Kidnap Road
Rent from DeepDyve- Kidnap Road
to my father and mother, jean and odette filloux
Ingrid Betancourt’s story can be found in the public record. Kidnap Road is imagined as a two-person play based in part on those events. The play’s design includes a detailed soundscape. Translation of the English text into Spanish is by Juan Posada, John Araoz, and Marco Antonio Rodriguez.
Cast of Characters
Woman
Leader / Commander / God / Male Hostage / Father / Young Guerrilla / Guard / Colombian Prisoner, played by one actor.
Woman is in a wooden cage.
Lights shift. At her presidential campaign, sounds of a crowd and applause. Announcer voice-over: “Y ahora vamos a escuchar a la candidata del partido oxígeno verde.”*
Here is a condom. If you vote for me, you are wearing a condom against corruption. On Election Day let your vote be like Viagra for Colombia.
[turns to address a different audience] When you decided to become a guerrilla, when each of you decided, “I’m going to the mountains to fight,” what was your intention? Was your intention to take away water and electricity from the poor people you wanted to defend? I don’t think so. I believe you joined to say, “We’re going to fight for a better society, for social justice.” The war makes us all suffer. Together we can make our country a better place. For our children. A consensus for peace will strengthen your movement. A consensus for war will destroy Colombia. I propose that we make unilateral gestures that will allow Colombians to embrace the peace process. There is a gesture for the FARC: “No más secuestros, no más secuestros, no más secuestros.”†
Faint sounds of a helicopter approaching.
The night when the game is played. The sky. Blue with a few clouds. Wide open. The beautiful sky, silent sky. [End Page 97]
Sound of chimes.
Quand je parle, je parle en français. O en español? But I am in England, Oxford, so, the language for now will be . . . English . . .
[picks up a book] And this is the book they gave me. The Bible. A bestseller.
Helicopter sounds get louder.
[voice-over; loudly] Todos, vamos! Vamos! Vamos!*
[loudly; dashing by her] Vamos! Vamos!
We are in the middle of a coca field. A helicopter is waiting.
[loudly] Vamos! Vamos!
The men from the helicopter are dressed in Che Guevara T-shirts, and one man—the leader—is holding a clipboard. The Absurd.
[loudly] Entren en el helicóptero! Entren en el helicóptero! La tenemos que esposar!†
The leader wraps plastic around my wrists. A Venezuelan news station films me. What made me get in the helicopter? With the people dressed in Che Guevara T-shirts?
Helicopter sound fades and turns into the ticking of a clock. Commander forces her to march.
Muévete! Camina! Muévete!‡
[marching with Commander] There are sixty seconds in a minute.
Sixty minutes in an hour.
Twenty-four hours in a day.
If I see the hands moving, then I know that you are here.
That you are in the same time as me.
But time is not chronological, nor logical, and what does it even mean here: time?
Commander orders them to stop marching, takes off his gun, and lies down. Assortment of jungle sounds.
Just before dawn, the jungle is at its most still. But there is never silence. Ever. The flies buzz, the birds make their very special sounds . . .
Sounds of jungle birds shrieking and croaking.
Sometimes you have to laugh. A praying mantis crawls up the side of my cage. Then a scorpion. The light slowly turns the color black to green. God, if you give me a little bit of sky today, I’ll give you . . .
God appears. [End Page 98]
What will you give me?
Why do we bargain, God? Why do we have to bargain all the time?
Well?
I don’t have anything left to give, God.
[laughing] What about humility?
A beat.
Those words, God? The ones I kept repeating in front of the guerrillas . . . ?
[laughing] Yes...
