Louisa Hill
Lord of the Underworld’s Home for Unwed Mothers
This play received the Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, the third place award in the Humanitas Center Theatre Group Playwriting Prize, and a nomination for the Ovation Award for Best Playwriting from the LA Stage Alliance.
World premiere at Skylight Theatre, Los Angeles, CA April 8, 2017
She did indeed rise from the dead every spring, but she brought with her the memory of where she had come from; with all her bright beauty there was something strange and awesome about her. —Edith Hamilton
The year is 1991. Corie (25), a death metal enthusiast with a dark sense of humor, seeks forgiveness by unearthing pivotal moments in her life that led her to make a difficult choice.
The excerpt begins midway through the second act.
CORIE: I’m 14.
An old kid.
Can’t put me with families with fathers.
Can’t put me with families with other kids.
Can’t put me with families with delicate constitutions. Can’t put me with families.
Now I live in group homes.
I run away, get put in detention for AWOL, new placement, run away, back to detention, new placement, run away.
All part of this absurd, nihilistic cycle: Hard, uncomfortable mattresses, bad food, no exercise, dirty clothes, stained underwear and stupid counselors who say dumb things like:
COUNSELOR: (New Age-y, earnest) But where are you running?
CORIE: Away.
COUNSELOR: But why do you feel like you need to run?
CORIE: To get there faster.
COUNSELOR: You’re going to get out soon and there won’t be anything to run from or anywhere to run to.
CORIE: I can’t wait.
COUNSELOR: It sounds like you are experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions, Cora.
CORIE: It’s Corie.
COUNSELOR: Corie. Music is a healthy way to express your emotions. Have you considered playing a musical instrument? What about the drums? Maybe a cymbal in the band would help you express yourself!
CORIE: I’d rather gouge out my eyeballs than be in marching band.
COUNSELOR: Well, maybe you could make your own music!
CORIE: (CORIE screams.) It would sound like this.
COUNSELOR: (patient, trying) Okay, okay.
CORIE: (CORIE laughs.) I’m feeling better already. (She screams again.)
COUNSELOR: That’s enough!
CORIE: (to the letter) I count down the days until my freedom when I’m handed my file stuffed to the brim with letters from that woman that say sadistic shit like “Hope you’re happy!” HA.
18 to 22. The college years. I steal.
I sleep at a new place every night.
I trade myself for a cigarette. I’m bruised and bloodied and dirty and haven’t eaten in days.
Then I see my destiny in a burning bush.
(FIRE-MAN warms his hands over a trashcan on fire. His eyes are intensely focused on something far away.)
CORIE: (to FIRE-MAN) Got any food?
FIRE-MAN: She says she misses you.
CORIE: Who?
FIRE-MAN: Your mother.
CORIE: I don’t have a mother.
FIRE-MAN: She says when you left, all the ground turned to ash.
CORIE: If she saw me she’d say, glad I got rid of her when I did.
FIRE-MAN: Everything has to die before it can live.
CORIE: Are you saying I’m going to die?
FIRE-MAN: You have to kill before you can eat.
CORIE: You’re crazy, man.
FIRE-MAN: God says He’s gonna give you a sign, but you gotta pray for it.
CORIE: I don’t pray.
FIRE-MAN: Sure you do.
Deep down we all know how to pray in just the way we’re supposed to.
CORIE: (to the letter) I look up and there’s a help wanted sign in a restaurant. It’s a sign!
...Just shitting you.
I wash my hair in a gas station bathroom before the interview.
And I get the job. And I find an apartment. Nothing sentimental, but a place to store my shit nonetheless. What the fuck, right?!
So I’m 25 now and I start to think that maybe the fates are gonna cut me a break. What can I tell you, dumb as a baby.
Then this one day at work a customer leaves a book of Greek myths.
I start flipping through it and it’s sort of brutal and awesome. Talk about fucked up people with terrible tempers.
The gods rip your heart out. Literally. They seek revenge at the organ level. I learn later that the word for this is metal.
As in: the ancient Greeks were so metal.
This information figures prominently in the most tragic and twisted myth I know: your creation story.
So one day at work, this scrawny punkass kid comes in.
(HENRY enters, holding a flyer.)
HENRY: Heeyyyy can I hang this up?
CORIE: (uninterested) Hmm?
HENRY: We’re looking for a drummer.
CORIE: For what?
HENRY: My band. Satan’s Spawn.
CORIE: (laughing) Satan’s Spawn?
HENRY: Yeah it’s like smooth jazz, easy listening stuff.
CORIE: Oh yeah?
HENRY: Nah, just shitting you. We do death metal.
CORIE: Flyers have to be approved. Just leave it on the counter.
(He sits.)
CORIE: ...It’ll take a while.
HENRY: Okay.
(He pulls out a burrito and starts eating.)
CORIE: This isn’t a fucking cafeteria.
HENRY: I’ll make you one if you want. I work right across the street.
CORIE: No thanks.
HENRY: Maybe another time. Just ask for Henry.
CORIE: You’re shitting me.
HENRY: Nuh uh.
CORIE: No one named Henry does death metal.
HENRY: Well, I go by Satan professionally.
CORIE: (to the letter) He comes by regularly. And then I start doing that really stupid thing where I turn my head every time I hear the door open. Scanning the room for his eyes. Bad.
(to herself) You’re writing your own eulogy, motherfucker.
HENRY: (entering with a new flyer) Got another one for you. We’re having a show next week. You should come.
CORIE: Sorry, I don’t babysit.
HENRY: Hey, I’m almost 22!
CORIE: Exactly. I don’t even like children.
HENRY: I think you like me. You smile every time I walk through the door.
CORIE: Only because I think you’re a customer. I’m all about the customer service.
HENRY: Come to the show.
CORIE: I don’t like music.
HENRY: Are you a stone?
CORIE: Can’t you tell?
HENRY: Well, I make stones weep with my music.
CORIE: With your “death metal?”
HENRY: Three things you need to know about death metal: brutality, speed, and truth. And it helps if you can make people laugh and vomit at the same time.
CORIE: That’s fucked up.
HENRY: Well you can’t spell slaughter without laughter.
CORIE: (to the letter) I’m sold.
He ushers me into a world that makes sense. Everything is on the surface instead of hidden.
(Death metal music plays. She’s at the show, HENRY’s on stage.)
CORIE: (to the letter)
The music pounds my heart, assaults my ears. I’m surrounded in this dark, chaotic fury, and everything is in line and it feels like...home.
(HENRY finishes performing and joins CORIE. They listen to the next set. They scream to be heard over the loud music.)
HENRY: You liked our set?
CORIE: It didn’t suck that much.
HENRY: High compliment coming from you. You should write us something.
CORIE: I don’t write.
HENRY: Come on, I bet you could spew out some, like, literary death metal. Get a little internal rhyme scheme going?
CORIE: You mean an infernal rhyme scheme.
HENRY: Yeahh!!
(HENRY kisses CORIE. She pulls back her fist, ready to punch him. She looks at him and then dives on him. They make out furiously.)
CORIE: (to the letter) We stay very hot that summer.
CORIE: And somehow the world is full of possibilities and it’s actually... not the shittiest. And I hate myself for dreaming. Waiting 'til I fuck it up.
HENRY: I really like you.
CORIE: What’s that mean?
HENRY: It means that if you were sad and shit, I’d be there for you.
CORIE: You don’t know about being sad and shit.
HENRY: But if you were...
CORIE: What, sad girls turn you on?
HENRY: No.
CORIE: Well, I’m not gonna be your sad girl. The sad girl with the generous heart. Hell no.
HENRY: I don’t want you to be my sad girl. You’re my...angel.
CORIE: I’m not a fucking angel!
HENRY: No, I mean like the angels in the Bible, with talons and scales and shit. Who wrestle you to the ground and beat the shit out of you.
CORIE: I can do that.
(She wrestles him to the ground.)
CORIE: (to the letter) We go to band practice.
(BUTCHER, played by the Female Chorus Member, tunes his guitar.)
HENRY: This is Butcher. He’s okay.
BUTCHER: Groupies line up back there. We’ll take our turns with you once we’re done with practice.
CORIE: Hey. Suck on a hemorrhoid.
HENRY: Hey man, shut the fuck up. She’s auditioning for us.
BUTCHER: No way, I thought you said a dude named Cory was coming.
HENRY: She’s a really good writer.
BUTCHER: What, is she going to write about her period?
(BUTCHER laughs.)
CORIE: My period is far more brutal than anything you’ll ever experience.
BUTCHER: Oh yeah all those rose petals falling gently down to the ground.
CORIE: There are no roses petals. It’s a fucking massacre.
(death growling a word here or there)
A demon possession. A demon who scrapes out my insides with dirty fingernails, ravaging my insides with a twisted dagger.
Releasing a tsunami of blood as thousands of eggs plummet to their death. A red sea so thick that even Moses couldn’t part it.
Periods are fucking metal. Literally.
Straight iron gushing out in coagulated tissue of gore. And I survive this carnage.
Every. Fucking. Month.
(to BUTCHER)
I’ll send you a post card next month. It’ll be the closest you’ll ever get to a vagina.
BUTCHER: You’re in.
HENRY: Yeahhh.
CORIE: (to the letter) But I keep waiting to send him that postcard. I’m a week late. Another and another until…(a realization)
SHIT.
Why did you let down your guard don’t you know bad shit happens when you’re not paying attention every fucking second.
I’m sorry, Lumpster, I should give you a better introduction.
Imagine the most devastating death metal song:
I’m vomiting and laughing and screaming. The world goes dark, the walls are closing in, and I can’t remember what it’s like to think. Your theme song is comprised of the most guttural death growls, the most ferocious riffs, the most brutal blast beats.
And I’ve never been more terrified.
Louisa Hill is a playwright and TV writer. Credits include Transparent, Evil, HBO’s Untitled Duplass Porn Project, a pilot at Hulu, and a screenplay at AGBO. She recently directed her first pilot.