a story of kites i just read this amazing play by dean francis alfar - the kite of stars. it's something that i envision high school students can pull off expertly. it requires imagination from the prop designers, mainly. not too much acting - 9 people, 6 chorus and three principal. it's typical filipino - beautiful and full of magic and innocence and imagination. if i were to be part of this play, i'd like to be part of the designers needed to put the kite together. :-D it's that pretty.

that kind of sweetness and imagination is locked inside me somehow. the play totally made me smile. the concepts are easy enough to grasp and write about, but i don't think i can ever form them into a play. i used to be able to write about anything and everything - now i believe i am in danger of settling into cold marble and flat stone.

i'm afraid of being woken up. that would require leaving my right here, right now, leaving my comfortable cocoon and letting me experience the full blast of life. i wonder if it's too late at this point.

because the story of kites says so - that there are things you can still accomplish late in life, but it would have been too late for others already. you can still accomplish much - but would it be received as well? is that why you are writing, why you are working toward your goal - for others? is that what quests are for? are there such a thing as quests too late?

in "the kite of stars," the characters grow old and wonder if they've wasted their lives by following this quest to their old age. they accomplish it, but only partly - because they do gather the materials and build the kite and fly it successfully, but the object for whom the project's been launched for in the first place has also aged so cripplingly that he no longer can appreciate their efforts. even the characters themselves - their youth is gone.

their youth is gone, but not their life. someone could tell the astronomist with the cataracts that a woman in love with him had suceeded in ascending the stars he'd admired so much. someone could have told the woman on the kite the butcher's boy's name, the one who'd known her longest and given his life and grown old with her.

but most of all, i think the playwright could have extracted more detail on what else could the woman have been thinking. he could have given her a chance to say something in that moment that she and the butcher's boy locked eyes for a long time. what did she say in that moment? did she ever also think of loosing her life in her quest for the materials?

or she probably already has said something, in the myriad things she and the butcher's boy had experienced in their 60 years together:

CHORUS:
Up and under
Down and over
this way and that way
that task and this test
answer a riddle
win a trade
run in your sleep
walk with the living
rest among the dead
tremble in the rain
breathe in the sunlight
search the islands
cross the mountains
brave the trees
eat on the road
talk to strangers
learn the stories
sing the songs
speak the language
know the people
spend a lifetime

BUTCHER'S BOY
sixty

MARIA ISABELLA
sixty

CHORUS
sixty years

MEN
field and mountain
earth and sky

WOMEN
river and stream
low and high

CHORUS
sixty years

WOMEN
roads and pathways
night and day

MEN
seas and byways
every which way

BUTCHER'S BOY
sixty

MARIA ISABELLA
sixty

CHORUS
sixty years

MAN ONE
After sixty years

CHORUS
sixty

MAN ONE
At last they returned to the Ciudad, both stooped and older

BUTCHER'S BOY
Well, here we are at last.

(MARIA ISABELLA nods and makes a sign of the cross.)

BUTCHER'S BOY
Do you feel like you've wasted your life?

(The CHORUS, as a caravan bearing many things, lumbers into the city.)

MARIA ISABELLA
Nothing is ever wasted.

From: Dean Francis Alfar, - "The Kite of Stars"
  ¶ 8/22/2004 03:08:00 AM