Nature Mort

This is one of my first scenes I ever wrote. This was before we learned about formatting and such, and it was supposed to be a silent scene as well. It's called Nature Mort as a sort of pun. Its the French word for still life, literally meaning dead nature. I thought the relationship between these two people as caustic and going nowhere, so I chose that title specifically to capture their relationship.

Scene: An art museum. A backless sofa is placed down center. Directly in front of it is a sculpture of some sort, along with three other paintings that hang on the three walls of the scene.

A young couple enters stage left. They are in the same room, but the way they carry their bodies and where they are focusing suggests that they are in two different worlds. 

The man leads and looks back while pointing at the sculputre. One can see by the way he smiles, by the way he gestures, that this scupture has some sort of significance to their relationship. The woman looks for a moment then shifts her attention elsewhere. The man, a little defeated, looks where she’s looking and tries to hold her hand. She pulls away her hand to rub her arm and moves on to the next painting. 

A literal seperation is now seen. 

The man looks at the woman. The woman feins interest in a painting of a horse. After a moment the man looks at the ceiling, gives a short sigh and goes to the woman. She still doesnt look at him and keeps her attention focused on the painting. He does likewise for a moment or two until he gets the idea which is immediatly seen on his face.

He backs up and starts riding an imaginary horse around the room.  She is mortified and looks around quickly to make sure no one is seeing this. She tries following him to stop him, but he's just slightly faster. She stops at the sofa and waits. When he’s right in front of her, she greets him with a slap to the face, which stops him dead.

 There’s a sudden uncomfortable stillness. 

The woman is still and slightly shocked and the man is looking at her in a way that we’ve never seen him do so before.  He then sits down on the sofa, his back to the audience. She is worried and sits down too. 

After a moment she reaches for his hand but he pulls away. Once again its uncomfortably still. We see the profile of her turned head. The man is looking forward and we can only see the back of his head.  She gets up, kisses him on the cheek, waits a moment, then exits stage right into the next room. 

The man is alone. 

After a moment he gets up and starts to move towards the room she just entered. He stops himself just before the doorway. He turns around and looks back at the room and at what has just happened. He exits stage left where the couple first came from. 

The room is empty. 

After a moment the woman comes back in, but stops dead upon seeing that he is not in the room. Panicked, she rushes to the exit stage left, but reappears after a moment. 

The woman is alone. 

She goes to the sofa and sits with her back facing the audience. A moment of stillness, then lights blackout.

Looking back on it I am surprised at all the things I've learned and how much I would change. Its interesting how stepping away from a work for a time can change how one views it weeks, months, or years later.