Script for Sylvia Plath's pre-suicide conversation with an hallucination (Rae)...thought it was interesting

Setting: An empty armchair.

=> Sylvia enters, plugging the doorway with a towel behind her.

Syl:

There. That should keep any death from reaching my sleeping children. (walks towards chair to sit down) Now all there is left is to sit alone with my thoughts for the last time.
(Sits and begins to sway and reel with nausea.)

=> Enter Rae(Wearing white, she sits on a table cross legged)

Rae:

Ms. Plath, what have you gotten yourself into this time?

Syl:

I have done this before, and maybe this time it will work. Dying is not a foe but a friend that so far has refused to comfort me. (Pause) Just for the sake of company, will you stay with me till...

Rae:

You know all that anti-depression, institution time, and shock therapy you took couldn't have worked too well if you want me, your own hallucination from the gas leak you created, sit with you till your latest attempt at suicide takes its course.
This is the 60s! You are a young, successful writer, with a loving family...why not lighten up a bit?

Syl:

(Has begun to slouch in her chair a bit). I'm past my prime, pressed for money and out of work. My husband, Ted Hughes, has left me and isn't coming back. I'm just not a light person.

Rae:

Come on, Ms. Plath. Why not stop all this and just go home to Massachusetts where you grew up, for a bit? Or look for a job at Cambridge University where you got your Fulbright scholarship. I'm sure they would be happy to see you.

Syl:

I don't want to go home or teach. I've said what I've had to say. Three books of what I've had to say to this world and now I'm through.

Rae:

They were good. Brilliant in fact. Your three books; The Bell Jar, Ariel, and, what was it...The Collusus?

Syl:

(Sliding from her chair) They got good enough reviews...

Rae:

(Glancing at Plat with concern) They got great reviews! You've been writing since you were 8 and have only gotten better with time!

Syl:

Maybe you're right. Some one should be coming to check on me any minute, maybe this isn't my time to die just yet. But, everything is just getting so blurry...a little sleep might help...(starts to tip)

Rae:

No sleep. Not just yet. Let's talk about...'The Mirror'! That was always my favorite poem of yours. She was you, wasnt she? The girl in the poem, I mean. (Syl's eyes merely flutter with daze).

Syl:

It's about death. Something I'll soon be painfully familiar with.

Rae:

(Wants Sylvia to hold on a little longer) How'd it go again?
(gets up to hold Syl's hand)
/starts reciting 1st verse with hesitation/
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately...-

Syl:

(cuts in - she is now laying on the floor)
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Rae:

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

(-pauses-)
I think it's time for me to go, Ms. Plath.

Syl:

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.*
(She quietly dies as the last slurred words leave her lips)
* 'The Mirror' by Slvia Plath