Goose

Goose is a play set around the life cycle of a goose. The Goose is one of the characters and speaks within the range of communicative sounds observed by Konrad Lorenz. The Goose takes with her a Cost Benefit Analyst and his wife from middle England, and a Goose Biologist who has shamanic tendencies. The Cost Benefit Abnalyst is proposing the building of a new airport on Thames mudflats, and he remains set in his ways, despite flying across northern Europe and man's destruction of it since the ice ages. There are three songs in it with music by Ian Morgan Williams.

Sample Scene

Observer	A plague of humans, crawling across the earth, swamping it
Man	I've had about enough of this. What's wrong with being human? I live a perfectly normal decent life. I even feed the birds
Woman	When I remember to fill up the birdfeeder
Goose	Go away go away! We can see you go away!
Man	I'm perfectly normal! I'm not frightening
Observer
	I'm truly sorry Man's dominion, Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal!
Goose	There's something wrong.
Observer	Watch out!
Goose	Go away! Go away! We can see you go away!
Observer	Watch out for the fox
Woman	Foxes are clever
Observer	Some say a fox was the first shaman
Man	I will not be deflected! Stop changing the subject
Woman	But we're talking about predators
Man	I didn't ask your opinion
Woman	You did! You said—
Man	Look, if I want a bleeding domestic, I'll have it in the comfort of my own home, not on some god-forsaken windswept mudflat on the edge of the North Sea. Take me home!
Woman	Ask him - he's the shaman
Observer	Oh so I'm just the bus driver now. Thanks for all the info, thanks for showing me the geese, now just push off
Woman	That's it, and take my husband with you
Goose	I am here, where are you
Man	Here as well you bloody stupid bird
Goose	I'm ready to go this way. Are you
Man	Get stuffed
Goose	Please please, go on, please
Woman	I'm going with you
Man	Where are we off to now?
Observer	Oh some other god forsaken windswept mudflat I should think
Goose	I'm going this way, are you?
Woman	I'm going this way
Goose	Go this way
Observer	Why don't you give her up, let her go with the geese
Man	Think I'd leave you anywhere near her. You've deranged her for your own benefit. I've read about Shaman. Used to be called witch doctors – a much better name. You turn people mad, take them over.
Observer	Oh yes, all of those things – make wax models, stick in pins - the full works
Goose	Look over there
Woman	I think there's something wrong
Goose	Go this way now
Woman	Now
Goose	Now
Woman	Now
Goose	Now

Woman and Goose take off. Woman whistles or sings fragments of her tune

Observer	Grab my tail
Man	(sullenly) Why?
Observer	Because you'll be left on this mudflat otherwise

Man grabs hold of Observer who is flying on ladder

Man	You're a cold bastard, aren’t you. You make out how marvellous and caring you are. You stand up for geese against the world, for animals against the destruction of Man, you quote poetry and scientific facts, but there's nothing really there is there. All there is is information. You're just a bloody data base.
Observer	Are you holding on tight, because I'd hate you to fall. Be messy in the mud
Man	You've no soul, no passion
Observer	You mean I don't have the emotions of a cost-benefit analysis? I lack the warmth of a government report?
Man	Yes
Observer	But nature is heartless. It's just there, and that's an end to it
Man	Who exactly are you?
Observer	A Goose biologist. I ring geese. Not their necks you understand – their legs
Man	I'd never have guessed
Observer	I spend the winter on the saltmarshes and stubble fields of Europe and the summer with the mosquitoes of the North, wading through shallow lakes with a pair of binoculars, driving flightless geese into nets with other Goose biologists, so we can apply little metal rings
Man	Goose biologists can't fly
Observer	Some can
Man	I think I must be in a play
Observer	No. You've simply been lucky enough to meet a Goose biologist who can fly. I daresay some of your cost-benefit analyst friends can fly too. It's just you've never caught them doing it
Man	Cost benefit analysts don't have friends
Observer	Now I call that real sad. Lucky you've found a friend who's a Goose biologist
Man	What will happen if I let go?
Observer	You'll fall into the sea where you'll probably drown, since your impact with the water will knock you unconscious even if it doesn't break your neck
Man	Thankyou
Observer	Why do you want to let go?
Man	I thought perhaps I might wake up

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