THE SET-UP
This is the speech that begins the play. Read on…
“If I’d done everything I could, everything I should, this boy wouldn’t be in the ground.”
(A gravestone.
ANNE, a woman in her 50s.)
ANNE
This isn’t my grave.
There are days I wish it was.
Days I think it should be.
A person shouldn’t outlive the next generation.
Parents shouldn’t outlive their children.
This is what war does.
It’s the law of averages. Put a body in front of bullets and explosives and people who want that body to fall, do that often enough, the body will fall. Nobody’s luck lasts forever.
Nobody.
No body.
I feel this way, and do nothing.
I should have barred the door.
I shouldn’t have let him go back.
If I’d done everything I could, everything I should, this boy wouldn’t be in the ground.
And I have to live with that.
I get to live with that.
Because more people die, to preserve my life. My way of life.
It’s obscene.
(photo: Tina Sigel as Anne in the 2011 Minneapolis production of “Leave” by Urban Samurai Productions; photography by Ron Ravensborg; scenic design by Erica Zaffarano)
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