Playwright Portrait, Tommy Smith, Excerpt from Sextet

The Playwright Tommy Smith, 2007

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SEXTET
 

NINA: I'm so afraid when you're gone.
TCHAIKOVSKY: Why are you afraid?
NINA: The last couple nights. I've been having these terrible dreams about you. I'm in the concert hall playing the violin. I don't play the violin, I know, but in the dream I could play very well. And no one's there, just space filled with sound and I play louder and louder and faster and faster and the strings break off, just whip right off the instrument, and they cut my forearms and I try to brush it away,brush the blood away like dirt but the cuts grow bigger and I call out but the space swallows the sound. But then I can hear you. I can her you in the silence. I'm coming. I'm coming. But you never do. You never come.