Frog

Green lights turn the stage into a gloomy underwater world. The entrance to a cave at the rear is moss-covered. The croaks of frogs and wails of babies emerge from the cave. A dozen bawling babies hang down from above the stage, limbs flailing.

A pair of workbenches for making clay dolls has been placed at the front of the stage.

Hao Dashou and Qin He sit behind the benches in lotus position creating clay dolls.

Gugu crawls out from the cave. She is wearing a baggy black robe, her hair is uncombed.

GUGU: (as if reciting from memory) My name is Wan Xin, I am seventy-two years old, and have been an obstetrician for fifty years. Though I am retired, I am anything but idle. I have been in attendance at the birth of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies. (She looks up at the babies hanging above the stage.) You children, I love to hear the sound of your crying. It makes me feel alive and real. Not hearing you cry makes Gugu feel empty inside. There isn’t another sound anywhere to match that of your crying. It is Gugu’s requiem. I only wish there had been tape recorders around back then to record the sounds of your crying as you were born. Gugu would play those sounds every day while she was alive and have them played at her funeral when she died. What wonderfully moving music the sound of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies crying together would make. (totally carried away) Let your crying move Heaven and Earth, let it deliver Gugu into Paradise…

QIN HE: (gloomy) Be careful their crying doesn’t send you down to Hell!

GUGU: (wanders lightly among the babies hanging above the stage like a fish swimming spryly through the water, lightly spanking their bottoms as she passes among them) Cry, my darlings, cry! Not crying means there’s something wrong with you, crying means you’re healthy.

HAO DASHOU: Crazy!

QIN HE: Who is?

HAO DASHOU: I am.

QIN HE: It’s okay to say you’re crazy, but not me. (self-importantly) Because I am Northeast Gaomi Township’s most famous clay-doll artisan. Though some may disagree, they’re welcome to their opinion. Where making things out of clay is concerned, I am the world’s number one. People have to learn how to promote themselves. If you don’t treat yourself like someone special, who will? The dolls I create are objets d’art, each valued at a hundred US dollars.

HAO DASHOU: Did you all hear that? That’s what you call shameless! When I was making dolls out of clay you were crawling on the ground scrounging for chicken feed. I was designated a master folk artist by the county chief himself. And what are you?

QIN HE: Comrades, friends, did you hear that? Hao Dashou, you’re not shameless, you’re too thickheaded to even feel shame, you’re deranged, you’re obsessive-compulsive. After a lifetime of making clay dolls, there isn’t one that can be called finished. You make one, then destroy it. The next one will be the one, you tell yourself. You’re like the bear in the cornfield picking ears and discarding them. Comrades, friends, take a good look at those hands. Hao Dashou, Big-Hands Hao? Those aren’t hands, they’re frog claws, duck’s feet, webbing and all…

HAO DASHOU: (angrily throws a lump of clay at Qin He) You’re full of shit, you’re deranged. Get the hell out of here!

QIN HE: Make me!

HAO DASHOU: This is my house.

QIN HE: Can you prove that? (points to Gugu and the hanging children) Can she? Can they?

HAO DASHOU: (points to Gugu) Of course she can.

QIN HE: Prove it.

HAO DASHOU: She’s my wife.

QIN HE: Prove it.

HAO DASHOU: We’re married.

QIN HE: Got any proof?

HAO DASHOU: We’ve slept together.

QIN HE: (deeply hurt, holds his head) No — you’re a liar, you’re lying to me. I gave up my youth for you, you promised you wouldn’t marry anyone, not ever!

GUGU: (looks daggers at Hao) Why are you provoking him? We agreed.

HAO DASHOU: I forgot.