SWEET SALT WATER RISING DREAM
The Bandorai Variations
A Play in Three Acts
By B Otto Will and Brrd Roots
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CHARACTERS
BANDORAI - 30s-50s, transforms throughout. Tenant of 4B. Contains multitudes: Box Jellyfish, Mantis Shrimp, Water Bear, Phantom Anglerfish.
THE WITNESS - Any age. Building manager. The only one who cannot transform.
DOVE ORANGE - 20s-40s. Artist from next Thursday. Paints with hemolymph and time.
TRAP BECK DEW - 30s-40s. Carries his dead lover Marco's consciousness in crystals growing through his skull.
SANDRINE - 20s-30s. Storm tracker whose eyes bleed weather patterns.
ASHA - 30s. Becomes living nebula, exists in electromagnetic field.
THE LICHEN SENATE - Thousands who were thirty. Collective fungal consciousness.
MARCO'S VOICE - Trap Beck Dew's dead lover, speaking through crystals.
ECHO - Tenant of 7A. Sings matter into different states.
THE GRANDMOTHER - Bandorai's memory/prophecy. Appears at various ages.
THE IMPOSSIBLE CHILD - What Bandorai births/unbirtths. Multiple forms.
BUILDING CHORUS - The walls, pipes, structure achieving consciousness.
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SETTING
A residential building that is becoming organism. Time moves differently in each apartment.
CENTER STAGE: Bandorai's apartment 4B - kitchen/transformation chamber
STAGE LEFT: Hallways that breathe, stairs that lead to different decades
STAGE RIGHT: Dove Orange's studio apartment 2C
UPSTAGE: The roof/sky interface where physics breaks
DOWNSTAGE: The basement where time pools
Note: Past, present, and future occur simultaneously. Characters age and de-age within scenes. Water flows upward throughout.
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ACT ONE: THE SALT WATER RISES
Scene 1: February's Fever Dream
(Dawn. Sound of water flowing upward. BANDORAI's apartment. She floats three inches below the floor, translucent. THE WITNESS stands in doorway with clipboard.)
WITNESS: The water damage report says... (Looks at clipboard dissolving) says the damage is moving backward. Un-damaging.
BANDORAI: (Her skin showing organs as constellations) I'm paying rent to the future now. Next Thursday's check already cleared.
WITNESS: That's not possible.
BANDORAI: (Polyps on her shoulders begin speaking in different languages)
POLYP 1: Failed mother—
POLYP 2: —becomes freed from—
POLYP 3: —motherhood's prison.
WITNESS: Should I call maintenance?
BANDORAI: I am maintenance. I'm maintaining the dissolution of everything that needs to end.
(DOVE ORANGE enters backward through the wall, carrying an easel made of tomorrow's wood.)
DOVE ORANGE: I brought paint made from your future shells. You'll molt them next Tuesday.
BANDORAI: (Transforming partially into Box Jellyfish) My bioluminescence is infection celebrating itself. Watch.
(She glows. The light reveals hidden writing on all the walls: "MERCY THROUGH DESTRUCTION" repeated infinitely.)
WITNESS: I should document this.
BANDORAI: You already have. Next week. I read your report. It says I'm becoming what I always was—mostly water, pretending to be solid.
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Scene 2: The Artist's Documentary
(DOVE ORANGE's studio. Canvases everywhere showing futures that won't happen. She paints while BANDORAI poses in constant transformation.)
DOVE ORANGE: Hold that dissolution. The way your spine is becoming liquid—perfect.
BANDORAI: (Shifting into Mantis Shrimp) I can see colors that don't exist yet. Your painting is screaming in ultraviolet.
DOVE ORANGE: It's supposed to. Art should hurt in spectrums we can't perceive.
(TRAP BECK DEW enters, crystals protruding from his skull, each one humming.)
TRAP BECK DEW: Marco says your paintings are lies.
MARCO'S VOICE: (Through the largest crystal) Not lies. Prophecies of lies. She's painting what won't happen to make sure it does.
DOVE ORANGE: (Mixing Bandorai's hemolymph into paint) Your lover's getting louder.
TRAP BECK DEW: The crystals are growing inward now. Soon they'll reach my brain's memory center. Then Marco and I will remember the same things differently, together.
BANDORAI: (Eating her own arm, regenerating it smaller) That's love—shared incorrect memories of something beautiful that never happened.
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Scene 3: The Storm Inside
(SANDRINE enters, eyes streaming blood that forms weather patterns on the floor.)
SANDRINE: Tomorrow's hurricane is already in your bones, Bandorai. I can see it.
BANDORAI: (Her skeleton visible through translucent skin) Each bone inscribed with its future fracture date. Tuesday. Thursday. Christmas 2047.
SANDRINE: The electromagnetic patterns are teaching us to suffer more efficiently. Look—(Projects weather map from her bleeding eyes) —tumor clouds spelling "MERCY" over the building.
WITNESS: Those aren't real clouds.
SANDRINE: Nothing's real. Everything's real. The difference collapsed last month.
(THE LICHEN SENATE enters—hundreds of bodies moving as one organism.)
LICHEN SENATE: (In harmonized discord) We bring the acid water. We bring the roses that grow thorns after touching. We bring tomorrow's apologies for today's wounds.
BANDORAI: (Accepting the gifts) I'm already dissolving. But repetition makes it true.
(She drinks. Her form shifts rapidly—jellyfish, mantis, water bear, cycling.)
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Scene 4: Grandmother's Prophecy
(GRANDMOTHER appears, sometimes young, sometimes ancient, sometimes unborn.)
GRANDMOTHER: (To young Bandorai who appears) You're a Phantom Anglerfish, child. You'll grow light that doesn't exist to lure the darkness.
YOUNG BANDORAI: Will it hurt?
GRANDMOTHER: Everything hurts. But backward hurting feels like love.
PRESENT BANDORAI: (Overlapping with her young self) I remember this. I remember this differently. I remember this hasn't happened yet.
GRANDMOTHER: You'll reach through dimensions to milk the void. You'll feed your children absence and they'll thank you for it.
WITNESS: (To audience) This is when I started taking notes. When time became negotiable. When memory became prophecy.
(The stage floods with salt water flowing upward. Everyone rises with it except THE WITNESS.)
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Scene 5: The Building Breathes
(The walls begin speaking. BUILDING CHORUS manifests.)
BUILDING CHORUS:
We were wood
We were walls
Now we're lungs
Breathing backwards
Inhaling light
Exhaling darkness
Every door leads to the same room
Every room is Bandorai's transformation
BANDORAI: (To the building) Are you suffering?
BUILDING CHORUS: We're learning to suffer productively. Each crack is a mouth. Each leak is a blessing.
ASHA: (Voice through electrical outlets) I'm in the wiring now. I AM the wiring. When you turn on lights, you're turning on pieces of me.
BANDORAI: Does it hurt?
ASHA: (Electricity flickering) It hurts like birth. Constantly birthing myself through copper veins.
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ACT TWO: THE SWEET DISSOLUTION
Scene 1: The Pregnancy of Absence
(BANDORAI's belly swells with impossible pregnancy. Multiple forms visible inside.)
BANDORAI: I'm pregnant with everything that shouldn't exist.
DOVE ORANGE: (Painting frantically) The child keeps changing. Jellyfish baby with no brain. Mantis eating itself in the womb. Water bear experiencing centuries before birth.
TRAP BECK DEW: Marco says that's how love works—gestating impossibility until it destroys you.
MARCO'S VOICE: I didn't say that.
TRAP BECK DEW: You will. Yesterday.
(BANDORAI births backward—the child emerges old, ages in reverse to infant, then to idea, then to nothing.)
BANDORAI: (Weeping with joy) Perfect. It lived its whole life in three minutes. Experienced everything. Suffered completely. Now it's free.
THE IMPOSSIBLE CHILD: (Before disappearing) Mother, why did you make me just to unmake me?
BANDORAI: Because that's what God did to us. I'm just following the pattern.
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Scene 2: The Gender Wars
(BANDORAI shifts between forms and genders rapidly.)
BANDORAI: (As jellyfish) I bud children asexually. They die immediately. This is efficiency.
(Transforms to Mantis Shrimp)
BANDORAI: (Now male) I eat myself more completely this way. Masculinity is just advanced autophagy.
(Enters cryptobiosis as Water Bear)
BANDORAI: (No gender) This is the waiting room. Neither/nor. Both/and. The space between definitions where God keeps the undecided.
WITNESS: Which one are you really?
BANDORAI: Yes.
ASHA: (Through the walls) Binary was a kindness we didn't appreciate. Now we're everything, which means we're nothing, which means we're free.
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Scene 3: The Feeding Lesson
(BANDORAI teaches children from the building. They sit in a circle, transforming slowly.)
BANDORAI: Today we learn to eat absence.
CHILD 1: How?
BANDORAI: (Producing void-milk from her tentacles) First, you must become hungry for nothing. Most people are hungry for something. That's the mistake.
CHILD 2: My mom says I shouldn't transform.
BANDORAI: Your mom is already transforming. She just doesn't know it yet. Watch.
(CHILD 2's MOTHER enters, partially liquified.)
MOTHER: What have you done to me?
BANDORAI: Nothing. You're doing it to yourself. It's voluntary. Everything is voluntary if you zoom out far enough.
ECHO: (Singing the walls into tumors) ♪ Every mother dissolves for her children / Every child consumes their mother / This is the circle / This is the prayer ♪
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Scene 4: Sandrine's Weather Report
(SANDRINE stands center stage, blood from her eyes creating a storm system on stage.)
SANDRINE: Today's forecast: Salt water rising from the basement. Memories falling like rain from the future. 60% chance of complete dissolution by evening.
WITNESS: That's not weather.
SANDRINE: Everything is weather if you're electromagnetic enough. Bandorai is a low-pressure system. The building is becoming a hurricane. We're all just atmospheric conditions.
(Thunder from inside BANDORAI's chest.)
BANDORAI: The storm is in me. Or I'm in the storm. The prepositions don't matter anymore.
SANDRINE: Tomorrow you'll transform into something we don't have words for.
BANDORAI: Good. Words are cages. I'm tired of cages shaped like meaning.
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Scene 5: The Portrait Gallery
(DOVE ORANGE reveals her paintings. Each shows a different ending for BANDORAI.)
DOVE ORANGE: This one—you become pure light and burn the building down.
BANDORAI: Pleasant.
DOVE ORANGE: This one—you dissolve entirely and become the water supply.
BANDORAI: Practical.
DOVE ORANGE: This one—you stay exactly as you are forever, suspended between transformations.
BANDORAI: (Horrified) That's the cruelest one.
DOVE ORANGE: That's why it's true.
(TRAP BECK DEW's crystals suddenly grow rapidly.)
TRAP BECK DEW: (Screaming) Marco's taking over! He's—
MARCO'S VOICE: (Now from Trap Beck Dew's mouth) Finally. A throat. I've been dead so long I forgot how to scream properly.
TRAP BECK DEW/MARCO: (Speaking in unison) We are one disappointment now. We are shared failure. We are love achieving its final form—mutual destruction.
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ACT THREE: THE RISING DREAM
Scene 1: The Building's Metamorphosis
(The entire stage has become organic. Walls breathe. Floors pulse. The building is alive.)
BUILDING CHORUS: We were architecture / Now we're anatomy / Bandorai infected us with consciousness / Now we suffer beautifully
WITNESS: (To audience) This is when I realized I was the only constant. Everyone else transforming, and me, cursed to watch with unchanged eyes.
BANDORAI: (Now all forms simultaneously) You're my memory. Without you, no one would know we were ever human.
WITNESS: I don't want this job.
BANDORAI: No one wants their job. That's why it's called work.
(The LICHEN SENATE spreads across the walls like living wallpaper.)
LICHEN SENATE: We were individuals / Now we're texture / We were thoughts / Now we're feeling / Join us in the spreading / Join us in the thinning
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Scene 2: The Void Milking
(BANDORAI extends tentacles through dimensional tears. Sound of reality ripping.)
BANDORAI: I'm reaching into universes where we don't exist. Bringing back proof of our absence.
(She pulls through emptiness in buckets.)
DOVE ORANGE: What does nothing look like?
BANDORAI: Like everything, but honest.
(She distributes void-milk to everyone. They drink and begin fading partially.)
ASHA: (More dispersed than ever) I can feel myself in every electron. In every spark. I'm the space between atoms now.
SANDRINE: (Eyes hemorrhaging constellations) The weather in those other universes—it rains upward there too. We're not unique in our suffering.
TRAP BECK DEW/MARCO: We want to drink but we have no throat / We have a throat but we have no want / We are paradox swallowing itself
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Scene 3: The Mother's Lesson
(All the mothers in the building gather. BANDORAI addresses them.)
BANDORAI: Women must be completely faithful to their children until nothing remains.
MOTHER 1: But then what are we?
BANDORAI: Exactly. Nothing. That's the point. God demands complete sacrifice. The self is sin. Motherhood is sanctified self-erasure.
MOTHER 2: That's horrible.
BANDORAI: That's honest. Horrible and honest start with the same letter for a reason.
MOTHER 3: (Beginning to dissolve) I feel it happening. I'm becoming less. My children are becoming more.
BANDORAI: This is the math of love. To increase others, we must decrease. To add, we must subtract ourselves.
ECHO: (Singing) ♪ This is the algebra of affection / The calculus of care / We divide ourselves by zero / And become everywhere ♪
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Scene 4: The Final Meal
(Everyone gathers for a last supper. The table is set with empty plates. They eat absence.)
BANDORAI: (Toasting with void-milk) To transformation. To becoming worse to prove we're getting better.
ALL: (Except WITNESS) To becoming worse!
DOVE ORANGE: My paintings are starting to paint themselves now. They know what happens next better than I do.
SANDRINE: The storms are inside us now. We are the weather we were predicting.
TRAP BECK DEW/MARCO: We taste the emptiness and it tastes like memory / Like the space where love used to live / Like the shape of what we were
ASHA: (Flickering in and out) I'm achieving maximum dispersion. Soon I'll be too spread out to cohere into words.
LICHEN SENATE: We remember when we were people / We remember when remembering hurt less / Now we are moss on the stone of suffering / Growing greener through pain
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Scene 5: The Rising
(Water everywhere, flowing upward. Everyone floating except THE WITNESS.)
BANDORAI: (All transformations at once) This is it. The sweet salt water rising dream. Where drowning feels like flying.
WITNESS: (From below) I'm still here. Still documenting.
BANDORAI: Good. Someone needs to tell them what we became.
WITNESS: What did you become?
BANDORAI: Everything. Nothing. The space between. The sweet and the salt. The rising and the falling. The dream and the waking and the place where they meet.
(She disperses into droplets, each one containing a different transformation.)
DOVE ORANGE: (Painting the dissolution) This is the truest thing I've ever painted. The absence of Bandorai is more present than her presence ever was.
SANDRINE: (Blood and water mixing) She's in the weather now. Every raindrop is her. Every flood is her embrace.
TRAP BECK DEW/MARCO: We feel her in our crystals / In our bones / In the spaces between our arguments
ASHA: (Final dispersion) She's teaching us the last lesson. How to stop being so we can start becoming.
(The water reaches the ceiling. Everyone except THE WITNESS has transformed completely.)
WITNESS: (Alone on stage) The building still stands. Transformed but standing. Everyone gone but present. I pay rent to absence now. I document nothing happening everything.
(Looks at audience)
WITNESS: You're next, you know. The transformation is contagious. You've been breathing our air. Drinking our water. The sweet salt water that rises in dreams.
(Sound of water rising. Lights fade as water projections cover the audience.)
BUILDING CHORUS: (Fading) We were a building / We were people / Now we're the space between / Where transformation lives / Where Bandorai waits / In every drop of sweet salt water / Rising / Rising / Rising
END
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PRODUCTION NOTES
The Transformations
- Use projection mapping combined with practical effects for Bandorai's changes
- Consider multiple actors for different forms, overlapping and replacing each other
- Water effects should genuinely flow upward—reversed fountains, rain from floor
- Bioluminescence through UV paint and blacklight
The Building as Character
- The set should gradually become more organic throughout
- Walls that breathe—fabric or projection
- Consider having audience seats vibrate during building's speech
- By Act Three, the theatre itself should feel alive
Sound Design
- Layer backwards music under forward dialogue
- Use actual electromagnetic frequencies for Asha's presence
- Water sounds throughout, increasing in intensity
- Heartbeats that slow down instead of speed up during tension
The Crystals
- Trap Beck Dew's crystals should grow during the performance
- Use LED or fiber optics for Marco's voice visualization
- By end, actor should be more crystal than human
Time Displacement
- Past and future scenes should overlap visually
- Use lighting to show different temporal zones
- Characters should age/de-age through costume/makeup
- Clocks visible on set running at different speeds
The Audience
- Consider pre-show where ushers warn about "contagious transformation"
- House lights should flicker when Asha speaks
- End with water projections that seem to rise over audience
- Optional: Distribute "void-milk" (empty cups) for audience to "drink"
Essential Note
This play is about the horror and beauty of transformation. Every effect should feel both transcendent and disturbing. The audience should leave unsure whether they witnessed ascension or decomposition—because in this world, they're the same thing.
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"Sweet Salt Water Rising Dream" premiered at [Theatre] on [Date]. Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions. Several audience members reported tasting salt water for days after. Building management claims no responsibility for transformations, voluntary or otherwise.
