Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk
LA LOBA (Singing over the Bones)
(La Loba – Śpiew nad koścmi)
2m, 3w
SYNOPSIS
The play opens with Jan’s monologue (written in free verse – just as most of the text) about a mythical snake who is eating a huge egg which he eventually swallows. The egg tastes good because it contains human life. In Jan’s view, the snake is the audience. Therefore he will offer several such eggs/lives to taste. First story is narrated by Alzbieta. When she was a little girl, Alzbieta lost her father, who was sent to Auschwitz. She grew up only with her mother, who refused to come to terms with the death of her husband and never stopped waiting for him. Next, Alzbieta’s husband Victor starts to talk about his two uncles, “one worked in an autopsy room, the other was a gravedigger”. When he was little, he used to visit his uncles and they taught him that life is here to be enjoyed, because there is nothing after death. This “philosophy” probably lead to his numerous love-affairs, so he and Alzbieta finally got divorced, yet Victor eventually returned to her. The third speaker is Eva. She met Alzbieta in a hospital, where both of them were treated with breast cancer. In the hospital Alzbieta recalls a story about her father’s death in the gas chamber and starts to compare his death with her own dying. At this moment it is revealed that Jan is actually her father. In a long monologue he asks the others to admit that his death was worse. He also asks them to help him die definitely (he is neither dead nor alive because Alzbieta’s mother never accepted his death) by walking with him through the gas chamber. Viktor and Eva offer their help, but Alzbieta refuses. (“You cannot be my father if you want me to go there with you.”) They reconcile and Jan can finally finish his life, though is a different way than he originally wanted. Alzbieta announces that everyone is dead and thus they can do whatever they like. Nobody knows what to do exactly. The play finishes with La Loba, who claims herself to be the narrator of the story and starts to sing an extract from the song Alonso del Rio in Spanish.