06.12.19 TONI STONE – ROUNDABOUT PRESS DRAFT
Lydia Diamond
3
ACT I Toni Stone stands down center. TONI (to audience) It is round, and small, and it fits right there in your hand. And it’s not the thing itself, it’s the weight of it. It’s how it feel, and how it fills what your hand was without it. Before that weight, my hand, your hand, is just a thing that serves you. It is a tool, no better than a fork or a screwdriver. Before the weight, it… my hand, your hand, our hands are only there to pick up or tie or brush off or put down or move a thing. And then there is this… (a single ball rolls in slowly, stopping magically right in front of Toni. She picks it up) … and it feels right. It feels like what your hand, my hand, wanted all along. Upstage, in low light, a player pantomimes hitting a ball, in slow motion. He watches the ball go up and up, and takes his stance to hit again. Through the following each of the six “players” enters, one at a time, spreading out across the back of the stage, and joining him in unison. It is a ballet. TONI (cont) I knew this girl once… people had told me she was a pretty girl. My mother had told me she was pretty. And she, my mama, tried to push us to play together… because, I guess she thought some of that pretty would rub off on me. (add next batter) But I’m trying to tell you about the weight. Of a thing… So this girl. This girl they says is pretty… and I think she was. Yes. She was pretty. But that ain’t the story. It’s the ball. I am trying to tell you about the weight of it, in a hand… yes. (add next batter) So this girl. She, I guess, don’t see me too good. Or maybe it all she know how to talk ‘bout. And she’s nice, and she’s trying to be friendly, ‘cause her mama talked to my mama and she’s supposed to be a good influence or some such. And what I’m trying to say is, she talk about boys like without them a piece of her is missing. (next batter). And I try to hear her, I do, because she a nice girl. An’ she always want to tell me about this one or that one
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