THE GORGONS
Kasia Chekatouskaya
Translated into English by Barys Kliuchnikau, edited by Apeksha Harsh
Copyright by Kasia Chekatouskaya. All rights reserved.
SYNOPSIS
The Gorgons is a text replete with metaphor, poetry and myth. Through the voices of three Medusas, the author deconstructs the “woman should” attitude and explores the stereotypes that exist in society. The text poetically explores the social role of women, the problems of violence and the patriarchal world order. The play is characterized by the intimacy of a monostory, which acquires scale and becomes a collective statement on behalf of the playwright.
MEDUSA I
She touched her cheek. It felt dry. She pinched it – the skin cracked. Spread over her face like tectonic plates that moved the continents to the ends of the world,
and in faults
I got rid of mercy
and in cracks
I no longer consider all people to be human
and in faults
hidden thirst for revenge
and in the cracks between the plates, blackness.
She looked at her face in the mirror. The right eye looked into the right eye. The left eye looked into the left eye.
The right eye cutting the right eye. The left eye cutting the left eye.
The right hand rubbed the right eye. The left hand rubbed the left eye.
The lenses fell out.
They fell on the dirty floor. The floor has not been washed for a long time (or has it ever?). She was trampled on with leather slippers with the number 309, winter boots, army shoes, and musty bare feet. She was covered in dirt and sand, corpses of flies and fleas, moldy porridge, scales of someone else’s skin, hair, sweat, blood, and broken teeth, the decayed remains of human activity.
Lenses are now like the floor .
I put the right lens in the right eye. The left lens in the left eye. Now in my eyes, dirt and sand, corpses of flies and fleas, moldy porridge, scales of someone else’s skin, hair, sweat, blood and knocked-out teeth, decayed remnants of human activity.
I wanted my eyes to stop seeing. But they saw.
Darkness did not come. The night did not come. Twilight did not hide reality.
Night is for those who can afford to forget.