Session Fourteen Transcript

Previously in SESSION THIRTEEN

 LEILA: Mari, Mari, getting together with the Mona Lisa. Are you giving out details?

MARI: Lori’s pried a few out of me.

LORI: They walked by the river.

MARI: True.

LORI: But they didn’t kiss there.

LEILA: Wow, Lori, you’re the town message board, aren’t you?

KACEY: Are there any developments in the case that we should know about?

MARI: Well – my Mona Lisa tells me - when they searched his place, they found a whole other set of keys to a whole other house. They finally tracked his other place down and they went there to see if they could find him.

BRIA: They could not find him.

MARI: No. But they did find -

LORI: Oh my god.

MARI: Yeah.

LORI: There were more women in the basement at his other house.

MARI: Yep.

LORI: It would probably really help them to know he’s really gone and they have nothing more to fear from him.

MARI: Oh. Wow. Yeah. I didn’t even think of that. They’re probably terrified he’s going to pop out behind some bush and get them again. How can I help them?

KACEY: I’m not sure you can. Was there anything left of him?

MARI: I swept it all into the garbage. Those ashes are long gone.

KACEY: maybe look into which dump the office garbage goes to?

MARI: I can do that, for sure.

KACEY: I’ll consult the wider community – maybe there’s someone with a really quirky Defense that will help us track him down.

Theme music begins

JACKI: Recorded live at Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn

Messenger Theatre Company presents

The Defense

This is Session Fourteen

LORI: Spill spill spill. I want all the gossip.

MARI: It’s going well. I like her.

LORI: Yay!

BRIA: Are you talking about Mari’s Mona Lisa?

LORI: Yes. They went out again.

MARI: You’re a real gossip, aren’t you?

LORI: With good news, absolutely. I spread it around like confetti.

BRIA: I’m happy for you, Mari. I hope we get to meet her one day.

MARI: You mean outside of the police station?

BRIA: Yeah. I mean – we didn’t MEET her in there. She just told us where the bathrooms were and stuff.

 LORI: And which were the best snacks in the snack machine.

LEILA: Are we talking about the snack machine at the police station? That was a hot tip that girl gave us.

LORI: That’s Mari’s Mona Lisa.

LEILA: Oh, right. Well, I thank her. Left to my own devices, I’d have probably ended up with those off brand cheese curls and I would have been hungry and sorry later.

KACEY: It sounds like you weren’t hungry or sorry after your pancakes last week.

MARI: Oh my god. They were this peach raspberry business? It was unreal.

LORI: They were magic.

BRIA: Kacey. You have to try them. They were glorious.

LEILA: Best pancakes of my life.

KACEY: They sound amazing. Meanwhile – I have some stuff to report if you all don’t mind me kicking things off today.

MARI: Please do.

KACEY: Well – as it turns out, regarding our challenge of tracking down the copy repair guy, there are a couple of people with Defenses that draw forth the dead in some way. They’re a kind of intense reanimating Defense.

BRIA: Like, calling forth a zombie army type Defense?

KACEY: Something like that, yeah.

BRIA: Whoa.

KACEY: Exactly.

LORI: That’s an intense Defense!

LEILA: Good god. I can’t imagine.

MARI: But how does that help them? Like, how does that work?

KACEY: She’s under attack. Her Defense searches for any dead nearby and pulls them forth, pulls them together and the reanimated corpses take care of the threat.

MARI: Wow.

KACEY: The real difficulty is in activating the Defense on purpose. But – I’ll tell you about that next. The basic idea would be that if we could get to the general vicinity of this guy’s ashes, then we trigger the reanimating Defense and then walk him to the police station and call in a hot tip about the remains on their doorstep.

MARI: This is complicated.

KACEY: Very. But there are a lot of chapters that would like to help with this. There’s a general sense that helping someone’s victims is not something we’re usually in a position to do.

MARI: Wow. Well. I have found the dump that our office trash goes to and I called over there to ask if they could pinpoint a location and it sounds like we can at least get within a reasonable area there.

LORI: How did you get them to tell you that?

MARI: I told them I lost my engagement ring in the trash.

LORI: Genius.

BRIA: Brilliant.

MARI: So we’re good for location, too.

LEILA: I’m stuck on how we get the Defenses to work on demand.

KACEY: This has been a concern of the organization for some time. It is not often that we want to trigger the Defense on purpose but this is a great example. There is a team of scientists who’ve been working on it for the last decade or so.

BRIA: No way.

KACEY: And, they’re just at the point where they’re ready to run some experiments in the field.

MARI: Or the garbage dump, as it were.

KACEY: As it were.

LEILA: Do we know how it works?

KACEY: They’ve built a machine that imitates the pheromones, vibrations and electrical impulses of a predator. They turn it on and the Defense is activated.

LEILA: Wow.

KACEY: The problem has been that they have to rebuild it every time it works because the Defense tends to destroy it.

BRIA: I bet.

KACEY: But this is a case where we could bring the re-animated corpses to the police station by leading it with the device. The bodies have been brought forth to kill this machine “predator” but it moves slow and we get the “predator” machine to move fast.

BRIA: Zombie chase scene! I’m so excited.

KACEY: The thing is – if anyone else with the Defense happens to be there, the machine will be at risk. In fact, we’re all going to have to consciously avoid both the dump and the route to the station because any one of us could be exposed to the machine and have our Defenses interfere with the process.

LORI: And I bet that machine would be a lot less effective if it were suddenly small.

MARI: Or a pile of ash.

LEILA: Or crushed under a stray AC unit or something.

BRIA: At least I couldn’t stop its heart!

KACEY: Bright side! So – I’ll pass on the location info to the team, they’ll pick a date, I’ll let you all know it’s happening and what the route is and we all just avoid that street.

MARI: This is so complicated.

BRIA: And it involves zombies!

KACEY: It is. And it does. We’re making real progress here and our particular cluster is at the heart of it. I’m really proud of us.

LORI: Me too!

MARI: Should I drop a hint to my Mona Lisa on the day so she can be on the lookout?

KACEY: As much as it would be good to have them prepared over there, I actually don’t think we should have you do that. We want you as disconnected from this operation as possible. In fact, I might even suggest you get out of town on the day we do this.

MARI: Out of town?

KACEY: I want no suspicion on you. None. So let’s get you on a little trip.

LORI: Maybe take your new girlfriend.

MARI: We are not ready for that.

BRIA: What if we took, like, a girl’s vakay sort of thing? That’s a thing people do.

KACEY: Having you all safely far away when this goes down actually sounds really good to me. Can you organize something like that, Leila?

LEILA: Are you kidding me? This is the sort of thing I live for. Leave it to me. I’ll start investigating possibilities and as soon as we nail down a date, I’ll book it all.

MARI: Who’s got a pancake recipe?

LORI: I’ll find some.

KACEY: I should have a date for you later tonight.

LORI: This is very exciting. On two fronts. One – the pancake posse steps out. Two – we bring some peace of mind to those girls.

KACEY: I agree entirely.

LEILA: I’m wondering if it might not be better to just set you loose to go pin down that date, Kacey. We can hold this fort down if you want to sort that out.

KACEY: Excellent idea. Thank you, Leila. Is that alright with everyone?

BRIA: Of course.

LORI: Absolutely.

MARI: Do it.

KACEY: I’ll run out to my car and get the contact list, make some calls and then I can come back with a date and you can catch me up on anything I missed.

LEILA: Go Kacey! We’ve got this.

KACEY: Right. Okay. Be right back.

LORI: Kacey’s the bomb.

MARI: 100%

LORI: Should we do something for her?

BRIA: Like what?

LORI: I don’t know. Make her a cake. Buy her a present. I feel like I want to.

BRIA: We never have before.

MARI: We’re getting into territory where we’re doing a lot of things we’ve never done before.

BRIA: That’s true.

LEILA: Maybe we should bring her some pancakes.

LORI: Yeah, yeah! Perfect. We can make some in this house we get and then bring her a batch.

LEILA: She’ll love it.

BRIA: Do you think that place would give us their peach raspberry recipe?

MARI: I doubt it. But the internet can surely provide.

LEILA: Does anyone have any special desires for an escape house?

MARI: By the water somewhere.

LORI: Water would be great. Maybe somewhere we could get in it.

BRIA: I’d like that.

LEILA: Are we feeling lake, river or ocean?

MARI: I’d take any of those.

LORI: I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing a tree or two, as well – so that might push us toward lake territory.

BRIA: Yeah trees would be good. I could go for some flowers.

LEILA: Great. How far do we want to travel?

MARI: I feel like I get a little crazy after three hours in the car.

LORI: That seems like a good limit to me, too.

BRIA: Especially if we’re not staying a real long time.

MARI: But I can absolutely do longer if you find a perfect place that’s just past it.

LEILA: I’m just collecting ideals here and when we have to push past them, I’ll check with everybody.

MARI: You do this sort of thing for a living, don’t you?

LEILA: I do. But this is so much better than the shit I have to organize for work. The stuff I have to organize there is so boring, you would not believe.

LORI: Tell us.

LEILA: They want the absolute dullest hotels. If they have personality, they’re not interested. They want the dullest food in the dullest locations and if they’re in exciting locations, they don’t want time to explore them, they just want to stay in their dull conference rooms.

MARI: Sounds very dull.

LEILA: You cannot imagine. But THIS? I am back in business, babies. Actual challenging, interesting planning, with actual interesting needs? I’m very excited.

BRIA: I guess it might be good, too, to not be too close to other houses, just in case there happen to be some Defense triggering ding-dongs nearby.

LEILA: We’re a pretty good team you know that?

BRIA: I give us an A+.

MARI: 100%.

LORI: Ten out of ten.

LEILA: Five stars.

BRIA: Out of five?

LEILA: Of course.

KACEY: Thank you all for suggesting we just handle this now. We’re on for Monday next week – so maybe you go away for the weekend and come back Tuesday. Does that work?

LEILA: Absolutely and I’ll get right on booking us something.

LEILA: I’ve got our preferences all organized.

LORI: Do we have a thing we should say to explain where we’re going? Or who we’re going with? I mean, for those who need more than pancake posse, that is.

KACEY: Some groups say they’re old friends from school – though that obviously won’t work for your old friends from school. We’ve heard “my women’s group” “My support group” “my club” Some people take up a cover hobby – like crochet or knitting – though we have had some sticky moments when non-Defense friends want to join whatever craft it is. The less appealing the craft or content is, the better.

MARI: Like macrame or something?

KACEY: You’d be surprised at how many people are into macrame.

LEILA: I don’t even know what that is.

MARI: This is.

LEILA: That’s macrame?!

MARI: Mostly just knots.

LEILA: Wow.

LORI: Maybe scrapbooking?

MARI: Is that a thing?

LORI: Yeah, my great aunt is into it. She hits up paper stores everywhere she goes.

MARI: Does she have a club?

 LORI: I don’t think so. I think she just does it on her own but it’s really a THING, you know? Like – they sell all these sort of paper doll-like decorative things that people put in their scrapbooks.

LEILA: My eyes are definitely glazing over – it might be suitably uninteresting.

KACEY: You don’t have to decide today.

LORI: Oh, you know the other thing about it? My great aunt always has to be super cautious about invites to scrapbooking events because they’re like pyramid schemes, they’re always trying to sell her stuff.

MARI: Like a scrapbooking MLM?

LORI: I think so. It’s super weird.

MARI: That really does make it intensely unappealing. No one would want to join our group if it seems like we’re trying to sell them something.

BRIA: This is so dark.

MARI: It’s true though.

KACEY: It’s actually pretty brilliant. If someone is pressing you about the group, just start trying to sell them on your scrapbook party.

LORI: One with an admission fee!

BRIA: Is that how they do it?

LORI: Sometimes. It’s kind of scary.

LEILA: Remind me to never go to a scrapbooking party.

BRIA: I don’t think you’ll need any reminder when you’re selling your scrapbook kits.

KACEY: This is horrible and also genius.

MARI: You don’t think our friends will think something is up when we start doing something so out of character?

KACEY: If no one’s prying, you don’t need to offer anything up. I know I have friends who I don’t need to explain anything to – I say a group of friends, that’s enough for them – but there’s always someone who needs to know more and in that case, you have something to say.

MARI: No one will ever believe I’ve gotten into scrapbooking.

BRIA: I’m just going to say that a pushy friend roped me into it – that it’s super dumb and embarrassing but I just couldn’t say no.

MARI: That’ll work for me, too. I have been roped into equally silly situations in the past.

LEILA: So, Kacey, will you want to know where we end up or is it better if we keep you in the dark?

LORI: Or should you come with us?

KACEY: I need to be here to help troubleshoot but thank you for thinking of me. And, actually, Leila, that’s a good thought – maybe don’t keep me in the loop. You can call or I can call if we need to but I probably shouldn’t know where you are.

LORI: Man, when I smalled that guy in the library, I would never have thought it would lead to these spy scenarios!

MARI: These are very weird times. If I hadn’t ashed that guy, we wouldn’t be in a backwards police thriller

LEILA: If you hadn’t ashed that guy, those girls would still be locked in his two basements, enduring who knows what horrors.

MARI: Right.

LEILA: Seriously.

MARI: Thanks.

LEILA: We’re here to keep each other from sliding into self -recrimination. So – you know. You’d do the same for me.

MARI: I would, you’re right.

KACEY: So proud of you all. So why don’t I release you into planning for your scrapbooking weekend.

LORI: Wheeeee!

KACEY: I’ll hopefully have good news for you on Monday.

MARI: It feels so weird to just – go away.

KACEY: It is the right thing to do.

MARI: Okay.

KACEY: Team. You’re going to hold Mari up this weekend, right?

LORI: No question.

LEILA: On it.

BRIA: 100%

KACEY: Shall we affirm?

ALL: I am safe but I’m not safe for everyone.

KACEY: Have a fun weekend, gang.

Theme music begins

JACKI:

The Defense is a production of Messenger Theatre Company.

 It is performed by Marcella Adams as Leila, Amber Jessie as Mari, Cosmic Kitty as Bria, Kristen Vaughan as Kacey and Toni Watterson as Lori.

 The writer/director is Emily Rainbow Davis.

Sound Design by Matt Powell

Sound Engineering by Daniel Massey

Sound Assistance by Angela Santillo

Stage Management by Ella Lieberman

The Producer is Melvin Yen.

The Defense theme is by Scott Ethier.

I’m Jacki Jing

I am safe but I’m not safe for everyone.