines. Like this.
ANGELA
(Unironically:) Angels.
CARLIE
It’s like a golden ocean.
ANGELA
Yeah.
CARLIE
(Shows the next picture:) Look at this one.
ANGELA
You can almost hear the sea-birds.
END OF PLAY
Art and Music in Our Souls 