THE RIGHTS OF SPRING - THE WATER DRAGONS


Before we begin our regularly scheduled program, a message from the pigeons!
[pigeons (small kids) teach please and thank you]

Friends, let me tell you about the Water Dragons. Water twists and turns, water flies in the air and crawls along the ground, water hisses and roars…… didn’t you know all along that water was composed of dragons?
You can’t normally see the Water Dragons, for various obscure physical and metaphysical reasons, but just for the purposes of this event, I’ll ask you to open the eyes of your mind, and let those eyes see…..
[The Eyes of the Mind....].
Here they are! They can fly at the speed of light, travel through space and time......You can point them in any direction. Do me a favor, and point them over there.... yes, over that way! They can see anything, too, visible or invisible, for instance they can see….
(sound effects?)
Now, send them speeding back through eons of time, and look back, and down, burrow under the icecap, to the ice-cave where
[Water Dragons brought in by Eyes]
The Water Dragons lie sleeping so quietly, twitching and snarling now and again as they dream of evaporation......They turn over and drip from time to time.... Their Grandfather Water lulls them to sleep........ Shhh.........
(sound? Lullaby?)
Then summon them back right here to Brooklyn, then forward in time, forward, forward, no, not that far, a little back..... Right there!
And now see what happens when we wake up the Water Dragons.
[Eyes take plastic off, Sun with bell?]
They rain all over everybody, and how we all love it!
[water-pom-poms over and around the audience]
rain harder and harder, run with them all over the ground, OK, OK, enough, cut it out, calm down everybody
[round dance with clouds, (music)]
Let your minds eyes drop to the bottom of the seabed, and follow the Water Dragons as they swim in the sea. Then let your mind become lighter, lighter, floating on air, watching as they evaporate, float with them as clouds; then let your mind become heavy, gloomy, damp, damper, rain, streams, Floating back to the ocean…..
Now refocus the eyes of your mind and send them speeding forward in time..... but while staying right in the same place (it takes a special kind of move) Forward until, until..... wait, a little back, to the left a couple of weeks,………… until…….WATCH OUT!
[Human Being] arrives
A typical modern human being demands a cup of tea! And they have to have it right now, not just when you feel rainy! Let your mind follow the water all the places it’s sent to before it gets to that cup of tea...... The water is snatched from the sky, bounced into the reservoir, made to crawl through tunnels, twist through pipes, squeeze through taps, etc.
[Eyes run Dragon line]
Then it’s fill the bath, run the dishwasher, water the lawn!
Picture the life the Water Dragons are living for you to drink your tea. Corralled, run around, twisted, squeezed, dripped and pushed and steamed! Imagine that! Enough, already!
The Dragons go on strike.
[Occupy signs, etc.]
[Human rep vs. Dragon rep. shouting match]
Hey, I’m the local representative for Dragon Rights, and my guys have had it! Pollution in the clouds, falling onto concrete, flowing into a bunch of rusty old pipes under the ground, and then what? The toilet? No more!
Well I’m here to represent this human! She’s intelligent! Nobody else is! She deserves her tea! She can’t be intelligent without tea and a shower every morning and running the dishwasher every evening! She needs water in a plastic bottle or she can’t meditate properly!
[Dragons rep vs. human rep]
[Eye leans on narrator’s shoulder]
The mind just can’t take it!
Hold on, freeze, stop it right there, before this thing gets out of hand!
You know, if this were reality, we would have to reform the political system, rethink the way we treat the ecology, and while we’re at it remake the financial system, but this isn’t real life – it’s a fairy tale; therefore what we need is a magic word. What is it?
Wait, this just in, a message from Mother Earth!
[Mother rep with birdseed, Pigeons in]
The pigeons, the most overlooked, the least wild Wild Things, come in to save the day.
[Pigeon dance]
The pigeons teach everybody to say “please and thank you”
[take Humans, Wild Things, and Dragons by the hand and make peace]
And everybody dances in the rain.
[contra dance]