The Halle Berry One Two:

"A performer steps into a role the way he steps into a costume. He puts on his audience. He re-presents that audience to itself. How natural that Californians would elect actors to public office."

Edmund Carpenter They Became What they Beheld (1970)

Characters:

Grace 1: Grace Jones

Grace 2: Grace Jones facsimile

Halle: Halle Berry, Academy Award winning actress.

Synopsis: Halle Berry met Grace Jones on the set of Boomerang in 1992. She made a pact with her that promised her "soul" if she received an Academy Award for Best Actress.

This is the deal: Grace will take Halle's life and show her how to live it, "full speed ahead honey", and Halle will disappear as one of the Graces—a cabaret act with a cult following.

Supplemental:

//: means to repeat from the beginning of the section until fade/necessary

[boomerang] shows a change in personal pronoun from 3rd to 1st person and vice versa.

Text in multiple columns—overlapping voices unless otherwise noted.

Soundtrack:

Prince, The Very Best of Prince, Warner Bros. Records Inc. 2001

—., Parade, Controversy Music, 1986

Selected Film Sources:

A View to a Kill (1985) MGM

Boomerang (1992) Paramount

Die Another Day (2002) MGM

Magazine Covers:

Upscale August 1999

Savoy November 2003

Ebony August 2004

Off Da Hook

There are voices before lights come up on: Two people dressed in an androgynous fashion. Stylish rather than mannish. They are the Graces.

Grace 1

Boomerang is a romantic comedy where what goes around makes a man go for a single bright light moving out of orbit. When two play that game the seductress loses her hand and the sexual predator gives up his heart to the fairest fruit on the tree. Robin Givens is a pebble thrown at a comet's tail—her power is without purpose. Strangé /Grace Jones by being foreign (European) Black expresses outrageous black female sexuality. The arc of her rock will smash your windows. There is no compromise.

Grace 2

Soundtrack samples:

Alphabet St.; U Got The Look

  yeah yeah yeahgot the look  let's make a better say soshe got the look  O.K. it's the malaisesure got the look  run and tell yo' mommaface jamming  'bout thatbody slamming  ABCDEFGH I love Unatural beauty  yeah yeah yeah//:unaffected //:

Security Features

ambient sound—listen to it then sound of water.

Halle Berry Academy Award winning actress (2002)

Halleis washing her beautiful hands everything about her is to be admired she is quietly confident goes to mirror

Grace 2

At airports. I am difficult. I'm set apart. I can't detach all arms, but I'm frisky. unlock the clogs and stock them in the hold. I'm not wonder. I've been programmed for hurt. I feel summer love. I take my revenge when. I am not natural I'm not super heroine. I dabble with the organic yet I am not vegetable matter.

I don't fright. I avoid flight. I don't even float like a butterfly, but I sting.

Grace 1

lists Halle's film roles (selected) during speech

Zola Taylor

Nina

Shelby Coles

Nisi

Josie Potenza

Miss Sandra Beecher

Jean

Khaila Richards

Nikhaule/Queen Sheba

Sharon Stone

Autumn Haley

Kathleen Mercer

Queen //:

Putting It On

The Graces turn away from Halle and bring out an old-fashioned suitcase.

Square and battered.

Grace 2 dresses Grace 1.

She will be Halle, but they don't believe in her.

The Graces share this article—overlapping—stopping and starting.

Cat Power:

Why Halle Berry is trying to perfect her purr.

[quotation follows]

AOL movies Entertainment Weekly2/24/2003 "EW checks in with the star of 'Catwoman'" by Missy Schwartz

Halle Berry is heeding the catcall—prepping for her starring role in Warner Bros.' "Catwoman," due in theaters next summer. "It's great—lots of fight training and whip work," says the Oscar winner, who's been a fan of the feline comic character since seeing Eartha Kitt play her in old episodes of the 1960s "Batman" series. "Catwoman's been done by great...