Liz a visual artist is struggling with her art, her boyfriend Domenic and her place in the universe. She forms a connection through her work to the twelfth century visionary and artist Saint Hildegard of Bingen... who moves into Liz's flat. As they both learn about each others' worlds, all hell breaks loose.
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes.
CHARACTERS:
SETTING:
Liz's flat in Edinburgh, the present day. It contains only painting equipment (including an easel and a blank canvas), a sofa-bed, books and a tape-recorder. The kitchen is off-set. There are some half-finished canvases against the wall. They are jagged abstracts, in browns and black. When the visual artist is not working with Liz, she works on a painting at the back of the stage. This painting is completed by over-laying with a slide projection in the last scene.
Hildegard has a little study to one side, which is in the twelfth century.
Commissioned by First Base Theatre Company and performed on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 1996 directed by Estelle Von Warmello. The production was remarkable for me because I ended up on stage as the Visual Artist (our original artist developed an allergy to the chalk she was using and had to take a few days off to recover: she was fine after a rest!)
[Liz is working on a painting following Hildegard's instructions].
HILDEGARD -All creation was predestined and established in eternity. Every cosmic power is directed and curbed by another as every creature is linked to another. God formed humanity according to the cosmic system and strengthened human power with the strength of elements. In the middle of creation humanity is the most significant and also the most dependent.
[Liz coughs. Hildegard gets her some water.]
HILDEGARD -Are you unwell?
LIZ -I need a break.
[She takes out foil of pills. Hildegard goes to the painting.]
LIZ Don't look!
HILDEGARD -No fish.
LIZ -I haven't done them yet.
HILDEGARD -It's disordered.
LIZ -It isn't finished yet.
[She takes out pill.]
HILDEGARD -What's that?
LIZ -Medicine.
HILDEGARD -What for?
LIZ -Keeps me happy. Three a day, every day.
HIL -But you are happy.
LIZ -I wouldn't be if I didn't take them.
HILDEGARD -How do you know if you always take them? You shut me out and took
those instead. Don't take any more.
LIZ -I have to.
HILDEGARD -You've got me now.
LIZ -You don't understand.
HILDEGARD -Aren't I enough?
LIZ -It's an illness. When I'm ill I wouldn't be happy in paradise. You don't
know what its like.
HIL -Oh don't I... It's the other side of your gift. You can't have one without
the other, for how can we know what is light without darkness. You have been
living in twilight. No wonder you forgot how to paint, stuffing yourself with
these..
LIZ -I didn't forget!
HILDEGARD -Mud paintings! Don't take it.
LIZ -Hildegard...
HILDEGARD -I won't let anything bad happen to you.
LIZ -But it's not that...
HILDEGARD -Trust me.
[Hildegard puts the pill in a plant pot.]
HILDEGARD -There. Now we'll see which
plant is happier.
The poster.
A painting by St. Hildegard
St. Hildegard (probably with her provost Volmar) receiving devine inspiration