Benita Conova
Sex, Violence & Metaphysics
written and directed by Richard Foreman
premiered January 8th, 1998 at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater
at St. Marks Church, NYC

Madame: Possibly, just possibly that feeling is mutual my dear.

Benita: What feeling?

Madame: But unfortunately animals-dead or alive-never conceptualize QUITE the way human beings conceptualize.

Cristina: I can well imagine she must have been speaking about herself, Madame. And as far as animals are concerned... Well, she doesn't consider herself either a dead gorilla, or a live gorilla.

Madame: Of course she was speaking about herself. But it would be very easy to imagine that even a dead gorilla imagines itself a mere-sleeping gorilla. And a sleeping gorilla imagines waking up perhaps, once upon a time, to do very bad things to little ladies such that even little ladies may find it impossible to imagine. By which I do NOT mean to imply that such a sound asleep gorilla is in this way CONCEPTUALIZING on the same level that a human being may possibly, conceptualize!

Benita: Her goddamned fucking brain is working against her, right in here.

Benita: Microscopic rodents-eating away at her head muscles.

Madame: Try riding the wave of such a wonderful catastrophe...

Betty: Benita Canova.

Madame: Little Israelite.

Benita: Catastrophe: an easy word for a much more ambiguous situation.

Cristina: Oh-look at this, little Benita Canova's brain doing bad things to her facial expression.

Benita: She can't find her facial expression.

Madame: Immeasurable, my dear.

Cristina: Oh yeah, a variety of shapes and sizes.

Benita: She doesn't think her facial expression comes in different sizes, because her brain is telling her the size and shape of her facial expression is always indeterminate-and she goes back and forth inside her facial expressions like a hungry animal in deep trouble.

Betty: Help!

Cristina: Oh, pleaseie-weezie, just for me-start whispering "Help."

Benita: Not yet. Try reading her facial expression.

Cristina: Wow, that really turns me on.

Benita: OK, stick around for desert.

Cristina: Hands off bitch!

Benita: Brain - get back inside my head. Please. Please!

[…]

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