Are Clouds Edible?
Where Love Holds On Despite Everything (The Play)
A child asks if clouds are edible, and suddenly we understand everything about hunger. This play takes place in a hospital ward under siege, where mothers count their children's ribs like prayer beads and doctors faint from giving away their rations. Four actors become an entire community—watering plastic plants because someone must tend to something, sharing gum like it's communion, folding paper cranes from medical forms because beauty insists on surviving.
The staging itself makes you feel the displacement, moving audiences between indoor and outdoor spaces, forcing us to reach for supplies we cannot touch. What makes this essential now isn't just its documentation of crisis—it's how it reveals the specific weight of love when everything else has been stripped away.
A nurse reapplies lipstick while crying. A man carries a tiny box of seeds for months, waiting for soil. Children sleep with clenched fists, holding onto memories of their mothers' faces "from before the hollowing." In our current moment of witnessing so much suffering from a distance, this play collapses that distance. It asks us: How does tenderness survive in spaces designed for its extinction? Then it shows us—one tissue paper crane trembling in the window light, fragile as the breath that keeps us here another day.
Act One: The Architecture of Reduction
Scene 1: The Question Plants Itself
MOLLY enters, counting stones like prayer beads. ANOUSHKA as CHILD draws with chalk behind scrim.
MOLLY: (to audience) There's a question that lives in my throat now. Like a seed my grandmother swallowed once by accident—it grew roots downward, branches up into her voice. "How did we arrive here?" But asking is like trying to count backwards from infinity.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (drawing) These flowers don't need water.
MOLLY: Yesterday she drew them. Today she's... (pause) The walls remember better than we do.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: They'll outlast us all. Even the spiders. Even the—
MOLLY: (interrupting gently) Even the questions.
Scene 2: The Mathematics of Hunger
GEOFFREY enters, swaying slightly. SIMPHIWE rocks a bundle.
GEOFFREY: Day five. No, six. (laughs) I've invented a new branch of medicine. I call it "mathematical healing." One spoonful of sugar water equals... equals...
SIMPHIWE: Three more breaths.
GEOFFREY: (steadying himself) Precisely. And two grams of flour?
SIMPHIWE: One unclenched fist. Maybe.
GEOFFREY: (to MOLLY) I gave my lunch to the twins in Ward 3. Don't look at me like that—I'm pioneering. "Involuntary minimalism." It'll be in all the medical journals.
MOLLY: Geoffrey, when did you last—
GEOFFREY: (sitting heavily) My wife sent me a photo yesterday. From before. I didn't recognize my own face. Isn't that funny? I looked at it and thought, "Who is that well-fed stranger?"
Scene 3: The Wedding Ring Spin
ANOUSHKA enters as NURSE, wedding ring spinning on her finger.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (to SIMPHIWE) Rest now. Tell me your story.
SIMPHIWE: Which one? The story of my daughter's ribs—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—like a ladder to nowhere? Or the story of how I became a mathematician?
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (reapplying lipstick) Tell me the story of before.
SIMPHIWE: Before is a luxury we can't afford.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (spinning ring) Last spring I got married. Look—(shows photo) That's me. Those cheeks. That smile that reached places. Now my husband says kissing me is like... (stops)
MOLLY: Like what?
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Like kissing an X-ray.
Sound of shoes squeaking. They all freeze.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: That sound. So ordinary. So violent.
Act Two: When Supplies Fall Like Mockery
Scene 4: The Reporters' Appetite
MOLLY addresses audience as reporters. Others create tableaux.
MOLLY: You want to understand? Write this down: A child's palm that won't open even in dreams. Go ahead, translate that into headlines.
GEOFFREY: (overlapping) They sleep with fists now. All of them. Like they're trying to hold—
SIMPHIWE: The memory of fullness.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (clenched fists) I'm holding my mother's face. From before the hollowing.
MOLLY: (to audience) You have beautiful nails. Perfect. Polished. Sometimes she touches them—(indicates imaginary reporter) Like prayer beads from another religion. The religion of abundance.
Scene 5: Aerial Drop Sequence
Outside. Boxes fall from above. Actors reach but cannot touch.
GEOFFREY: (painting "FRAGILE" with water) Look! Manna from heaven! Canned goods, sugar, flour—
SIMPHIWE: (reaching desperately) How many died trying to reach the last drop?
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Seven. No, eight. The boy from Ward 2 just—
MOLLY: (shouting at the sky) You drop food into war zones like love letters into graves!
GEOFFREY: The water's already evaporating. My "FRAGILE" sign. (laughs bitterly) Even my vandalism is temporary.
Scene 6: The Cactus Memory
Back inside. SIMPHIWE waters plastic plants.
SIMPHIWE: My mother had a cactus. Bloomed once every seven years. We'd mark our heights on the wall, waiting.
MOLLY: Did you see it bloom?
SIMPHIWE: (watering plastic leaves) Does it matter? I'm watering plastic plants and no one stops me. We're all pretending something might grow.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (singing commercial jingle) "Taste the rainbow of—" (stops) I forgot. What comes after rainbow?
GEOFFREY: Fruit flavors. It was fruit flavors.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: What's fruit?
Silence.
MOLLY: She really doesn't remember.
Act Three: What Remains
Scene 7: The Empty Store
GEOFFREY transforms into shopkeeper, arranging nothing.
GEOFFREY: (to invisible customers) Good morning, Mrs. Hassan! The usual? Coming right up. (mimes wrapping nothing) And for you, sir? Ah yes, we got fresh... fresh... (falters)
SIMPHIWE: (entering) Do you have—
GEOFFREY: Yes! Whatever it is, yes! Look at these shelves. Full of yes. Abundant with certainly. Overflowing with—
SIMPHIWE: I have a seed.
GEOFFREY: (stopping) Show me.
SIMPHIWE reveals seed. They all gather around it.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: How long have you been carrying it?
SIMPHIWE: Since the orchards burned. My daughter found it. Before she... (pause) I'm waiting for soil that might receive it.
MOLLY: What if there's never—
SIMPHIWE: (fiercely) There will be. There has to be. Otherwise, what's the point of this? (holds up seed) This is tomorrow. This is my pension plan. This is my prayer.
Scene 8: Invisible Words
MOLLY writes in the air. Others speak in fragments.
MOLLY: The pen ran out of ink but I kept writing. The invisible words were more true.
GEOFFREY: Patient, female, age unknown, presenting with—
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Dreams of bread so vivid she wakes up chewing—
SIMPHIWE: Air. I chew air and laugh because what else is there?
MOLLY: (writing frantically in air) Must document. Must witness. Must—
ALL: (overlapping whispers) Remember. Record. Resist. Remain.
Scene 9: Communion of Gum
ANOUSHKA and SIMPHIWE with a single piece of gum.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: I found it in my pocket. From before.
SIMPHIWE: Spearmint?
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Cinnamon, I think. Or maybe I'm imagining the burn.
They cut it with surgical precision.
SIMPHIWE: On three?
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Wait. (pause) Let's make it last.
They chew in slow motion, eyes closed.
GEOFFREY: (to MOLLY) Are clouds edible?
MOLLY: (throat closing) I... Geoffrey, don't ask me that.
GEOFFREY: A child asked me today. Ward 3. The little girl who draws flowers.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (appearing) They look soft. Like cotton candy. I remember cotton candy. Pink. Dissolved on your tongue like sweet air.
MOLLY: Clouds are... clouds are...
SIMPHIWE: (gently) Clouds are for looking at, habibti. For finding shapes in.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: What shapes?
ALL: (looking up, seeing different things) Bread. Oranges. My mother's hands. A dinner table. Full plates. Tomorrow.
Final Scene: The Paper Crane Light
All fold medical forms into cranes.
MOLLY: Someone asked why we do this. Why we witness. Why we write.
GEOFFREY: Because silence would be the final displacement.
SIMPHIWE: Because someone must remember the weight of them. Before they became air.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: Because even here, someone is folding paper cranes.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (placing crane in window) For the light to catch. See? It trembles like—
MOLLY: Like hope made visible.
SIMPHIWE: Fragile as the breath—
GEOFFREY: That keeps us here—
ALL: Another day.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD reaches for the crane as lights fade. The olive tree glows through the window.
MOLLY: (to audience) How does tenderness survive in spaces designed for its extinction? (pause) Maybe it looks like this. Like all of us. Still here. Still reaching.
Silence. The question hangs in the air as lights fade to black.
[END]
