The Child Who Collects Shadows
Notes from the Abundant Deprivation Zone
( The Play )
Pre-Show Installation (Outdoor Space)
The Shadow Collection Garden
- Install multiple light sources at odd angles creating overlapping shadows
- Place empty picture frames on the ground where audience members' shadows fall
- Provide small black bags labeled "Shadow Collection Kits" at entry
- Scatter plastic plants throughout, with one actor (Geoffrey) watering them obsessively as audience arrives
- Paint a full supermarket mural on an outdoor wall with visible teeth marks
Audience Journey
- Guide audience through shadow garden in small groups
- Each person must "donate" their shadow to the collection
- Hand out small pieces of paper to write questions they're afraid to ask
- Questions placed in a clear box that will appear onstage
Act One: The Grammar of Trauma
Opening Sequence - The Breathing Mosaic
Stage Design: Floor covered in cracked mirrors of different sizes
Movement Score:
- Molly enters counting invisible objects, dropping them into shadow
- Simphiwe begins at center, dissolving gram by gram through micro-movements
- Each movement leaves a "tile" of light on the floor
- Anoushka (as child) collects these light-tiles in a bucket that never fills
The Bread Fever Scene
Geoffrey performs a medical examination on a loaf of bread:
- Takes its temperature
- Counts its ribs
- Tries to feed it water
- The bread begins counting back (use recorded child's voice)
- Other actors echo the counting in different languages/speeds
Lipstick Liturgy
Anoushka (as nurse) creates a ritual:
- Applies lipstick while crying (water sprays from eyes)
- Each application leaves red marks on air (use laser pointers)
- Begins painting walls with gestures that leave light trails
- Hums commercial jingles that decay into wordless melodies
- Other actors join, creating a choir of forgotten abundance
Act Two: The Swaying Bridge
Multiple Worlds Sequence
Split Stage Technique:
- Indoor stage divided by translucent scrim
- One side: hunger ward movements (slow, careful, conserving)
- Other side: golf game movements (confident, wasteful, oblivious)
- Actors' spines literally stretch between worlds using elastic cords
The Question Eggs
Molly delivers questions to audience while actors create tableaux:
- "Are clouds edible?" - actors taste air
- "Are we clouds?" - bodies become vapor using fog machines
- "Is this the cloud?" - everyone looks up, sees their shadows on ceiling
- Each question cracks open, releasing movement sequences
Paper Crane Multiplication
Technical Magic:
- Start with one crane in Anoushka's hands
- Use hidden compartments and sleight of hand
- Cranes appear from pockets, sleeves, mouths
- By scene end, hundreds fall from ceiling
- Audience finds cranes under their seats
Act Three: The Delirious Work
Shadow Collection Showcase
Simphiwe (as the child who collects shadows):
- Displays collection using shadow puppetry
- Shows how shadows weigh less than food
- Demonstrates shadow-eating technique
- Teaches audience to catch their own shadows
Painted Supermarket Shopping
Move entire audience outside to the mural:
- Actors shop with invisible carts
- Geoffrey stocks empty shelves with air
- Molly bites the wall, leaves real teeth marks
- Audience invited to "shop" for one thing they've lost
The Fever Dream Fugue
All actors perform overlapping solos:
- Molly: Writing invisible words that appear as projections
- Geoffrey: Planting medical gloves in sandbox
- Simphiwe: Teaching shadows to sing
- Anoushka: Alternating between child and nurse, aging/youth-ening
Technical Requirements
Sound Design
- Layer: heartbeats, fans, stomach sounds, golf game, commercial jingles
- Create "silence-eating" effect when cranes multiply
- Use contact mics on actors' bodies for internal sounds
- Echo effects for questions that multiply
Lighting
- Shadow play essential - multiple light sources
- UV paint for invisible writing scenes
- Lights that "breathe" with the mosaic tiles
- Fog for transformation sequences
- One persistent light on plastic plants
Props That Transform
- Bread that becomes baby (use puppetry)
- Wedding ring on fishing line that grows
- Calculator that only shows ERROR
- Lipstick that leaves light trails
- Seeds that project trees when held to light
Audience Integration
Interactive Moments
- Shadow donation at entry
- Finding cranes under seats
- Shopping in painted supermarket
- Invited to water plastic plants during intermission
- Final scene: everyone holds up phone lights as "edible clouds"
The Bridge They Cross
- Create physical bridge between indoor/outdoor spaces
- Bridge sways (safe but unsettling)
- Below: speakers playing stomach sounds
- Each audience member crosses alone
- Actors whisper questions as they pass
Closing Ceremony
Cloud Tasting Ritual
- Audience returns inside to find cotton candy machines
- But the cotton candy is just air with sugar scent
- Anoushka (as child) teaches everyone to taste clouds
- Each person answers: "What do clouds taste like?"
- Answers projected on walls as they're spoken
Final Image
- All shadows collected throughout show project on ceiling
- They form one large shadow of a child reaching upward
- Simphiwe stands beneath, arms raised, almost touching
- Lights fade except on plastic plants
- Geoffrey continues watering in darkness
- Sound of real water falling
Performance Notes
Duration: 90 minutes with one "bridge crossing" instead of intermission
Essential Qualities:
- Movements should feel fevered but precise
- Repetition as ritual, not mere echoing
- Find humor in the absurd without mocking pain
- Transformations should feel inevitable, not magical
- Maintain sense that reality itself is unreliable
For Actors:
- Don't play trauma, play tasks
- Find the delirium in precision
- Let objects teach you their logic
- Questions are more important than answers
- When you don't understand, keep going
Warning: This play changes each performance based on what shadows are collected, what questions are asked, what the audience shops for. Embrace this instability. The work itself has a fever. Let it dream through you.
( Dialogue)
Act One: The Grammar of Trauma
Opening Sequence - The Breathing Mosaic
Cracked mirrors cover the floor. MOLLY enters counting invisible objects.
MOLLY: Seventeen... eighteen... nineteen shadows. No, wait. (drops something invisible) They keep slipping through. Like trying to hold smoke. Like trying to hold... (to audience) Do you know what weighs less than hunger?
SIMPHIWE: (center stage, beginning to dissolve through micro-movements) I'm becoming a tile. Watch. Each gram I lose becomes part of the floor. Part of the architecture.
ANOUSHKA (as CHILD, carrying empty bucket): I'm collecting the light your body leaves behind. See? (shows empty bucket) It's getting so heavy.
MOLLY: She thinks light has weight. Should we tell her?
SIMPHIWE: Let her believe something fills something.
The Bread Fever Scene
GEOFFREY enters with a stethoscope and a loaf of bread.
GEOFFREY: (examining bread medically) Temperature: 39.5. Elevated. (listens with stethoscope) Heartbeat irregular.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: Is the bread sick?
GEOFFREY: The bread is... (counts) One rib, two ribs, three ribs—
BREAD (recorded child's voice): Four ribs, five ribs, six ribs, seven—
ALL: (overlapping in different languages/speeds) Eight, nine, ten, eleven—
GEOFFREY: (frantic) The bread is counting back! The bread remembers being grain, being field, being—
MOLLY: Being eaten.
SIMPHIWE: (to bread) Shhh, you're not a baby. You're not a—
BREAD VOICE: Mama?
Silence.
GEOFFREY: (quietly) I've invented a new branch of medicine. Where everything we examine... examines us back.
Lipstick Liturgy
ANOUSHKA transforms into NURSE, applying lipstick while water sprays from her eyes.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (to mirror) Still here. Still red. Still... (lipstick leaves light trails in air) My mother's last tube. When it runs out, I'll use... (laughs) Well, we all know what runs endless here.
She begins painting the air, humming.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (singing) "Taste the rainbow of—" (stops) Of what? Geoffrey, what comes after rainbow?
GEOFFREY: Fruit flavors. It was fruit flavors.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (painting frantically) I'm writing fruit on the walls. Apple. Orange. Pomegranate. (tastes air) Why do pomegranates taste like tears?
MOLLY: Why do tears taste like pomegranates?
SIMPHIWE: (joining the humming) Why does anything taste like anything anymore?
They create a choir of forgotten abundance, wordless melodies that decay.
Act Two: The Swaying Bridge
Multiple Worlds Sequence
Stage splits with translucent scrim. Actors attached to elastic cords stretching between worlds.
MOLLY: (pulled between) Here, a child asks if clouds are edible. There, someone asks if the wine is properly chilled.
GEOFFREY: (one side) Calculating: How many grams of flour equal one more breath?
GEOFFREY: (pulled to other side) Calculating: How many yards to the green?
SIMPHIWE: My spine is taffy. Was sugar. Remembers sweetness. (stretches) Can a body be in two places at once?
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (pointing up) Look! Our shadows are having a meeting on the ceiling without us!
The Question Eggs
MOLLY approaches audience with nested questions.
MOLLY: I have questions that crack open. Watch. (to audience) "Are clouds edible?"
Actors taste air in response.
SIMPHIWE: They taste like cotton candy. Like memory. Like—
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: Like Thursday. Clouds taste like Thursday.
MOLLY: (cracking another) "Are we clouds?"
Actors' bodies become vapor using fog effects.
GEOFFREY: I'm evaporating. No—ascending. No—(confused) What's the difference?
MOLLY: "Is this the cloud?"
Everyone looks up. Their shadows dance on the ceiling.
ALL: (whispering) Our shadows know something we don't.
Paper Crane Multiplication
ANOUSHKA holds one paper crane. It multiplies mysteriously.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: I folded one from a medical form. But now—(cranes appear from everywhere) They're eating the silence!
GEOFFREY: That's why it's getting louder. All that consumed quiet has to—
SIMPHIWE: (catching falling cranes) These aren't just cranes. Read them. Each one is a diagnosis.
MOLLY: (reading) "Patient presents with excessive hope."
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (reading) "Chronic remembering of abundance."
GEOFFREY: (reading) "Acute onset of believing in tomorrow."
Hundreds fall from ceiling.
SIMPHIWE: The cranes are writing themselves now. Look—blank papers becoming birds becoming stories becoming—
Act Three: The Delirious Work
Shadow Collection Showcase
SIMPHIWE becomes the child who collects shadows.
SIMPHIWE: (displaying collection) This one's from a mother who forgot her daughter's name. It weighs nothing. This one's from bread that thought it was a baby. Even lighter. (to audience) Want to donate? Shadows are the only thing we have in abundance here.
MOLLY: How do you catch them?
SIMPHIWE: Like this. (demonstrates) You have to be quick. They're slippery. Like soap. Like hope. Like—
GEOFFREY: Like trying to hold onto someone who's already gone.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: I eat them sometimes. When the hunger gets too loud.
MOLLY: What do shadows taste like?
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: Like the space between heartbeats.
Painted Supermarket Shopping
At the mural. Actors shop with invisible carts.
GEOFFREY: (stocking empty shelves) Fresh air in aisle three! Memories of milk in the dairy section! (to invisible customer) Oh, Mrs. Hassan, the usual? Coming right up! (wraps nothing)
SIMPHIWE: (shopping) I need ingredients for hope. Where do you keep the—
MOLLY: (biting the wall) The apples taste like paint. No. The paint tastes like apples. No. I taste like forgetting.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: (examining teeth marks) Everyone leaves marks here. Even the invisible shoppers. See? Ghost teeth. Spirit molars. The hunger of the never-were.
The Fever Dream Fugue
All perform overlapping solos.
MOLLY: (writing invisibly) The pen ran out but the words keep coming. Invisible words are more true because they can't lie about what they—
GEOFFREY: (planting medical gloves) Day forty-three of my rooftop garden. The latex is sprouting. I swear I saw fingers. Tuesday they waved at me. Wednesday they made a fist. Thursday—
SIMPHIWE: (teaching shadows) B-flat, shadows! From the diaphragm! You can't sing if you don't breathe, and you can't breathe if you don't—
ANOUSHKA: (switching between child/nurse rapidly) Are clouds edible? / Check the IV drip / My teeth are falling out / Blood pressure dropping / Will they grow new children? / We're losing her / Plant them please / Clear!
Their solos interweave, creating a symphony of delirium.
Closing Ceremony
Cloud Tasting Ritual
Cotton candy machines produce only scented air.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (teaching audience) First, open your mouth to the sky. Now, let your tongue remember sweetness. There. You're tasting clouds.
MOLLY: What do they taste like?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (prompted) [Their answer]
SIMPHIWE: In the Abundant Deprivation Zone, we eat memories, drink shadows, plant hope in latex gloves.
GEOFFREY: We count ribs like rosaries, water plastic plants like prayers, shop in painted aisles for things that never were.
ANOUSHKA/NURSE: We wear lipstick like armor, fold cranes like promises, ask questions like—
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: Are clouds edible?
MOLLY: (to audience) In the space between the question and the answer, that's where we live. That's where we're living. That's where we'll keep living until—
Final Image
All shadows project on ceiling, forming a child reaching upward.
SIMPHIWE: (reaching up) Almost... almost...
GEOFFREY: (watering in darkness) Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. The plants still aren't growing. But the water... the water believes they might.
ANOUSHKA/CHILD: (whispered) I collected all your shadows. They're safe. They're so light. Like clouds. Like questions. Like tomorrow.
MOLLY: (to audience) Take your shadows when you go. Or leave them. We'll eat them when the hunger comes again.
Sound of real water falling.
ALL: (scattered whispers) Still here. Still here. Still here.
Darkness. Except for the plastic plants. Which might be glowing. Or might be singing. Or might be—
[END]
