31 Plays in 31 Days, #1 - "Who Was Your Mother?"

Here it is, my first entry for 31 Plays in 31 Days 2015!

This one is a possible scene for an Adonis sequel. I scribbled a little bit of this last year, but my ideas and thinking on it have changed a lot as Bernie and I discussed it. I originally conceived of the big bad of the next stories, the general commanding the Roman armies trying to put down the resistence, to be an embodiment of "the-establishment-as-rapist" idea that runs throughout the story. I thought maybe she could be a previous abuser of Aidan's to give her that psychological edge, and make it clear that just because Aidan's in a better place it doesn't mean he's completely conquered his trauma.

Bernie kind of talked me out of that. He felt it was too pat and coincidental for the big bad to happen to have abused our hero in the past, and I had to concede that point. So this character, Saturnina, is becoming by Bernie's suggestion more of an embodiment of "The Edifice of Rome," a True Believer who felt she was defending all the good things that the empire brought to the world, things that she felt would not exist without it. This scene tries to get at exposing some of that thinking.

I kind of miss the old idea-- enough that I'm trying to preserve at least the spirit of it in another character --but this change is a good example of how Bernie tempers me.

( Day #1 -  )