Girl in the Ashes conclusion
(The STEPSISTERS enter the kitchen.)
STEPSISTER 1.
But who was she?
STEPSISTER 2.
I don’t know but I hate her.
STEPSISTER 1.
I wanted to kill her.
STEPSISTER 2.
I wanted to scratch her eyes out.
STEPSISTER 1.
I wanted to cut off her legs.
STEPSISTER 2.
I wanted to rip out her tongue.
STEPSISTER 1.
I wanted to flay her alive.
STEPSISTER 2.
Women will never get anywhere until they learn to stick together.
(CINDERELLA enters the kitchen.)
CINDERELLA.
How, how was the Grand Ball, Step-sisters?
STEPSISTER 1.
It was horrible. There was this, I don’t know what –
STEPSISTER 2.
A princess or something –
STEPSISTER 1.
And she danced with the Prince all night long.
STEPSISTER 2.
The nerve.
STEPSISTER 1.
And then – voom! She just takes off! Out into the night.
STEPSISTER 2.
The Prince stopped the whole ball and sent everyone home.
STEPSISTER 1.
The whole thing was a disaster.
STEPSISTER 2.
Unspeakable.
STEPSISTER 1.
I hated it.
STEPSISTER 2.
A waste of time.
STEPSISTER 1.
I think I’ll kill myself.
STEPSISTER 2.
Me too.
STEPSISTER 1.
What do you want to try this time?
STEPSISTER 2.
Let’s slit our wrists.
(STEPMOTHER enters.)
STEPMOTHER.
Daughters! Daughters! The Prince is here!
STEPSISTER 1.
Here!
STEPSISTER 2.
He’s here?!
(CINDERELLA dives into the fireplace.)
STEPMOTHER.
Yes!
STEPSISTER 1.
To see us?!
STEPSISTER 2.
Wow, I guess old Barbie-face didn’t make such an impression on him after all!
STEPSISTER 1.
She’s probably really stupid.
STEPSISTER 2.
And a slut, I bet.
STEPMOTHER.
Where is that irritating little twerp? I don’t want her poking her head out and disgusting everyone. She’s not here? Good.
(PRINCE enters.)
PRINCE.
Uh, hi. Sorry to come around after midnight like this, but uh, as you probably know, I was supposed to select a Bride tonight, and uh, well there’s a problem.
STEPSISTER 1.
Oh, I will be your Bride!
STEPSISTER 2.
I will too!
STEPMOTHER.
They are both exceptionally talented in the ways of women, Prince. Why not marry both?
PRINCE.
Ah, yes. Well, see, the problem is, see, I don’t know exactly who it is I’m looking for. See, there was this woman, at the party, the Grand Ball I mean, and she was quite beautiful, maybe you saw her, quite beautiful, but I uh, I uh, I lost track of her, I lost track of her, somehow, she ran off, and you know, what with the lights and just the rush of falling in love and everything, I can’t even remember what she looks like, and I didn’t get her name. I don’t know her name.
STEPSISTER 1.
Well you know, I think that was me, actually.
STEPSISTER 2.
No, sister, actually I’m fairly sure it was me.
STEPSISTER 1.
My sister, you are quite mistaken, it –
PRINCE.
Uh, look, I don’t want a debate about it. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve been searching the whole kingdom all night, door to door, looking for this girl, I feel like I’m going mad, I’ve got to see her again, and all I’ve got from her is this, this shoe –
STEPMOTHER.
That’s a slipper.
PRINCE.
All right, a slipper, I’m sorry. So, if, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m trying to see, you know, who might, if the, I’m trying to –
STEPMOTHER.
You’re looking for whom the shoe will fit. As it were.
PRINCE.
Thank you.
STEPMOTHER.
Well then. Give me the slipper, and we’ll see if it fits my eldest daughter.
PRINCE.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
(PRINCE exits.)
STEPMOTHER.
Put it on. Put it on, hurry!
STEPSISTER 1.
Okay, okay, don’t rush me.
STEPMOTHER.
What is taking you so long? Put it ON.
STEPSISTER 1.
My, my big toe –
STEPMOTHER.
What? What?
STEPSISTER 1.
My big toe won’t fit.
STEPMOTHER.
Oh for Christ’s sake – here, give me your foot.
STEPSISTER 1.
What?
(STEPMOTHER produces a large knife.)
STEPMOTHER.
You won’t have to walk much when you’re Queen.
(And she cuts off STEPSISTER 1’s big toe.)
STEPSISTER 1.
Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
PRINCE. (oov)
Is everything all right in there?
STEPMOTHER.
Yes, Dear Prince! Just a little squeal of delight! (to STEPSISTER 1) Get the damn shoe on.
STEPSISTER 1.
It, I can’t –
(STEPMOTHER forces it on.)
Ow!
STEPMOTHER.
Now stand up straight. Oh Prince!
(PRINCE enters.)
PRINCE.
Hi, how’s it going?
STEPMOTHER.
Here she is! Your Princess!
PRINCE.
Oh how wonderful! The slipper fits? Oh how wonderful! This is a truly wonderful day, I – uh, no.
STEPMOTHER.
No?
PRINCE.
Uh, no. I, uh, I, perhaps this is rude of me, but uh, I couldn’t help noticing, she’s, uh, she’s, uh, bleeding.
STEPMOTHER.
Bleeding?
PRINCE.
Yes.
STEPMOTHER.
Where?
PRINCE.
Well, her foot. Right there. Where it’s bleeding. Rather badly. And I couldn’t help noticing that you’re clutching a big toe in your hand.
STEPMOTHER.
Am I? Ah yes. So I am. Yes. Well, it kind of, it kind of…fell off.
PRINCE.
Fell off?
STEPMOTHER.
Yep, just – boop! Fell off. But as you can see, the slipper does fit.
PRINCE.
No, I’m sorry, this is no good.
STEPMOTHER. (to STEPSISTER 1)
All right, all right, take it off, here, here’s your toe back.
STEPSISTER 1.
You, you mutilated me.
STEPMOTHER.
We can talk about it later. Go to bed.
(STEPSISTER 1 exits.)
STEPMOTHER. (To PRINCE.)
Now step outside and we’ll try it on my other daughter.
PRINCE.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
(PRINCE exits.)
STEPMOTHER.
Okay, put it on.
STEPSISTER 2.
You bet – uh oh.
STEPMOTHER.
What?
STEPSISTER 2.
My heel.
STEPMOTHER.
What about it?
STEPSISTER 2.
No wait, I think I’ve – no. No, I’m sorry, this isn’t, my heel –
STEPMOTHER.
Let me see it.
(She produces the knife again.)
Oh that’s not much at all.
(She cuts off STEPSISTER 2’s heel.)
STEPSISTER 2.
Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
STEPMOTHER.
Hush up, child, love is always painful the first time. A woman has to get used to altering her body if she wants to marry a prince.
(PRINCE enters.)
PRINCE.
Hi, I’m sorry, I thought I heard another scream.
STEPMOTHER.
It was a triumphal shout, sweet Prince. Look! The slipper fits!
PRINCE.
Great! Let’s go get married post-haste! Hey, wait a minute.
STEPMOTHER.
What?
PRINCE.
She’s bleeding too.
STEPMOTHER.
She isn’t.
PRINCE.
Yes. Look.
STEPMOTHER.
What a coincidence!
PRINCE.
The heel. She’s lost her heel.
STEPMOTHER.
You’ll never miss it.
STEPSISTER 2.
Oh! Mother, for God’s sake, this is so sick!
STEPMOTHER.
Daughter, sweet?
STEPSISTER 2.
How can you do this to us? You’ve scarred us for life! I hate you! Take your fucking slipper and ram it up your ass!
(She limps off. Pause.)
PRINCE.
Well. That was unpleasant.
STEPMOTHER.
Teenagers. She’ll get over it.
PRINCE.
Do you have any other daughters? Only I have to insist that they are not bleeding.
STEPMOTHER.
No, that’s it. That’s it. I’m ruined. I’m finished, they’ll turn against me and marry for love now.
(CINDERELLA, in the fireplace, sneezes.)
PRINCE.
What was that?
STEPMOTHER.
What was what?
PRINCE.
I heard a sneeze.
STEPMOTHER.
It was the fireplace.
PRINCE.
But it sneezed.
STEPMOTHER.
It’s a special feature, you have to pay extra.
PRINCE.
Is there someone in there? Good God, there is.
STEPMOTHER.
It’s no one really, just a dwarf we keep around the house, for laughs, you know –
PRINCE. (to CINDERELLA)
Come out here. Come out here now. You can’t live in a fireplace. I am the Prince and I order you to come out.
(CINDERELLA crawls out of the fireplace.)
My stars! It’s a girl.
STEPMOTHER.
That’s Cinderella. She’s insane. She lives in the fireplace and talks to birds. I don’t really know her that well. We took her in, you know, charity –
PRINCE. (to CINDERELLA)
You’re only wearing one shoe. Hey, wait, it’s gold, it’s a gold slipper. It looks just like this other one.
(He puts it on her.)
It fits. It fits. Oh my Lord. It’s you. It’s you. My partner. My princess. My beloved, my moon, my star. You are a star. Why did you run from me? Why did you hide?
CINDERELLA.
I, I was ashamed. I was ashamed of myself, ashamed of my life.
PRINCE.
Why? Because your step-mother is cruel and your step-sisters are petty and spiteful? Who cares about them? That’s them, you’re you. My love, I will easily take you away from all this. I don’t care where you’re from or how you dressed or where you had to sleep. As far as I’m concerned, your life began the moment I first saw you at the Grand Ball, that’s what I loved, and that’s what you will be from now on. Will you marry me, my darling Cinderella?
CINDERELLA.
Oh yes. Yes, my Prince, oh yes I will.
(They kiss and embrace. STEPMOTHER exits, miserable.)
INTERPRETER.(to AUDIENCE)
And so theater is my savior. I am graceful and funny and sexy and confident on one side of the footlights and remote, shy and cold on the other. After a show, I don’t go looking for people. People come looking for me. Backstage, on the street, at the stage door, over the phone. I set up my whole life so that I could be Cinderella, the girl in the ashes, whose True Love must search far and wide over the kingdom for her. And so I force people to come and look for me. If they really love me, they will find me, and when they find me, they will not care that I was once a wretch, that I once lived in a fireplace, that I was covered in ashes.
Every woman I have ever known I first impressed from the stage. Every friend I have I have met in the theater. This was a deliberate choice. Cinderella left a slipper; I leave programs. The Prince wanted to know her name; my fans want my autograph. And anyone who knows me will tell you, I don’t shake hands, I hand out flyers. Come to my show. Don’t talk to me here, now, don’t talk to me here, come to my show, see my play, see me on stage, you don’t want to meet the real me, I’m a slug, I’m a worm, I’m a girl in the ashes. This was my decision. This was my plan. And it has served me well so far. I have lived happily ever after.
PRINCE.
I love you so much.
CINDERELLA.
Please don’t call me that. That’s my old name.
PRINCE.
Then what shall I call you?
CINDERELLA.
Call me a star.
PRINCE.
You are a star.
(They embrace.)
CINDERELLA.
I am a star.
(Music. They dance. The BIRD enters, throws confetti upon them and drapes them in garlands of flowers. Fade out. End of play.)
This reminds me of Lisa Loomer’s “The Waiting Room”, one of the relatively few plays I’ve seen live, particularly with that whole knife thing. Especially since one of those characters was a victim of foot binding.
I am unfamiliar with Ms. Loomer’s work.
I would be too if someone I knew hadn’t ended up in the cast.
This does resonate with me, actually. I’ve often toyed with the idea of producing a work of art to make myself seem somehow worthy in the eyes of myself and society. Sadly, toying with doesn’t seem to be sufficient, and I can’t get past that. (Not to mention that producing is no guarantee of recognition.)
Well, I suppose if all else fails you can always take wonderful photographs and then post them on the internet for everyone in the world to see — oh, wait.
Hey, there’s a good thought. And if that falls through, I could take up acting. Maybe start with some cameos.
Also, thank you.
This had a special resonance for me. For reasons that are probably obvious, especially after this week. And it’s amazingly well written…I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Which is where I live most of the time these days. Take from these halting, incoherent half-sentences that I was really moved by this, I connected with it strongly and I thank you for writing it and for posting it.
The title and subject of this wonderful play seem really familiar – and I have the feeling I may have read it before. Was this done at A Certain Theatre on Ludlow Street originally (or at some point)? I read a few of your plays/monologues in the files during the years I worked there under A Certain Person you wrote about in the past year.
I was wondering, as I had the brief, horrible thought that That Person might have been the director/producer/actor you mentioned who cast himself as The Interpreter and Cinderella. It’s just the kind of thing he would do to a play like this. Just the thing.
The Interpreter’s final speech chills me to the bone, as I recognize way too much of that in myself. But I suppose, so would a vast quantity of theatre creators . . .
Girl in the Ashes was indeed produced at That Certain Theater on Ludlow Street (which was called Nada, for those new to this space). And yes, the director/producer/actor of the production is the drunk/liar/thief you worked under. I won’t name him; let’s just say he considered himself the Be-all and end-all in downtown theater.
It was also produced at Here’s American Living Room the previous summer, with Steven Rattazzi as the Interpreter, Alana Adena as Cinderella, Mollie O’Mara as the Stepmother, and Bill Montgomery as the Father and the Prince, and directed by myself. I count that production as one of the most purely enjoyable of my career.
Oh, dear god. Of COURSE it was him. I also tend to avoid mentioning his name as I’m terrified he’ll find it while googling himself and want to converse with me in some form. We last mainly conversed through angry quotes in the Voice as to why Nada got evicted (my side, basically: drunk/liar/thief), and that’s where I’d like to leave it.
Now on the other hand, it’s been my deep pleasure to work with Steven Rattazzi on a couple of occasions, and would have loved to see him in that part.
Let’s just refer to him as Voldemort then, shall we?
Thanks, that’s going to take off in my household, and I may try to spread it among some people OOB to whom it will have some meaning.
I thought for a moment it would impart to him the impression of more power than he actually could possibly wield, but my fiancee says that the name here means He Who Eats of Sushi When He Should Be Paying the Bills and the Artists.
OK. Enough. I try not to think of him any longer. Sorry.
I’ve been enjoying this very much all along, but am finally rousing myself to comment here at the end. I’ve enjoyed the way you twined the pathos with humor throughout, but the humor really burst forth for me with here. The toe/heel stuff was wonderful. (And I loved the “see you naked” part in the last part too.) I wasn’t completely sure about how well the Interpreter would work when I read the first part, but seeing the whole thing in its entirety I love what you did there too. The way you made the fairy tale personal. The lightness of the dialogue and the humor and the distance that I think comes from the fairytale format contrasted with the deeply personal sort of raw, close honesty of the Interpreter is really effective.
I hadn’t looked at Cinderella this way before, but I find it such a believable way to read that story. Charmingly written. And on a personal note, it hits VERY close to home.
A lot of the narrative here, essentially anything you don’t recognize from the Disney version, is lifted directly from the Grimm’s version of the story, barely without even comment. I left off the part at the end where the Stepsisters come to the wedding and get their eyes plucked out by birds.
Me neither. When I read the Grimm’s version it was a bolt from the blue. The whole psychological aspect of the story resonates so much more deeply than with the Perrault (which is the version most people are familiar with) with its fairy godmother, glass slipper and chimes at midnight. Cinderella doesn’t flee the ball because it’s getting late, she flees because she’s gotten more than she bargained for — she just wanted to be an also ran, to be acknowledged as human, and now the Prince wants to marry her, which is impossible, because she knows he’ll hate her when he finds out who she is. Disney portrayed Cinderella as heartbreakingly good, optimistic, patient and deserving, but the Grimm’s give her a much more complex and believable psychological profile — she’s been told by her family that she’s worthless and so she believes she is. Only this big fake-out with the magic gown and the Grand Ball gets Cinderella to where she deserves to go.
It’s weird how this Cinderella responds so well to being asked to be seen naked by a man she barely knows. Maybe it’s the corruption of show business and the unexpected side effect?
That exchange stuck out to me too while I was typing this up today. I think what I was thinking of was how movie stars are all marketed for their sexual appeal today, that it’s perfectly natural, expected even, for any movie star, male or female, to feed the sexual fantasies of the audience. In the context of “Cinderella” I suppose it sounds a little odd, but it also shows that these two are very much interested in pursuing a sexual relationship; Cinderella’s response indicates to me that she’s been thinking about it all night too. I guess I wanted them to seem modern and straightforward.
Very good, thanks Todd!
I go for a couple of days and theres a whole play posted. 🙂
When I was about 10 (and a precocious 10), I tracked down a book of the original faery tales to read. Death and Blood all over the place! Children murdered left, right, and centre. All very good! I always rememebred from Cinderella that the sisters cut their heel and toes off to fit the slipper. That never made it into Disney!
Great read, thanks.