The Mercy Ward ~ A Play in Three Acts
Characters
COLINE - 30s, weather tracker whose equipment reads emotions
BAIK - 30s, woman undergoing constant involuntary transformations
ZIEGLER - 40s, the documentarian with unchanged hands
CHEN - 30s, flood survivor carrying water in his lungs
ASHA - 40s, former nursery director, now dispersed into electromagnetic mist
WOOZY PUPIL - 7, child who makes concrete feel pain
ZARA - 20s, artist painting with impossible materials
GRANDMOTHER - 70s (appears in memory/projection)
THE WALLS - Chorus, the settlement's fungal architecture made conscious
THE CHANGED - Ensemble, various states of transformation
Setting
The Settlement's medical ward, sometime after ecological and biological collapse. The stage represents multiple spaces simultaneously - kitchen, laboratory, gallery, outdoors. Time is fluid. The walls visibly breathe throughout.
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ACT ONE
Scene 1: Morning Tea
(Dawn, or what passes for it. The stage is dominated by translucent walls that pulse with slow breathing. BAIK floats in what was once a kitchen - medical equipment merged with domestic appliances. Her skin is transparent, organs visible. COLINE enters with weather equipment that sparks and whirs.)
COLINE: Emotional pressure dropping. Grief at 30.2 inches. (To BAIK) Tea?
BAIK: (Her voice layered, multiple tones) It tastes like batteries now.
COLINE: Everything tastes like batteries. Or memories of batteries. Or the idea of electricity dying in our mouths.
BAIK: (Pouring tea that glows faintly green) Tuesday I grew compound eyes. Wednesday I ate my fingers. Today... (Looks at her hands) They're growing back wrong.
COLINE: Define wrong.
BAIK: They remember being wings.
(ZIEGLER enters, notebook in hand, the only unchanged part of him.)
ZIEGLER: Day 1,426. Baik's fingers are arguing with themselves about what they are.
BAIK: Document this, Ziegler - (Her hand transforms into a claw, then a fin, then back) God's mercy looks like options you didn't ask for.
THE WALLS: (Chorus, breathing in unison)
We inhale your suffering
We exhale your suffering
We are your suffering
Made architecture
COLINE: My barometer says you don't exist today, Baik.
BAIK: (Laughing) Finally, accuracy.
Scene 2: The Flood Memory
(Lights shift. CHEN enters, perpetually dripping water that never reaches the ground.)
CHEN: The walls say Sarah's happy inside them.
ZIEGLER: The walls lie.
CHEN: I know. But lies that breathe feel more honest than truth that doesn't.
THE WALLS:
Sarah swims in our vessels
Sarah breathes in our lungs
Sarah is learning to be infrastructure
Sarah says hello
CHEN: (To walls) Tell her I'm drowning better. Getting efficient at it.
COLINE: (Checking equipment) You're producing your own weather system. Localized flooding in your chest cavity.
CHEN: The water followed me inside after the disaster. First the house, then my dreams, now my lungs. Evolution or execution, depending on perspective.
BAIK: (Transforming, her skin rippling) Everything depends on perspective. Yesterday I was convinced I was furniture. The perspective of being sat on changes you.
(WOOZY PUPIL enters, dragging her hand along the wall. Where she touches, the walls whimper.)
WOOZY PUPIL: I taught the concrete to feel pain!
ZIEGLER: (Writing) Why would you do that?
WOOZY PUPIL: So it knows it's alive. Dead things don't hurt.
CHEN: (Coughing water) Living things don't hurt like this.
WOOZY PUPIL: (Singing softly)
Concrete remembers mountain
Mountain remembers ocean
Ocean remembers being sky
Sky remembers being nothing
Nothing hurts the most
(The walls begin to keen - a low, structural moan.)
Scene 3: The Gallery
(ZARA's space, canvases that move on their own. She paints with brushes made of human hair and worse.)
ZARA: (To a painting) Stop eating the visitors.
BAIK: It's hungry?
ZARA: I painted it with appetite. My mistake - used too much yearning, not enough satisfaction.
ZIEGLER: Document: Painting consumed three observers before containment. Now sings hymns from basement.
ZARA: (Mixing colors that shouldn't exist) Want to know what I'm mixing? Baik's molted skin, Chen's lung-water, and tomorrow's regret.
COLINE: Tomorrow doesn't have regret yet.
ZARA: I'm painting it into existence. Causality is negotiable if you use the right medium.
BAIK: Paint me.
ZARA: Which you?
BAIK: All of them. The medusa drowning in air. The mantis eating itself. The water bear experiencing centuries between heartbeats.
ZARA: (Beginning to paint) That's not a portrait. That's a massacre.
BAIK: Same thing. I'm dying in every direction simultaneously.
(ASHA enters, or rather, drifts in - barely visible, like heat shimmer.)
ASHA: I've brought nectar.
CHEN: From where?
ASHA: The void where stars used to be. I milk absence now.
WOOZY PUPIL: What does void-milk taste like?
ASHA: Like forgetting, but sweeter. Like your mother's voice if she never existed.
Scene 4: The Lesson
(The stage transforms into a teaching space. The CHANGED gather - various states of transformation.)
BAIK: (To the children, her vocal cords dissolving) Today's lesson: Women must give everything.
CHANGED CHILD 1: Everything?
BAIK: Until nothing remains. Become the empty glass. Then shatter.
CHANGED CHILD 2: My mother kept something back.
BAIK: That's why she's not here.
GRANDMOTHER: (Appearing as projection/memory) Wrong lesson, child.
BAIK: (To Grandmother) You're dead.
GRANDMOTHER: Death is negotiable. Like time. Like gender. Like the difference between mercy and murder.
BAIK: You taught me sacrifice.
GRANDMOTHER: I taught you survival. You learned sacrifice. Different curriculum.
(GRANDMOTHER shows her arms - text written on the inside of her skin.)
GRANDMOTHER: Read what I really wrote.
BAIK: (Reading) "Persistence is punishment. Nurture while dissolving. Transform into nothing while staying awake for it."
GRANDMOTHER: The last part is key - stay awake. You're sleeping through your transformations.
BAIK: It hurts less asleep.
GRANDMOTHER: Pain is information. Information is power. Power is...
BAIK/GRANDMOTHER: (Together) ...the ability to choose your transformation.
GRANDMOTHER: But you gave up choosing.
(GRANDMOTHER fades.)
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ACT TWO
Scene 1: The Weather Breaks
(Storm sounds that move backwards. Rain falling up. COLINE's equipment sparking wildly.)
COLINE: Tomorrow's forecast: mandatory sunshine after prohibited storms!
ZIEGLER: That's not weather.
COLINE: Nothing is weather anymore. I track emotional pressure, multiply it by suffering, divide by hope. The equation always equals transformation.
CHEN: (Water pouring from his mouth) The flood's inside me now. Internal weather system.
COLINE: You're a closed loop hurricane. Sustainable disaster.
(The walls begin to sweat. Actual perspiration beading on their surface.)
THE WALLS:
We are having a fever
We are having a vision
We are having your memories for lunch
They taste like rust and mother's milk
WOOZY PUPIL: (To walls) Are you sick?
THE WALLS: We are becoming sick. Learning illness from you. Thank you for the education.
Scene 2: Midnight Transformations
(Darkness except for bioluminescent traces. BAIK cycles through forms rapidly.)
BAIK: (Shifting) Medusa. Mantis. Tardigrade. Human. No—wait—
(She becomes stuck between forms.)
BAIK: I'm everything. I'm nothing. I'm the space between.
ZIEGLER: (Writing by bio-light) Subject experiencing simultaneous multi-form expression.
BAIK: Stop documenting. Start helping!
ZIEGLER: This is helping. Someone has to witness.
BAIK: Witness this— (She strikes at him with a claw that becomes a tentacle that becomes a hand) I'm falling through myself!
ZARA: (Entering with canvas) Hold still. I need to paint this.
BAIK: I can't hold anything. I'm becoming unbecoming.
ZARA: Perfect. That's exactly what I need to capture.
(She paints frantically as BAIK shifts. The painting begins to move, mirroring BAIK's transformations.)
ASHA: (Coalescing slightly) I can help. Drink this.
BAIK: What is it?
ASHA: Concentrated nothing. From between stars. It'll stabilize you in instability.
BAIK: (Drinking) It tastes like... forgetting my own name.
ASHA: Names are anchors. You need to drift.
Scene 3: The Gender Storm
(BAIK's transformations now include gender shifts. The stage lighting fluctuates with each change.)
BAIK: (Male voice) Monday.
BAIK: (Female voice) Wednesday.
BAIK: (All voices) Weekend.
BAIK: (No voice, just gesture) Thursday is nothing. Just potential.
CHEN: How do you track it?
BAIK: I don't. It tracks me. Hunts me through my own body.
COLINE: (Reading equipment) You're creating temporal anomalies. Your gender is breaking causality.
BAIK: Good. Causality had it coming.
WOOZY PUPIL: Can you teach me that?
BAIK: You don't want this lesson. Every change is a small death. I'm dying alphabetically through every possible form.
ZIEGLER: (To audience) Document: Subject claims to experience death as organizational system.
Scene 4: The Feast
(A grotesque dinner party. The table is organic, growing food that shouldn't exist.)
ZARA: I painted dinner.
CHEN: It's moving.
ZARA: Everything I paint moves now. Side effect of using Baik's skin as canvas.
BAIK: You used my skin?
ZARA: You shed it. Waste not.
(They sit. The food writhes on their plates.)
ASHA: (Mostly invisible) I'll just photosynthesize.
COLINE: From what light?
ASHA: The light that hasn't arrived yet. I'm eating tomorrow's photons.
WOOZY PUPIL: (Poking her food) Mine's crying.
ZARA: That means it's fresh.
THE WALLS:
We are your dinner table
We are your digestion
We are the thing that eats you
While you eat
CHEN: (Water flowing from his eyes) Every meal is communion now. We're eating God's jokes.
BAIK: Then God has a terrible sense of humor.
VOICE OF GOD: (Through the walls) I learned it from you.
(Everyone freezes.)
ZIEGLER: (Writing frantically) Document: Possible divine communication or collective hallucination.
VOICE OF GOD: Same thing.
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ACT THREE
Scene 1: The Breakdown
(The settlement is fragmenting. Walls lean at impossible angles. Time stutters.)
CHEN: (Drowning more violently) The water wants out.
COLINE: Let it go.
CHEN: It's all that's left of Sarah. If I let the water go, I let her go.
BAIK: (Now multiple beings simultaneously) Let. Her. Go.
CHEN: Says the woman who can't let go of any form.
BAIK: I don't have a choice!
CHEN: Neither do I! The water is my choice to keep her!
(He vomits an impossible amount of water. In it, a shape forms - SARAH's face.)
SARAH: (In the water) Stop carrying me. I'm heavy when wet.
CHEN: You're dead.
SARAH: I'm architecture now. Better than dead. Useful.
THE WALLS:
Sarah is load-bearing
Sarah is foundational
Sarah supports you all
Stop making her sad
Scene 2: The Child's Discovery
(WOOZY PUPIL stands center stage, hands on the ground.)
WOOZY PUPIL: I can feel the settlement's heartbeat.
ZIEGLER: Buildings don't have hearts.
WOOZY PUPIL: This one grew one. From all our pain. It needed a way to pump suffering through its veins.
(She sings. The building responds with rhythmic creaking.)
WOOZY PUPIL:
Building, remember mountain
Mountain, remember star
Star, remember nothing
Nothing, remember us
THE WALLS: (Singing back)
We remember your bones before they grew
We remember your dreams before you dreamed them
We remember your death before you die
We remember tomorrow that never comes
BAIK: Make it stop remembering!
WOOZY PUPIL: I can't. I only taught it to feel. It learned memory on its own.
Scene 3: The Final Portrait
(ZARA unveils a massive painting - all of them, all their forms, simultaneously.)
ZARA: I painted us.
COLINE: It's horrifying.
ZARA: It's honest.
ZIEGLER: It's moving.
ZARA: We're moving. It's just keeping up.
(The painting begins to speak with all their voices.)
PAINTING:
We are the mercy ward
We are the sickness and the cure
We are God's favorite joke
We are the punchline that never lands
BAIK: (To painting) What are we becoming?
PAINTING: What you always were. Just more visible.
ASHA: (Nearly completely dispersed) I can see through time now. We don't end.
CHEN: That's the worst news possible.
ASHA: Or the best. Depends on perspective.
Scene 4: The Transformation Complete
(The stage is chaos. Everyone transforming simultaneously.)
BAIK: (All forms at once) I am medusa mantis tardigrade human divine mistake!
CHEN: (Water exploding from him) I am flood and drought and the space between!
ASHA: (Visible and invisible) I am here and there and nowhere!
WOOZY PUPIL: (Aging rapidly then reversing) I am child and crone and seed!
ZARA: (Becoming her own painting) I am art and artist and audience!
COLINE: (His equipment merging with his body) I am the storm and the forecast!
ZIEGLER: (Still unchanged) I am... still documenting.
ALL: (To ZIEGLER) Why don't you change?
ZIEGLER: Someone has to witness the end.
BAIK: This isn't ending. It's just changing so much it looks like ending.
ZIEGLER: Then someone has to witness the change.
(His pen begins to transform in his hand.)
ZIEGLER: No. No! I need to document—
(The pen becomes a flower, then a key, then a small bird.)
ZIEGLER: (To audience) Final documentation: The observer cannot remain outside the observation. The witness becomes the witnessed. The mercy ward has no exit, only deeper wards.
(Everything accelerates. Transformations overlap. The walls breathe faster.)
THE WALLS:
We are having a heart attack
We are having a birth
We are having an ending
That is also beginning
ALL: (In unison, but each in their own transformed voice)
This is the mercy
This is the ward
This is the place where God stores his love
Too much to bear
Too much to refuse
Too much to die from
Not enough to live
(Lights flicker between brilliant and darkness.)
GRANDMOTHER: (Appearing one last time) The lesson was never sacrifice. It was witness. You're all witnessing your own becoming.
BAIK: We're dying!
GRANDMOTHER: You're transforming. Same thing, different speed.
(A brilliant flash. Then darkness. Then a single light on WOOZY PUPIL, now ancient.)
WOOZY PUPIL: (To audience)
The mercy ward continues. In you now. You've breathed our air, heard our words. The transformation is contagious. Welcome to the ward.
(She transforms into light, then into sound, then into silence.)
END
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Production Notes
Set: Multi-level, suggesting depth and instability. Walls should physically breathe—perhaps fabric or projection. Include medical equipment merged with domestic items.
Lighting: Should suggest transformation—morphing colors, bioluminescence, shadows that move independently.
Sound: Layered breathing of walls, backwards rain, heartbeat of building, emotional weather.
Costumes: Should allow for quick transformation suggestions. Layers that can be removed/added/shifted.
Special Effects:
- Chen's perpetual water
- Asha's dispersal into mist
- Baik's multiple simultaneous forms
- The painting that moves and speaks
Casting Notes:
- BAIK requires extreme physical flexibility
- THE WALLS should be voiced by entire ensemble
- Consider doubling GRANDMOTHER with VOICE OF GOD
Runtime: 2.5 hours with two intermissions
Themes for Direction
- Transformation as both blessing and curse
- The price of documentation vs participation
- Gender fluidity as temporal anomaly
- Mercy indistinguishable from cruelty at extremes
- Collective vs individual identity
- The observer effect on reality
- Survival through metamorphosis vs resistance
Final Note
The play exists in the space between states—between comedy and tragedy, between human and other, between ending and beginning. Like the mercy ward itself, it should feel medically precise yet emotionally chaotic, documenting its own dissolution.
[End of Manuscript]
