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NUPTIAL FLIGHT - a tale of family values and natural selection [more info continued]

Cast
JUDITH - approaching 50.  Protects the tribe at all costs, menopausal.
DAMN IT CHILD - 10.  The innocent savant, brilliant red hair.
RUTH - almost 24.  The nature lover, clean aura.
EXALTED ELK OF THE YEAR - 50s.  Sells carpets, stupid hat.
THE TREE (young, for a tree).  Life is on the line—a dotted line.
RUBLAH DEE - approaching 40.  The Seer, goes by Janine now.
CHARLES - fifties.  Judith's absent husband, broke the code.

About The Play
I don’t know why but ever since I was six and I wrote my twenty-six chapter epic: The Life of The Ant Family, I have been intrigued with ants.  Then when I was wandering the stacks at the UCSD library, I came across the beautiful tome, THE ANTS, by Hölldobler and Wilson, and I was hooked all over again.  Did you know that ants copulate in mid-air?  And that soon after, the male ants die?  And it’s the female ants that found and run their colonies?  Never mind that there are __ ants for every human.  And they’ll be here long after we’re gone.  And then I imagined someone who could communicate with ants—deciphering their elaborate chemical codes.  It was an estranged husband.  And he used those ants to visit conjugally his long-lost wife. And from this union a child was born.  Is that crazy enough for you?  Well, then I went crazy for trees.  Maybe it was all those eucalyptus trees in San Diego.  Am I the only person who thinks trees look kind of, well, sexy?  I mean, I’m not in love with them.  But I understand people who are.  And I imagined just such a person falling in love with a tree.  But of course their love has to be star-crossed.  We live in a time of such violence toward nature.  And it can’t be long before nature strikes back.  And then I discovered, the trees are planning a revolution.  They’re going to reverse the photosynthesis process and light up the planet like a roman candle.  OK, the imagination went a little wild.  Perhaps it was that six year old brain at work.  And it serves as a surreal backdrop to this family’s desperate fight to survive.