Scene 2: Josiah, Stephen, Susanna, Jana: The Temple
Josiah:(inspecting Stephen's right arm) Hmmm. Let's see the mark
on the other arm, boy.
Susanna: His name is Stephen.
Josiah: Eh?
Susanna: Pardon me, your holiness. I said his name is Stephen--
not "boy".
Josiah:(overly polite) I beg your pardon. Stephen, would you
mind showing me the mark on your other arm?
Stephen: (showing him) It's about the same as it was a week ago.
No worse.
Josiah: About the same, yes, ABOUT the same. Leg!
Stephen: What?
Josiah: (patronizing) Kindly show me the mark on you LEG, Stephen,
son of...(he
searches for the name).
Susanna: Susanna.
Josiah: Ah, I may be mistaken, but I think most good Hebrew boys
use their FATHER'S name as a surname.
Susanna: Well, he hasn't got a father.
Josiah: Oh?
Susanna: He never had one.
Josiah: (sarcastically) Well, isn't today just full of surprises.
Let's just see the MARK!!
Stephen: (reluctantly pulls up his pant leg to show a big ugly mark.
Josiah almost retches.) I guess this one's got a bit worse.
Josiah: Stephen, son of Susanna, I declare you UNCLEAN!
Susanna: No! It's not possible!
Josiah: God struck King Uzziah with leprosy for violating his Temple.
Perhaps this is his way of punishing evildoers.
Susanna: (Clutching Stephen) You can't be serious. He's
just a boy!
Josiah: Just a boy! Oh, no, not at all. He's Stephen the
Leper! Good luck at the leper camp, NEXT!
(exit Stephen and Susanna)
(enter Jana)
Jana: Sir, I've found these strange markings on my
skin, and I'm worried they might be serious.
Josiah: But, you're a Samaritan.
Jana: (pretending to be amazed) So I am.
Josiah: Don't you know Samaritans aren't allowed in the Temple?
Jana: Sir, if you could just tell me what these marks
are, if you know. (She steps towards him.)
Josiah: (Backing away) You Samaritans don't respect God's laws, you
don't honor the sanctity of marriage, you eat unclean animals, and you
have the nerve to come to the temple looking for help from God?
Jana: I don't claim to be worthy of anything special.
I'm sick! I may be dying. I've come to ask for God's mercy.
Josiah: In my experience, which may be limited compared to yours, God's
mercy is not available to Samaritans.
Jana: Then where does a dying Samaritan woman go for help?
Josiah: Will you leave this place if I tell you?
Jana: Yes.
Josiah: On the road to Samaria, there is a leper colony.
Food is brought there daily, (sarcastically) out of mercy.
Scene 3: Mira and Helen: Greeks
Mira: (entering Helen's tent and whispering) Helen!
Helen: Mira! (horrified) Why are you here?
Mira: I had to see you.
Helen: Mira! You shouldn't be here! You'll catch it, too!
Mira: Oh, Helen.(goes to embrace her)
Helen: Stay away! You have to leave. You have to go back
to Greece!
Mira: Helen! Helen, look at me. Look at me!
(She shows her a lesion on her arm) Look here. (She shows her another
on her neck)And here. (She shows her a third on her forehead) And here.
I have it already. It's spreading. Fast.
Helen: Oh, Mira.(She embraces her)
Mira: Well, at least we saw the temple.
Helen: And the gardens.
Mira: And the palace.
Helen: We never heard Jesus of Nazareth, though.
Mira: Oh Helen, I know your heart was set on hearing him
teach. I hear the crowds are unbearable, though.
Helen: What will our families think has happened to us?
Mira: I wrote them.
Helen: What did you write?
Mira: I told them we'd been sold as slaves to a wealthy foreign sultan.
Helen: They'll never come looking for us.
Mira: Exactly.
Helen: How did this happen to us?
Mira: I don't know, Helen. I don't know.
Helen: (Brushes Mira's hair away from her face) You look ridiculous.
(They laugh)
Scene 4: Full Cast: The Leper Colony
Lucus: That was pathetic! If you're going to be good lepers, you're
going to have to learn to shout clearly and together. Now try it
again.
Lepers (everyone else except Josiah - half-heartedly, not in very good
unison) Unclean! Unclean!
Lucus: No, no, no!! On the count of three! One, two, three...(he
conducts them)
Lepers: (together) Unclean! UnCLEAN!!
Lucus: (reluctantly)That was better. Now I want to see you wave
your arms around. You, boy, try it.
Susanna: His name is Stephen.
Lucus: Listen, woman, I didn't ask for this job. I don't like
lepers. I don't hang around with them when I get off work, and I
certainly don't learn their names. Boy, try it.
Stephen: Unclean (waves his arms) unclean!
Lucus: Not bad. Wave your arms a little more - scary,
like. And use your diaphragm. And here, put more ashes in your
hair.
Stephen: (Waving his arms ferociously) UNCLEAN!!
Lucus: (enthusiastically) Great job Stephen! (clutches his head with
his hand) Aarrgh! No names. Thanks a lot, woman!
Susanna: Susanna.
Lucus: Susanna. AARRGH!
Doris: Hey! Who is that? Someone is coming. Unclean!
Lepers: UNCLEAN!
Jana: He looks familiar. Oh, great. It's you.
Josiah: (arrives and falls on his knees) God has stricken me, too.
Jana: For what sin, priest?
Josiah: I don't know, but it must have been very evil.
Jana: Perhaps for turning away a dying Samaritan.
Josiah: Maybe I shouldn't have given you directions to get here.
Jana: Believe me, I'd heal you if I could just to keep you out of my
life.
Lucus: If you old friends are through with your happy reunion, perhaps
we could get back to chanting practice.
Mira: (Advancing slowly on Lucus) You know what you can do with your
chanting
practice?
Lucus: You stay away from me, you leper!
Mira: What? Afraid of a little human contact?
Lucus: (As the lepers gather around him) Don't touch me!
Lepers: (Separately at first, then together in a slowly rising chant)
Unclean, unclean, unclean, unclean...(this continues into Lucus' next speech)
Lucus: Stay back! (draws his sword) I'm warning you! FREEZE!
(the lepers fall silent.) You want to kill me with your disease?
You're too late. (He tears off his helmet. He has a huge lesion
on his head.) See? I'm already a leper. There! Do you
want to touch this? Do you?
Scene 5: Doris, Helen, and Rachel: A Sorry Bunch
Doris: What a sorry bunch we were. Ten in all. Rich,
poor, woman, man, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Samaritan. Living off half-rotten
rations left outside the boundaries of our camp by charitable yet terrified
locals. The same locals who showered stones on us if we ventured
too close to their homes. We weren't ungrateful. We were bitter.
Helen: No one visited us. We made sure of that. We
scared off anyone who strayed into our camp with shouts of "unclean".
Rachel: There was no one to talk to but one another. Helen, what
is your deepest regret?
Helen: I'm sad for my family, but what really hurts is that I'll never
hear Jesus teach.
Doris: Ah, Jesus! Yes, you've missed out. I saw him turn
water into wine.
Rachel: I hear he performs all kinds of strange works.
Doris: He catches fish with his voice, and walks on water.
Helen: Really? Tell me more!
Doris: He once fed five thousand people with seven loaves of bread
and two fish.
Helen: How did he do that? Oh, (disappointed) you're joking with
me.
Doris: Absolutely not!
Rachel: It sounds strange, dear, but I've also heard that he heals
the sick.
Helen: (pause) How sick?
Rachel: (pause) I hear he raises the dead.
Scene 6: Full Cast: Beginning the Journey.
Simon: We were happy for a reason to leave the camp.
Lucus: It's not so much that seeing Jesus is a good enough reason to
leave, but rather, that not seeing Jesus isn't a good enough reason to
stay.
Jana: You've been talking to the priest too much,
Lucus. If you have no hope, why do you keep putting one foot in front
of the other?
Simon: Jana, don't be so hard on him. Would you want to be left
behind; the only leper in a leper colony?
Jana: Is that all we are, Simon? Are we just lepers?
Simon: I'm a slave -- (he remembers) a free slave. A friend.
Susanna: I'm a person, a woman. I have a son.
Lucus:(in despair) I'm a soldier cursed by God!
Simon: And so we trudged on, feeling different degrees of hope and
despair. When we passed other travelers, we shouted "unclean" to
save others from our curse. To each other, we were the only world
we had left. To strangers, we were just lepers.
Susanna: We followed other travelers on their way to see Jesus.
The crowds got thicker and thicker. Thousands of people hoping to
hear words of truth, to see miracles, to be healed. People eager
to be filled with wonder.
Scene 7: Full Cast: Meeting Jesus
Mira: (They turn to face front) We rounded a bend in the road and were
frozen by what we saw. Ahead of us lay a broad valley. The
hillsides were like an enormous quilt of seething color and motion.
People too numerous to count covered every inch of ground.
Josiah: Far off, in the center of the valley, lay a tiny blue lake
like a saucer on an immense tablecloth. On its surface bobbed a tiny
boat. In this boat sat two men: one holding onto the oars, and one...(he
can't find the right word) The energy of every soul in this valley seemed
to be focused on this one man. His arms and lips moved, and a ripple
began as people close enough to hear passed the message on to those behind
them. The words swept outwards in waves until they reached us.
Doris: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
I was in desperate need of comfort. Mourning had become a state of
being for me. But the hope of healing that had brought me this far
was slipping away. The crowd was packed tight. There was no way for
us to squeeze our way through. I was ready to turn around and drag
myself away, when young Stephen spoke.
Stephen: Unclean! UNCLEAN!!
Mira: People turned to look at us. I was mortified. Be
silent!
Josiah: Someone clapped a hand over Stephen's mouth. (He claps a hand
over Stephen's mouth.)
Doris: But something strange was happening. People were
crowding against each
other to get away from us. An empty space was growing around
us.
Mira: The massive quilt gave a shiver and shifted ever so slightly.
Josiah: In surprise, the hand on Stephen's mouth dropped for
a moment.
Stephen: Unclean! UNCLEEEEAAAAN!!
Josiah: The hand stayed dropped. The crowd was actually
moving aside, like the Red Sea opening up.
Mira: We all joined in the chant and pushed forward as a group.
Lepers: (Waving their arms) Unclean, unclean... (the chanting continues)
Doris: (Over the chanting) As we advanced, the path opened up before
us. The entire valley seemed to murmur and ripple as we got closer
and closer to the tiny lake and Jesus, until ten lepers stood on the shore.
(The lepers all freeze, and one by one drop their hands. They are
all somewhat hunched over.) Something in his look told me that he remembered
me from the wedding at Cana over a year before, where I had seen him turn
water into wine.
Stephen: Jesus took up an oar and started to row the boat towards us.
The other man hesitated a moment and then put his oar into the water as
well. The boat scraped up onto the beach and Jesus jumped out.
Josiah: He walked towards us, saying nothing.
Mira: He just looked us in the eyes.
Doris: (straightening up) He touched my shoulder.
Stephen: (straightening up) He touched a lesion on my cheek.
Josiah: (straightening up) He gripped my face in both his hands, and
stared into my soul.
Mira: (straightening up) He stopped in front of me and smiled when
I whispered "Have pity on us."
Doris: (softly, sadly) And then he sent us away.
Scene 8: Full Cast: Getting Healed
Stephen: Not away! To the temple! To be inspected by the
priests.
Helen: But the sores are still here!
Mira: So what now?
Stephen: To the temple.
Susanna: To the temple.
Lucus: To the temple!!
Helen: We walked along the road, saying nothing, until Mira gave a
cry.
Mira: Helen -
Helen: -she shouted -
Mira: - Helen, my hands are so smooth!
Susanna: It was happening to all of us. Decaying tissue was transforming
before our eyes into healthy, baby-soft skin. Legs and arms became
strong again. Vision became clear. We all looked at one another,
and the most exhilarating truth became obvious.
Lepers: (ad lib, they inspect, touch, grasp, and embrace one another)
You're healed! Am I healed? How about my neck? Your head is
clear! You look terrific!
Lucus: Clean! CLEAN!!!
(Lepers ad lib a celebration: they embrace, play fight, jump for joy,
fall to their knees and pray, and perform other expressions of celebration.
They dance their way off the stage until only Jana is left. She steps
forward and delivers the final monologue looking forward, over the
audience.)
Scene 9: Jana the Samaritan
Jana: Sir? I came back to thank you for my life. The others?
They are in Jerusalem, being examined by the priests as you instructed.
I suppose they'll all go back to their old jobs and lives. Rachel,
the wealthy widow, has freed her slave Simon...Well, she set him free when
she got leprosy, and now she set him free again and gave him a paid position
in her household, and she promises that the widow and her son will be adequately
cared for, and the Greeks will have passage home to their families. No,
sir, I haven't been examined by the priests. Well, I am a Samaritan,
and I am not welcome in the temple. I am not free to worship there,
but in my heart I will worship the power that healed these sores, forever.
My faith? My faith has made me well? Oh no, YOU have made me
well. Your mercy and your power. You have made a miracle out
of me.
............................................................
Copyright Kent Suss, all rights reserved.
The script may not be reproduced, translated or copied in any medium, including books, CDs and on the Internet, without written permission of the author.
This play may be performed free of charge, on the condition that copies are not sold for profit in any medium, nor any entrance fee charged. In exchange for free performance, the author would appreciate being notified of when and for what purpose the play is performed. He may be contacted at: ksuss@mtyp.ca