PART ONE: ONCE UPON A TIME, ET CETERA
World, Oyster
A group of MIDWIVES are gathered around a bed.
MIDWIVES. Here she is.
A little girl!
Hello you!
Arenât you perfect?
And loud â did you hear that?
A real war cry.
âHere I am.â
âYouâd all better listen to me.â
Well done Mrs
(Miss â
Ms?
Shhh.
Is there a father?
Shhh, not now.)
Can you believe sheâll be an old woman one day?
Can you believe one day sheâll die of old age?
Hopefully â of old age, I mean, not prematurely.
Give her a chance, she might be a president.
She might be a famous soprano.
She might be a scientist who invents a compound that saves the Earth.
She might live an averagely happy life without great ambition or drama.
Well â
Well â
Thatâs not exactly
Shhh, the consultantâs coming.
The consultant!
CONSULTANT enters.
CONSULTANT. How are we all ladies?
MIDWIVES. Very well thanks.
Tired but ďŹne.
Bit emotional actually.
Weâre all absolutely ďŹne.
CONSULTANT. Good, then letâs get on with it. Weight, length?
MIDWIVES. Checked.
CONSULTANT. Lungs, eyes, heart?
MIDWIVES. Checked.
CONSULTANT. Post-partum strategy?
MIDWIVES. Checked.
Checked.
Checked.
CONSULTANT. Hale and healthy, whole life ahead of her, world, oyster, etcetera. Proceed.
MIDWIVES. Yes doctor.
CONSULTANT. Clean her up. And donât forget to label her.
Changing the Story
Youâre ďŹve, at home with yourMUM, AUNT and GRANDMOTHER. They are talking to YOU. YOU are busy playing with your toy rabbit.
MUM. Why?
AUNT. Why?
GRANDMOTHER. Why? Because, thatâs why.
MUM. You have to go to school, everybody does.
AUNT. And you canât go to school with no shoes on, can you?
GRANDMOTHER. Lots of children donât even have shoes, they walk barefoot.
MUM. (Mum.)
GRANDMOTHER. Dog mess, broken glass, youâre a lucky girl. When I was your age â
MUM. (Mum, stop changing the story.)
Put your shoes on please or weâre going to be late.
YOU shake your head. GRANDMOTHER takes away Rabbit.
GRANDMOTHER. Rabbit wants to go to school. (Rabbitâs voice.) Iâd go to school in my new shoes, I would, ever so pleased.
MUM. (Rabbit doesnât talk like that.
GRANDMOTHER. I gave him to you, I know how he speaks.
MUM. He?
AUNT. Donât ask me, I didnât get a rabbit.
MUM. No, you got a dog, a live dog.)
GRANDMOTHER. If you donât go to school you wonât learn how to read and write.
AUNT. Yes, would you prefer to grow up illiterate, because youâll never get a job that way.
MUM. (Itâs a bit early for that.
AUNT. Iâm making it her choice.
GRANDMOTHER. She doesnât need a choice, sheâs ďŹve years old.)
When I was your age we had to be good little girls.
MUM. (Itâs not the 1950s, Mum.)
GRANDMOTHER. We didnât have gap years and multi channels, we were too busy raising our families.
MUM. AND doing nursing work.
AUNT. AND making sure our little girls had a clean blouse every day.
AUNT/MUM. Yadda yadda yadda.
GRANDMOTHER gives YOU back your rabbit.
GRANDMOTHER (to your MUM). Fine, you handle it then.
MUM. Fine with me, sheâs my daughter.
AUNT. So Iâm irrelevant because Iâm not a mother? Fine.
YOU make Rabbit talk to YOU. YOU listen. YOU laugh.
MUM. I donât know what youâre laughing at. Rabbit canât talk.
YOU look at Rabbit, shocked. YOU might cry.
Sorry. Iâm lying. Of course he can talk. âSheâ, I mean. Now please will you put your shoes on? Please.
A More Rounded View
Youâre eight. Some TEACHERS are talking to YOU at school. One of the TEACHERS is holding a ruler.
TEACHERS. So youâre the Cossack, I see.
And you ask your playmates to be peasant girls.
(Pretty peasant girls.
Yes, sheâs quite speciďŹc about the prettiness.)
And they have to weave and bake and clean in their â
Hovels.
Right, and then you, the Cossack, burst in brandishing this ruler.
Cutlass.
I see, and then you threaten to â
Pillage them.
Right, pillage them, unless they fall in love with you.
(Did Cossacks use cutlasses?
Weâre not so concerned about historical accuracy.
Weâre more concerned about the tying of peasant girls to chairs, the brandishing of rulers, et cetera.)
YOU. But
TEACHERS. Do you know what the word âpillageâ means?
Well, letâs say itâs a sort of â (Foreign accent.) âIâll have my wicked way with you if you donât do as I sayâ type of â
(I think Cossacks originate in Russia.
Yes, weâve been studying Catherine the Great.
Is that where all this came from?
I think so, yes.)
The point is, itâs not a nice thing to do to anyone, which is why weâve asked you to stay in this playtime.
YOU. But â
TEACHERS. Perhaps being a Cossack makes you feel powerful.
It is fun being powerful, but there are other ways to be powerful.
Yes, like being an adventurer or an explorer in the Amazon or perhaps the North Pole, et cetera.
Yes, and when a pretend game becomes too rough sometimes somebody can get hurt or frightened.
(Actually the other Year Fours seem to love it.
The point is that nobody else ever gets to play the Cossack.)
So you like playing the Cossack, I see.
Perhaps itâs, well, perhaps itâs simpler for her.
Simpler?
You know, to play a man instead of a â
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
YOU. But â
TEACHERS. Well, it is good to try different roles.
Yes, because you get a more rounded view.
Not that weâre saying that itâs fun to be pillaged.
Goodness no being pillaged is NEVER fun, not even if...