Chapter 32 – A Hard Day’s Night

While waiting to return to LAPA, Eric explained what Maddy Filmore had told him while Eppie removed three layers of makeup and returned her hair to neutral.

For the Sony shots, retouching usually took two weeks, but Okamoto-San was so pleased with the results that he may only opt to remove makeup imperfections. After that, Filmore would give the final approvals, then Sony would run the images through their internal pipeline: associate journalists, industry exchanges, corporate, you name it.

Her cross-promo with LAPA would take longer, being released to the school after her Fall Gala performance as Antigone; furthermore, pending her performance of the two songs she had planned with Zara, they may need more, such as couple shots.

Seventeen had slated her for March 2008, with the issue hitting the supermarket stands in February. It was a bit of a gamble for the publication, and they were somewhat strong-armed into it by Frederick Curon’s promise that a certain song would bring home a Grammy on the 10th of February, thereby rocketing both the magazine and Eppie into the stratosphere.

Looks like Filmore is due for a quadruple promotion, Eppie mused to herself, understanding that incidentally, the world had yet again worked itself to stand in her favour. Either the [System] had a sense of humour, or Director Curon was just that bloody good. That and Kellie would soon turn the whole Lucia Lancet rivalry on its head, DJ table and all.

For now, she had a whole new contact list added to her phone, ready to be blessed with future gainful employment.

Monday rolled in with the cold, six weeks and counting to the Fall Gala, close enough that students were beginning to feel the stress. Rehearsals were tightening, and groups began to jostle for time to practice in the Playhouse.

Nonetheless, classes were still happening.

English Honours opened with Act TWO, the most controversial scene in all of Shakespeare.

Taking place in a forest, the “Moor”, the “Other”, the naked evil that is the lover of Tamora plotted the rape of Lavinia by the Queen’s two sons, and the framing of Titus’ other children for murder.

Here, Tamora’s sons, Chiron and Demetrius, would slay Bassianus and drag Lavinia into the dark woods. In the same act, Quintus and Martius, Titus’ boys, would be framed for the death of Bassianus, kin to the Emperor, and be slain by the very laws his father upheld.

Here, the audience would find Lavinia, handless, tongueless, bleeding out her existence.

“Before we begin,” Dr Kirby said seriously. “Let’s get it out of our system. Let’s not skirt around something that happens somewhere, sometime, every day, even here in America. Who would like to volunteer?”

Eppie shuddered involuntarily.
James Jules raised his hands.

The hunt. The forest. Bassianus killed. Lavinia… was… er…

“It’s not a dirty word,” Dr Kirby told them. “It’s life. It happens in our industry even now. Say it. Acknowledge it. Have power over it.”

Brutally assaulted. Tongue removed. Hands removed. Left in the forest. Found by Marcus.

“Yes,” Kirby answered the uncomfortable silence with a clap to break the tension. “Now, let’s make you all even more uncomfortable—why did this happen?”

Power. Eppie answered silently.

“Their power manifests in her silence,” Kirby spoke to a silent room. “Its far more logical to have Livinia killed, and yet—”

Kirby brought up a list of critics who argued that Titus Andronicus, for this scene among others, should be removed from the Shakespearean Folio. It was almost never performed from the late 1600s to the 1800s, and in America especially, the play was avoided like the plague. Some critics point to the dark-skinned orchestrator of the rape, Aaron the Moor, but thespian in every age knew the true reason.

The scene was too raw, too gratuitous—and too reflective of US history, especially in the Deep South.

“The theatrical simulacrum’s purpose is, in many cases, to make the audience feel quite uncomfortable. It takes them into a place that’s already of discomfort inside of them, and then they are trapped there, looking at themselves and what they would do.”

“The assault never happens, EVER, on stage. We only see the aftermath.”

Kirby spread her hands. “Why her hands and her tongue?”

“So she can’t testify,” Cameron Atkinson answered.

“She is the evidence—well, there’s no DNA testing back then—but she’s the evidence,” Lucy says with a quiet voice. “And yet, she can’t provide the evidence because she can’t write and she can’t speak.”

“Yes, because Roman Law has certain legalities,” Kirby says. “Sophistry, of course, but that’s the social contract.”

Slut shaming. Legal proceedings. Witnesses being silenced. Eppie remained silent as well, thinking of Mio, somewhere in Fresno, unable to speak. In their civilised age, William didn’t even need to take off her tongue or her hand.

“She writes with her stumps, with a rod, in the sand” someone pointed out the obvious.

“Not the point” Dr Kirby shook her head. “The silence isn’t just physical. It’s legal as well. Shakespeare wrote the play in 1594. Even in that world, nearly sixteen hundred years since Anno Domini, the words of women do not hold up in court when your assailants are the sons of the Queen of Rome. The brothers are cruel not because they can, but because it shames her father, because they fear no consequence.”

Eppie took notes like an autoscribe, fighting the rage building inside her.

“You’ve all read the play, so let’s move forward a bit. How does Lavinia communicate then? Eventually?”

Atkinson volunteered. “She leads her uncle with a book. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philomela. Greek myth, retold by Ovid. She was raped by her brother-in-law, Tereus, who then cut out her tongue so she could not tell her sister what he did.”

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“And what does Philomela do?” Kirby chased up the question. “Eppie, you’ve been awfully quiet.”

Eppie looked up. She knew the story. She knew the theory. But not like this.

“Philomela weaves a tapestry,” she answered. “She weaves it into cloth, a classic Greek symbolism of the fates and of storytelling, and she sends it as her testimony. She—”

Eppie felt her head fill with a sudden, unexpected heat, like the spark of a new star igniting into being.

“She… that is, Lavinia, uses a script to show the truth. She uses Ovid’s play to tell her father what happened.”

THE PLAY! Eppie felt her brain burn. THE PLAY’S THE THING!