Otto Paraploo
RESONANCE ~ A Play in Two Acts with Musical Interludes
By [Author Name]
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CHARACTERS
VERA - 47, a librarian who collects silences. Translucent in her honesty, moves like water finding its level. Carries invisible scars from unnamed disasters.
JORDAN - 23-30 (ages through play), a graduate student fleeing noise. Gender-neutral, searching for solid ground after personal catastrophe. Narrator and participant.
THE DAUGHTER/ECHO - 17-35, appears at different ages. Sometimes Vera's given-up child, sometimes Jordan's future self, sometimes the audience's conscience.
THE QUARTET - Four musicians who exist between real and metaphysical:
- FIRST VIOLIN - Asks questions through music
- SECOND VIOLIN - Echoes and amplifies
- VIOLA - Offers comfort
- CELLO - The heartbeat, the ground, the inevitable
CHORUS OF THE DISPLACED - Library patrons, street philosophers, fellow travelers. They shift between individual voices and collective consciousness.
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SETTING
The stage is divided into three spaces that flow into each other:
1. THE WAREHOUSE - Stage left. Abandoned, cavernous. Water stains map forgotten floods on concrete walls. Pigeons nest in broken windows. Natural reverb makes every sound significant.
2. VERA'S APARTMENT - Center stage. Sparse but warm. A pine table, seventeen plants in various stages of bloom and decay, windows that never fully close. Books stacked like prayers.
3. THE LIBRARY/CHURCH - Stage right. Transforms between public library and church basement. Same creaky floors, same quality of hushed expectation.
The Quartet sits upstage, sometimes visible, sometimes in shadow. They play throughout - sometimes prominent, sometimes barely audible, always present.
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ACT ONE
Scene 1: After the Flood
(Lights up on THE WAREHOUSE. JORDAN stands center, testing the echo with small sounds - a cough, a footstep, a half-formed word. The QUARTET begins the progression: Am-F-Dm-E7, barely audible.)
JORDAN: (To audience) I came here after the second flood. Not the biblical kind - the personal kind. When everything you've built gets swept downstream and you're left standing in water-damaged rooms, trying to remember what mattered.
(ECHO appears in the shadows, mimicking JORDAN's movements at a delay.)
JORDAN: This warehouse used to make textiles. Thousands of hands feeding fabric through machines, creating patterns that would wrap around bodies they'd never meet. Now it's empty. Except for the ghosts. Except for the sound.
(Drops a penny. The sound reverberates for seven seconds.)
JORDAN: Seven seconds. That's how long truth takes to circle back in a space this honest.
(VERA enters from stage right, carrying a thermos and two cups. She doesn't acknowledge JORDAN at first, sets up the cups on a makeshift table of shipping crates.)
VERA: (Testing the space) Hello, hello, hello...
(Each "hello" returns slightly altered. She smiles.)
VERA: Good. It's still working.
JORDAN: What's still working?
VERA: The truth echo. Not all spaces have it anymore. Most got renovated out. Acoustic panels, drop ceilings, carpet. (Pours tea) Can't have truth bouncing around indefinitely. Bad for property values.
JORDAN: I don't—
VERA: You're Jordan. Tuesday and Thursday, southeast corner table at the library. Political theory section but you never check anything out. You've been crying in my stacks for three weeks.
(JORDAN freezes. The QUARTET swells slightly.)
VERA: (Cont'd) Chamomile with honey. It's 107 degrees. The perfect temperature for difficult conversations.
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Scene 2: The Teaching
(VERA's apartment. The space transforms through lighting - warm amber, plants seem to breathe. JORDAN sits at the pine table while VERA moves through her kitchen with practiced rhythm.)
VERA: My grandmother survived the Dresden bombing. She was seven, hiding in a root cellar while the city burned above her. The temperature reached 1,800 degrees. Hot enough to create its own weather system.
(She sets down bread, tears it precisely.)
VERA: (Cont'd) She said the strangest thing was the silence after. Not quiet - silence. Like the world had forgotten how to make sound. Took three days for the birds to sing again.
JORDAN: Why are you telling me this?
VERA: Because you have that same look. Like you're waiting for the birds to come back.
(The DAUGHTER enters, stands behind VERA, invisible to her but visible to JORDAN.)
THE DAUGHTER: She tells this story to everyone she's about to save. Count them - there have been fourteen before you.
JORDAN: (To VERA) How do you know I need saving?
VERA: I don't. But you're here, aren't you? In my apartment that smells like mint and old paper. Drinking tea at exactly 107 degrees while the world spins too fast outside.
(She sits. The QUARTET plays pizzicato, like rain beginning.)
VERA: (Cont'd) Tell me about your flood.
JORDAN: It wasn't dramatic. No one died. Nothing burned. Just... erosion. Gradual failure. I was supposed to be brilliant, you know? Youngest PhD candidate in my department. Published at twenty-one. Full scholarship. The trajectory was so clear.
THE DAUGHTER: (To audience) Trajectories are just stories we tell about physics. What goes up doesn't always come down. Sometimes it just... disperses.
JORDAN: Then my advisor—
(Stops. The CELLO holds a low drone.)
VERA: You don't have to name it. Some disasters are better left unnamed. They keep their power when we try to contain them in words.
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Scene 3: History in Fragments
(The stage fractures. Different areas light up as VERA moves through them, each space a different age, different catastrophe survived. The CHORUS OF THE DISPLACED appears, embodying different moments.)
VERA: (Age 19, to CHORUS MEMBER 1 playing her young husband) I don't know how to be married. I don't know how to be still.
CHORUS 1: Then don't. Move.
VERA: Through what? To where?
CHORUS 1: Away from me, apparently.
(Light shift. VERA ages to 24.)
VERA: (To CHORUS MEMBER 2, playing a social worker) She's better off without me. I'm not... I don't have whatever mothers are supposed to have.
CHORUS 2: Maternal instinct?
VERA: Money. Stability. A heart that doesn't feel like it's full of broken glass.
(THE DAUGHTER, age 3, appears briefly, reaches for VERA, disappears.)
(Light shift. VERA ages to 35.)
VERA: (To CHORUS MEMBER 3, playing her dying mother) I can't remember you anymore. Your face keeps slipping.
CHORUS 3: (With dementia's confusion) Are you the nurse? You look like someone... someone I used to know...
VERA: I'm your daughter, Mom. I'm right here.
CHORUS 3: I don't have a daughter. I had a daughter but she dissolved. Like sugar in rain.
(All CHORUS members begin humming the progression: Am-F-Dm-E7. VERA returns to present, to JORDAN.)
VERA: We're all recovering from something. Most of us just got better at hiding the limps.
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Scene 4: The Refrain
(THE WAREHOUSE. VERA and JORDAN stand in the center. The QUARTET builds gradually.)
VERA: Listen. Do you hear it?
JORDAN: Hear what?
VERA: The instruction. It's in everything if you listen. In heartbeats, in traffic, in the space between words.
(The QUARTET plays stronger. CHORUS begins to move, creating patterns.)
VERA: Move, move, move.
CHORUS: (Echoing at different intervals) Move, move, move.
THE DAUGHTER: (To JORDAN) She means through, not away. Through the pain, through the failure, through the collapse.
JORDAN: I don't know how.
VERA: Like this.
(She begins to move - not dance exactly, but purposeful navigation through invisible obstacles. JORDAN watches, then begins to mirror.)
VERA: My grandmother, after Dresden, she walked for six days to find her sister. Through ruins that were still smoking. Through bodies that looked like shadows burned into pavement. She was seven. She moved through it because standing still meant becoming part of the disaster.
JORDAN: Did she find her?
VERA: No. But she found others who were looking. They became a different kind of family. Bonded by search rather than blood.
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Scene 5: Small Apocalypses
(The LIBRARY/CHURCH space. CHORUS members become library patrons, each nursing private catastrophes.)
CHORUS 1: (Returning a book) My son hasn't called in three years.
VERA: (Scanning it) Sometimes silence is its own communication.
CHORUS 2: (Whispering) I lost my house in the recession. I live in my car now. I come here for the heat.
VERA: Bathroom key is always on my desk. No questions asked.
CHORUS 3: (Young, frantic) I need books on starting over. Like, completely over. Like, witness protection level over.
VERA: Third floor, section 158.1. Psychology of resilience. Take the elevator - it's quieter. You can cry there if you need to.
(JORDAN watches these exchanges. THE DAUGHTER stands beside them.)
THE DAUGHTER: She collects damaged people like she collects sounds. Preserves them. Catalogues them. Creates space for them to echo properly.
JORDAN: Why?
THE DAUGHTER: Because someone did it for her once. Or didn't. I can never remember which version is true.
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Musical Interlude #1
(The QUARTET takes center stage. They play the full progression, but now we see how it fragments and reforms. FIRST VIOLIN plays questions that never quite resolve. SECOND VIOLIN attempts answers that trail into silence. VIOLA weaves between them, consoling. CELLO maintains the heartbeat even when it falters.)
(VERA and JORDAN sit on opposite sides of the stage, each in their own pool of light, writing letters they'll never send.)
JORDAN: (Writing, speaking aloud) Dear Professor McKenna, I wanted to explain why I disappeared...
VERA: (Writing, speaking aloud) Dear Rebecca, you'd be thirty-five today. I wonder if you have my hands or your father's...
(Their words begin to overlap, creating a fugue of regret and possibility.)
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ACT TWO
Scene 6: The Deepening
(Three years have passed. VERA's apartment. She's noticeably thinner, moves more carefully. JORDAN is older, steadier, but carrying new scars. They prepare dinner together in comfortable rhythm.)
JORDAN: The warehouse is being renovated. Luxury condos.
VERA: Of course it is. Can't have all that beautiful honesty going to waste.
JORDAN: Where will we practice listening?
VERA: Churches. Train stations at 3 AM. The spaces between heartbeats. Truth finds a way to echo. It's patient like that.
(THE DAUGHTER enters, now the same age as JORDAN.)
THE DAUGHTER: (To audience) This is when I finally found her. Not in person - online. A photograph from the library's website. "Staff Picks for National Poetry Month." She was holding Neruda, smiling like she knew a secret.
JORDAN: I got married.
VERA: I know.
JORDAN: I got divorced.
VERA: I know that too.
JORDAN: How do you always know?
VERA: You walk differently after love fails. More careful with your feet, like the ground might give way again.
(She coughs, a sound that reverberates wrong. The QUARTET shifts to minor key.)
JORDAN: How long?
VERA: Since February. Maybe longer. Bodies keep secrets until they can't.
JORDAN: What kind?
VERA: The lung kind. Which is ironic, considering I've been collecting breath all these years.
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Scene 7: Excavation
(The stage becomes archaeological. CHORUS members hold objects from VERA's past - photographs, books, recordings. Each object triggers a scene.)
CHORUS 1: (Holding a cassette tape) Recording #47: Grandmother's breathing machine, 1987.
(We hear the mechanical wheeze. VERA, younger, appears beside the hospital bed.)
YOUNG VERA: Tell me about the silence again. After the burning.
CHORUS 1: (As grandmother) It wasn't empty, liebchen. It was full. Full of everything that would never be said again.
CHORUS 2: (Holding a photograph) Rebecca, age two, before the adoption.
(THE DAUGHTER transforms into a toddler, reaches for VERA who pulls back.)
YOUNG VERA: I'm made of broken glass. I'll cut you. I'll make you bleed.
THE DAUGHTER: (Adult voice from child's body) I bled anyway. Just differently. Wondering why I wasn't worth keeping.
CHORUS 3: (Holding a book) "Be Ought To Will" - annotated edition. Every margin filled.
VERA: (Present, to JORDAN) The space between what we should do and what we will do - that's where most of us live. In that terrible gap.
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Scene 8: The Orchestra of Disaster
(The WAREHOUSE, half-demolished. Construction equipment creates an inadvertent symphony. VERA and JORDAN stand among the debris. CHORUS becomes the city - its failures and reconstructions.)
CHORUS: (Overlapping)
- The factory fire of 1978, forty-three dead
- The bridge collapse during rush hour
- The tent cities under the overpass
- The children who didn't come home
- The water that rose too fast
- The warnings that came too late
VERA: Every city is built on disasters. We just pave over them and pretend the ground isn't hollow.
JORDAN: Is that what we're doing? Paving over?
VERA: No. We're doing something harder. We're building on top of the ruins while acknowledging they're there. It's why everything we make is slightly tilted. Accommodating the uneven foundation.
(THE DAUGHTER appears with a cello, begins playing a counter-melody to the QUARTET.)
THE DAUGHTER: (While playing) She taught me this without meaning to. Through absence. Through the shape of what wasn't there. I learned to make my own music in the silence she left.
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Scene 9: The Teaching Continues
(Split scene - VERA in her apartment, clearly ill, and JORDAN teaching at the community center. Their actions mirror each other.)
JORDAN: (To unseen students) Today we're going to practice listening. Real listening. Not waiting for your turn to talk, but actually hearing what's underneath the words.
VERA: (To THE DAUGHTER, who she can now see) You came.
THE DAUGHTER: I've been here all along. You just weren't ready to see me.
JORDAN: (To students) When someone tells you they're fine, listen to the frequency. Fine has a different pitch when it's true.
VERA: I wasn't fine. For so many years, I wasn't fine.
THE DAUGHTER: I know.
JORDAN: (To students) Sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply witness. Not fix, not advise. Just... be present for someone's truth.
VERA: Can you forgive me?
THE DAUGHTER: I forgave you before I knew there was something to forgive. Children do that. It's later, when we learn we had other options, that forgiveness gets complicated.
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Scene 10: The Morphine Dreams
(VERA's apartment becomes fluid, dreamlike. Past and present collapse. The QUARTET plays fragments, discordant then harmonious. CHORUS becomes everyone VERA has ever lost or left.)
VERA: (To JORDAN, but seeing others) You're all here.
JORDAN: It's just me. Just Jordan.
VERA: No, you're my grandmother. See? You have her hands. After the burning, she played piano with those hands. Said music was proof that beauty was stronger than destruction.
CHORUS 1: (As the ex-husband) You moved through me like I was just another room.
VERA: I was looking for the door. I've always been looking for the door.
CHORUS 2: (As her mother) You were my anchor. Even when I forgot your name, I knew you were what kept me from floating away entirely.
VERA: I wasn't enough. I couldn't stop the forgetting.
CHORUS 3: (As herself) You were exactly enough. Sufficient to the day. That's all anyone can be.
(THE DAUGHTER begins singing - no words, just the vowels of loss.)
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Scene 11: The Final Thursday
(Sparse staging. A bed. A chair. JORDAN beside VERA. The QUARTET plays very softly, almost inaudible. Outside, rain.)
VERA: (Lucid) It's Thursday.
JORDAN: Yes.
VERA: It's raining.
JORDAN: Yes.
VERA: Good. The earth is starting over. It does that. Washes everything clean, even if just for a moment.
JORDAN: Are you afraid?
VERA: Of dying? No. Of not having said everything? Yes. But that's everyone's fear, isn't it? We all die mid-sentence.
(THE DAUGHTER sits at the foot of the bed.)
THE DAUGHTER: Tell her. Tell her I exist. That I survived. That I became a cellist. That I have your same way of tilting my head when I listen. That I'm grateful for the absence because it taught me presence.
VERA: (Not quite seeing her, but sensing) Is someone else here?
JORDAN: Just the rain. Just the echo.
VERA: The echo. Yes. That's all any of us are, really. Echoes of echoes of echoes. But oh, what music we make bouncing off the walls.
(She reaches for something invisible. THE DAUGHTER takes her hand. The QUARTET swells, then gradually fades to just the CELLO, then silence.)
VERA: Did you remember to water the jade plant?
JORDAN: Yes.
VERA: Good. They're survivors, jade plants. They can go so long without water, but when they get it, they store it in their leaves. Little reservoirs of possibility.
(She closes her eyes. The CELLO plays one last note, sustained until it becomes part of the room's silence.)
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Scene 12: After/Continuing
(One year later. The library. JORDAN works behind VERA's old desk. The same careful attention to damaged people. THE DAUGHTER enters, carrying a cello case.)
THE DAUGHTER: (To JORDAN) Excuse me. I'm looking for a book about listening.
JORDAN: (Not looking up) Section 152.3, psychology of perception. Or 780.1, musical acoustics. Depends on what kind of listening you mean.
THE DAUGHTER: The kind that brings people back from the dead.
(JORDAN looks up, recognizes something familiar in the stranger's face.)
JORDAN: Third floor. There's a reading room that used to be a chapel. The acoustics are perfect. Sometimes, if you're very quiet, you can hear conversations that happened years ago. They get stuck in the corners, waiting.
THE DAUGHTER: Waiting for what?
JORDAN: For someone who knows how to listen.
(THE DAUGHTER nods, heads for the elevator. Stops.)
THE DAUGHTER: Did you know her? The librarian who used to work here?
JORDAN: Yes.
THE DAUGHTER: What was she like?
(JORDAN considers. The QUARTET begins playing softly - Am-F-Dm-E7.)
JORDAN: She was... transparent. Like glass. Like those bowls that sing when you run your finger along the rim. She collected silences and gave them back as music. She moved through disaster like it was just weather - something to be endured, then cleaned up after. She taught by example, which is the only real teaching there is.
THE DAUGHTER: Did she ever mention—
JORDAN: A daughter? Every day. In the space between words. In the way she held books about parenting she'd never check out. In how she looked at teenage girls like they might be someone she knew.
(THE DAUGHTER nods, unable to speak.)
JORDAN: (Cont'd) The reading room. Third floor. Take your time. The echoes aren't going anywhere.
(THE DAUGHTER exits. JORDAN returns to work. The CHORUS enters as library patrons - different faces, same damages.)
NEW CHORUS 1: I need books on starting over.
JORDAN: (With VERA's same tone) What kind of over?
NEW CHORUS 1: The kind where everything you built got washed away.
JORDAN: Section 158.1. Psychology of resilience. Take the elevator - it's quieter.
(The lights begin to fade, but the QUARTET continues. In the growing darkness, we hear VERA's voice, perhaps recorded, perhaps remembered:)
VERA'S VOICE: Move, move, move. Through, not away. Through the disaster, through the silence, through the forgetting and remembering. This is all we can do - move through it, collecting echoes, leaving our own sounds for others to find. In empty rooms where truth reverberates. In the space between heartbeats. In the continuing...
(Blackout. The QUARTET plays one more progression, then silence. Then, faintly, the sound of rain beginning again.)
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EPILOGUE: The Instructions
(House lights up halfway. JORDAN addresses the audience directly.)
JORDAN: She left instructions. Not written - she wasn't that obvious. But embedded in everything she did. A recipe for living through disaster:
(THE QUARTET plays underneath, supporting.)
JORDAN: (Cont'd)
- Water the jade plants, especially during droughts
- Make tea at 107 degrees - hot enough to extract truth, cool enough to drink
- Listen to the silence after catastrophe - the birds always come back
- Create echo chambers, not the kind that confirm what you already believe, but the kind that show you how truth changes shape when it bounces off honest walls
- Move through, not around - the only way past is through
- Collect damaged people like rare books - handle with care but don't be afraid to open them
- Remember that everyone is recovering from something, most are just better at hiding the limps
- Trust that absence can teach presence
- Know that we're all echoes of echoes, but oh, what music we make
(The DAUGHTER enters with her cello, begins playing. One by one, the CHORUS enters, each carrying an instrument or found object that makes sound. They create a symphony of the everyday - spoons on glasses, books closing, feet walking, breath breathing.)
JORDAN: (Cont'd) This is her legacy. Not silence, but the spaces between sounds where truth lives. Not absence, but the shape of what presence means when you've known loss. Not the disaster, but the continuing after.
(The soundscape builds - not to chaos but to complexity. Each sound distinct but part of the whole. The lights fade slowly, but the sound continues even in darkness. Finally, just the cello. Then just breathing. Then the particular silence of a room where something true has been spoken.)
END
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PRODUCTION NOTES
On Music
The Quartet should be present throughout, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. The progression Am-F-Dm-E7 is the play's heartbeat - it should feel inevitable, like breathing. When possible, use actual acoustic instruments rather than recorded music. The space between notes matters as much as the notes themselves.
On Space
The three playing areas should flow into each other - no hard boundaries. Use levels to create depth. The warehouse should feel genuinely cavernous - if possible, use the actual acoustics of your theater space rather than amplification. Let silence have weight.
On Casting
All roles except VERA and JORDAN can be doubled. The Chorus should reflect the community where the play is performed. THE DAUGHTER/ECHO can be played by multiple actors at different ages, or by one actor who transforms. Gender is fluid for all roles except where specified.
On Disasters
The specific disasters mentioned can be adapted to reflect local history. Every community has its floods, its fires, its gradual erosions. Use what your audience will recognize in their bones.
On Silence
This play requires brave use of silence. Not empty pauses, but full silences - pregnant with possibility. Trust your audience to stay with you in the quiet moments. They're listening for their own echoes.
On the Ending
The epilogue can be performed differently each night - let JORDAN respond to the actual audience, the actual space. The instructions should feel like they're being discovered, not recited. The final silence should last until it becomes uncomfortable, then a moment longer. That's where the truth lives.
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"Resonance" is dedicated to all the librarians who've created quiet spaces for loud griefs, all the teachers who've taught by example rather than instruction, and all the daughters and sons who've learned presence from absence. May your echoes find their proper walls.