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[0:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:16] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:17] Dylan Glick: And my name's Dylan Glick.

[0:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We are all three here today.

[0:21] Dylan Glick: Yay.

[0:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's a rarity that we can get all three of us in the same room sometimes.

[0:25] David Rigano: That's right.

[0:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We all hate each other.

[0:27] David Rigano: And so yeah, it's just the fighting and the... We were all in the same room on Saturday.

[0:32] Dylan Glick: And we were.

[0:33] David Rigano: That is true.

[0:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[0:35] David Rigano: Friday.

[0:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Friday.

[0:36] David Rigano: Friday.

[0:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, it was Friday the 13th.

[0:37] Dylan Glick: Friday.

[0:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Friday the 13th.

[0:40] David Rigano: Thunder and lightning sound effects.

[0:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh huh.

[0:42] David Rigano: I'm not gonna put him in.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, I know that's why we said.

[0:46] David Rigano: What were we all together for on Friday?

[0:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Why don't David, why don't you tell us what we were all together for?

[0:51] David Rigano: If memory serves, we were together for my 12th annual Ides of March extravaganza.

[0:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Wow on Friday the 13th.

[0:59] David Rigano: On Friday the 13th.

[1:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, we did the 12th or the 13th.

[1:03] David Rigano: It is looking like we're gonna do the 13th on the 12th next year.

[1:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Nice.

[1:07] David Rigano: Mark your calendars.

[1:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Mark your calendars.

[1:10] David Rigano: Yes.

[1:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And really do because we had so much fun.

[1:13] Dylan Glick: Yeah, we had a great time.

[1:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: As audience members, Dylan and I had so much fun.

[1:16] Dylan Glick: There was a fun little prompt on every table that asked a question that then we had to put in like a little bowl on stage.

[1:22] David Rigano: And David and his brother Paul, halfway through the show picked out a few little pieces of paper, and they said that they were gonna write a song on the spot.

[1:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And that song was dedicated to our coworker friend Archer.

[1:34] David Rigano: It was because of your suggestion.

[1:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Because of my suggestion.

[1:37] David Rigano: Well, interestingly enough, it was actually like it could have gone either way because both Dylan and I had Archer related suggestions in there.

[1:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If we had one more, it would be a good one.

[1:46] David Rigano: If we had one more, we would have increased our odds.

[1:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[1:49] David Rigano: But maybe next year, I already have some ideas for next year's Archer suggestions.

[1:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No promises that we're going to write a song every year.

[1:58] David Rigano: And no promises that if you see writing prompts on your table, that means we're gonna write a song.

[2:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But maybe we're gonna, we'll just write a song about Archer in general.

[2:08] David Rigano: And then I think in protest we can stand up and just start performing it in the world.

[2:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: In the middle of the show.

[2:14] David Rigano: Exactly.

[2:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly.

[2:15] David Rigano: That's the real betrayal that you'll be getting the eyes.

[2:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The mutiny even.

[2:19] David Rigano: Oh, but it was so much fun.

[2:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it was.

[2:21] Dylan Glick: I was talking about it like for two days.

[2:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was telling everybody here about it.

[2:25] Dylan Glick: Great friends of the story.

[2:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Great surprise guests.

[2:28] Dylan Glick: Great surprise guest.

[2:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh my god.

[2:31] Dylan Glick: Sutton.

[2:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[2:31] David Rigano: You can cut that if you need to cut that much.

[2:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Um what's it called?

[2:36] Dylan Glick: Channel drop in good time.

[2:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Channel drop in good time.

[2:39] David Rigano: I we had a backstabbing piano drop in good time.

[2:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Backstabbin, piano dropping, good time.

[2:44] Dylan Glick: Dropping a tune.

[2:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Drop me a tune.

[2:46] David Rigano: I literally the next day came to the bookshop and bought a copy of Julius Caesar.

[2:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh wow.

[2:50] David Rigano: Yes.

[2:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Just to see how accurate our song Beware the Eyes was.

[2:54] David Rigano: That's right.

[2:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I've written a very long letter to the Regano song book about this.

[2:59] David Rigano: But it's also that's a song that like because I've seen the show, I feel like I've seen it either every other year or like every other year plus a few years, because I've seen it quite a few times.

[3:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And because there's frequently been songs that either you had a part in writing or that were from a show that you had a part in writing.

[3:19] David Rigano: Yeah, definitely.

[3:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But the I song always sticks with me.

[3:22] David Rigano: I'll be walking home singing it.

[3:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Everyone else was too in the stairs.

[3:26] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[3:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I loved hearing the cut song from Holy Cows.

[3:29] David Rigano: I teared up a little.

[3:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, we haven't done Mr. Right now in a while.

[3:33] David Rigano: Oh, and that's also the song.

[3:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it's God damn it.

[3:38] David Rigano: It's yeah, that's and it's a song that's special.

[3:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I remember like when it happened during the show, it was great.

[3:44] David Rigano: It's a real downer moment in the show, and we didn't need it.

[3:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It got cut because it never worked for the moment in the show.

[3:51] David Rigano: And we felt it wasn't Mr. Right then.

[3:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[3:54] David Rigano: And we've found a better moment to tell that aspect of the character, which then necessitated a new song.

[4:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[4:03] David Rigano: A song that I love.

[4:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Which is called The Line Up.

[4:06] David Rigano: It's on the album, which is available on Spotify and all of those.

[4:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: All of your streaming platforms.

[4:12] David Rigano: Yeah, no, it's always great.

[4:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's a really great song that works a lot better in cabaret settings than it ever did in the show.

[4:20] David Rigano: It really does.

[4:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I remember you first explaining to it, explaining it to me when we were putting the show together.

[4:25] David Rigano: And I was like, oh, that's so good.

[4:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then we saw it again, it was so good, but in these rewrites, yeah.

[4:30] David Rigano: But I still there was a part of me who was like, can we have it back?

[4:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I know we can but it's still it's a good enough song that it made me miss it.

[4:38] David Rigano: Now my question for you both is I have not let that, let me speak.

[4:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I have not yet listened to the cast recording of Holy Cows.

[4:45] David Rigano: Would you recommend that I wait until the next production?

[4:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Or should I go ahead and give it a little bit?

[4:50] David Rigano: Yeah, go ahead.

[4:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think you can go ahead and give it a listen.

[4:51] David Rigano: Yeah, I'll send you a script.

[4:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's like, oh yeah, yeah.

[4:54] David Rigano: It's a studio album, so it's not a cast album of a production of the show.

[5:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: A bunch of people in it had done a reading.

[5:04] David Rigano: Okay.

[5:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So they were pretty familiar with it, but there were also people who just learned it for the album.

[5:09] David Rigano: Great.

[5:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And but it's a good, it's a good example sample of the story, and it's another one that like if you have the script and you read it and listen, you will have a lot of fun because it's a very funny, heartfelt show.

[5:21] David Rigano: You've told me about how it ends before.

[5:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It really warms my heart.

[5:24] David Rigano: And so I'm excited to get into it.

[5:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:27] David Rigano: And that was something so I'm like very slight spoilers, and I'm gonna figure out how to say this without.

[5:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it's about a perpetually losing church baseball team and the pastor's wife's crisis of faith.

[5:39] David Rigano: She and her daughter make a bet that if God is real, the holy cows will win their first game in 10 years.

[5:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Ever.

[5:49] David Rigano: Yes.

[5:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And ever.

[5:50] David Rigano: They've never won a game.

[5:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And my and I remember my brother saying to me at one point in the first part of the writing process, how are you, an atheist, going to write a show that kind of says that God exists.

[6:08] David Rigano: Yeah.

[6:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[6:09] David Rigano: I won't tell you exactly what happens with the game.

[6:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then I brought in a lyric for a reprise very late in the show.

[6:19] David Rigano: And it's four lines.

[6:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's perhaps you were saying the game's not the thing, and that winning is not what is going to bring the family and faith.

[6:27] David Rigano: I have to earn.

[6:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And my brother looked at those four lines and he went, God damn it.

[6:33] David Rigano: Yeah.

[6:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Good shit.

[6:35] David Rigano: Because yeah, I don't think it obviously we have fun with like right after she makes the bet, miraculous things start happening.

[6:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[6:45] David Rigano: And we can but we don't give an answer.

[6:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[6:48] David Rigano: Because we're watching the people who are watching the game.

[6:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We can say that anything we want is happening on the field.

[6:54] David Rigano: So we have a lot of fun making up the most outlandish ways.

[7:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Outlandishly amazing ways that they can start playing really well.

[7:04] David Rigano: And doing cartwheels, like catching the ball mid-cartwheel.

[7:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like the balls hitting a bird.

[7:08] David Rigano: Yeah, right.

[7:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Getting someone out because they didn't catch the ball the bird in the top.

[7:15] David Rigano: So all sorts of like weird stuff.

[7:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That obviously that's just like fun miracles.

[7:20] David Rigano: It is fun.

[7:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We found fun miracles.

[7:23] David Rigano: And that's it.

[7:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But at the same time, I don't think the show says like the show says you have to work on your own faith, and you have to work on your own family.

[7:33] David Rigano: They're not gonna like just come to you.

[7:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I think that's what it is.

[7:36] David Rigano: Because one that's for me, that's what faith is.

[7:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I have this is one of three shows I have that play in the world of faith, and none of them give answers.

[7:46] David Rigano: The one of them that I'm most excited to see is your George Michael musical.

[7:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, no, but they have but no, it I never want to give an answer because that's not my place.

[7:50] David Rigano: That's not my place to give an answer.

[7:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Everyone has their own personal journey, and whether it's a journey that doesn't involve belief in that specific belief system or one that does, it's really up to that person and their relationship, and that's what the show is.

[8:10] David Rigano: Um I'll also say that like when I was a kid, what I really loved, and I can look back and go, oh, you little atheist, you were trying to make sense of an idea of God that you had heard about, but I decided that I believed in the Greek gods.

[8:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Which I never actually did.

[8:32] David Rigano: I just enjoyed Greek mythology like so many little nerds did.

[8:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But I just decided that because that fascinated me, that was my belief.

[8:47] David Rigano: When I actually took time to think about it, I realized where I actually lay.

[8:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But speaking of fabulous ancient Greeks.

[8:55] David Rigano: Tell us more.

[8:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There is, of course, a poetess named Sappho’s, history's first you all lesbian.

[9:11] David Rigano: What about her poetry makes her you all lesbian specifically?

[9:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, not a you all lesbian specifically, but she was very... Sappho is where the term Safic comes from.

[9:20] David Rigano: And she was one of the first really famous lesbians of history.

[9:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Slide.

[9:27] David Rigano: Love that for her.

[9:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love famous lesbians.

[9:28] David Rigano: I do too.

[9:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[9:31] David Rigano: And her gardening.

[9:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And her gardening.

[9:33] David Rigano: And speaking of her gardening.

[9:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[9:35] David Rigano: And to talk a little bit about that, we had a wonderful event here talking about the book Sappho’s's Garden.

[9:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[9:42] David Rigano: With us.

[9:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What a segue.

[9:44] David Rigano: Right?

[9:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[9:45] David Rigano: I feel like I'm the one who normally does the segue.

[9:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I know so.

[9:48] David Rigano: And I was like, David is a good one.

[9:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When you started saying Gods, I literally turned to Mark and mouthed.

[9:52] David Rigano: Is Sappho’s?

[9:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm I'm plot saying.

[9:57] David Rigano: I usually I'm normally the segue person, so I was like, I wasn't prepared.

[10:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly.

[10:06] David Rigano: But we had Carol Lee Campbell and Domnica Radulescu in to talk about Sappho’s's Garden.

[10:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And they brought with them actors.

[10:16] David Rigano: They brought actors and put together an entire piece for us.

[10:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Very similar to like our Doug DeVita nights or whenever we have actors come in.

[10:27] David Rigano: It's just a function.

[10:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's always exciting.

[10:29] David Rigano: Fun experience.

[10:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: One of them I actually knew.

[10:31] David Rigano: I did a show with, uh who was one of the actors in there.

[10:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: She and I did a production of Leaves of Grass.

[10:40] David Rigano: Oh, like a Walt Whitman.

[10:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, Walt Whitman.

[10:44] David Rigano: Speaking of poetry.

[10:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Speaking of poetry, yeah.

[10:46] David Rigano: A retelling in a very theatrical way as a device piece.

[10:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we did that twice, and it was just a very interesting evening.

[10:56] David Rigano: But we got to know each other very well.

[10:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so it was nice to see her come back and be here in the bookshop.

[11:02] David Rigano: All right.

[11:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: All right, let's jump in and hear more about Sappho’s's Garden.

[11:06] Dylan Glick: Woo!

[11:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Please help me in welcoming Carol and Domnica.

[11:20] Carol Lee Campbell: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. And first, thank you, Mark and David. Thanks, uh Drama Bookshop for hosting us. It's a great honor. We are both coming from Virginia, Washington. It's very exciting for us to be here tonight in New York in this incredible space for theater and uh theater books.

[11:41] Domnica Radulescu: So what why now? That's the title of our introduction. So you can read that in the book that you just purchased. But I'm going to say, start by saying that for us women, whether you would like want it or not, we're all Sappho’s's daughters. Because from uh 2600 years ago, she gave voice to female desire to the female experience of being in the world. She was the first, she created the first love poetry. She is the beginning of literary history. And she spoke, she still speaks to us about women's experience of being in the world, of desiring other women or desiring men. She is known to have been bisexual and have had, and a lot has been said about her. Some has become legend. Not everything is necessarily true or evidenced, but because so much of her work, she wrote 10,000 verses, which many of them, of whom many were actually destroyed by the fathers of the church during the Middle Ages, and some lost in the desert.

But we're lucky still to have fragments. So most of her poetry that we have is in fragments. And what has remained is luminous and visceral and extraordinary, and still speaks to us from this arc of history from 2600 years ago. And another theme that is prevalent in her work, in her poems, is also women's connection to nature and to the universe and to the gods and goddesses. So this is why this we have brought this themes together that of female desire and female experience in the world, as well as the love of nature, the love of the universe. Only our play is reversed because it happens in a dystopian universe where we only wish to emulate and to reconnect with Sappho’s's message. Our the creation of our play has its own story.

There is a story to our story about Sappho’s, namely my obsession. I have been haunted by Sappho’s and have been obsessed with her for a long time. And my Sappho’s obsession met Carol's interest and obsession.

[14:01] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah, we're both obsessive people. That's what that's where art comes from, right? You have to be obsessed to create art and theater. Met her obsession with goddess culture, and that was such a synergistic union. She and I have been collaborating for over a decade on numerous theater projects. Ours is uh an intellectual and artistic marriage made in heaven. And so, yes, this sort of sums up very briefly the sources of our play. It happened that in the summer, in the COVID summer of COVID, out of desperation, maybe too much time of our hands, a combination of real concerns with violence against women that is we've seen as very very uh sinisterly correlated with violence against the earth, against nature, against Mother Earth. We received a grant from my university, a collaborative grant, and we literally co-wrote and co-created this play in this extraordinary surge of creativity and love for our Mother Earth as well as concern for what is happening.

[15:06] Carol Lee Campbell: And the result is Sappho’s's Garden. You'll hear several excerpts. Hi, it's such a joy to be with you tonight. So thank you for coming. Our thanks to the Drama Bookshop. This is certainly a dream come true for sure. So I'm just gonna say a couple of words because the eloquence of Domnica need not be overshadowed at all. So I'll just say a few things about the details of tonight's performance. We're just gonna show you excerpts. We're not gonna show you the whole play. And I think you're gonna be able to figure out the storyline as we go. But if you don't ask questions, they're good. Essentially, the other thing you might see tonight is, as Domnica had shared, there's sometimes there's only fragments left.

There's only one poem that's still in its entirety that Sappho’s wrote, which is Ode to Aphrodite. Everything else is in these different stanzas, phrases, fragments, and we've interwoven them into the play. Our different characters in our play will utilize them. And when you see a character doing some variation of a swan dive, that's quoting Sappho’s directly. Pretty cool, right? So let's jump right in, even though I'd love to just keep chatting with you. That's for later. And I'd like to introduce our director and our actors. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce Rachel Tamron. She is our director tonight, ladies and gentlemen. And then I'm going to introduce, welcome Selena Hernandez, she's playing Inez. Welcome Tiasha Ferme, she's playing Claudia. And Stephanie Alvarez is playing Cleus. And finally, can you hear me? Yes. Very good. Effie Sansa is playing our Sappho’s.

[17:17] Carol Lee Campbell: Sappho's Garden. A play in one act by Carol Lee Campbell and Domnica Radulescu. Setting. A wasteland, except for small strands of willow trees. A dystopian, large, wide open area with rubble in the background. A space that shows fire has burned some of the trees and bushes, but hasn't reached the willow trees. Reconstruction is going on. Volunteers are moving about. It can be anywhere in the world. Prologue. I am Sappho’s. I was born into a wealthy family on the island of Lesbos around 615 BC and lived for 60 years. I devoted my life to poetry. I was known as the 10th muse. My family and I were exiled to Sicily because of a conflict with political elites, but even through that, I continued creating. By the end of my life, I composed over 10,000 lines, but only a few fragments are left. My fragments continue to speak to the world as you will see. Although they only breathe, words which I command are immortal.

[18:49] Carol Lee Campbell: Scene one. Treasures in the earth. Inez digs in the ground. Volunteers in the background move in and out of a pop-up canopy that has a table bringing water, bags of seeds, hummus, bone meal, spades, shovels, all elements of garden building. Cleus is digging nearby. Claudia enters and puts on gloves.

[19:12] Claudia: Any dead bodies under there?

[19:15] Inez: Not yet. I'm glad they assigned you to this project.

[19:18] Claudia: Dead bodies? What are you talking about?

[19:23] Inez: One of the teams found a mass grave like two kilometers down the road last year.

[19:28] Claudia: I'm not afraid of the dead. But that's why they had to bring Claudia as part of the agreement. Especially after everything that's happened here. Inez, how long will it take till it's a garden?

[19:42] Inez: My last community plot took about three years to mature. But jeez.

[19:48] Claudia: This was before.

[19:50] Inez: Before what?

[19:55] Claudia: Look at this place. Why would anything want to grow here?

[19:58] Inez: We can't invite doomsday scenarios. This place has more rocks and sand than soil.

[20:04] Claudia: There's more than meets the eye. We just have to be careful. Claudia, how do you know when it's okay to dig?

[20:13] Claudia: It's complicated. They cleared this area for a landmine a year ago, but the world is filled with graves from different periods.

[20:21] Inez: Exactly. There could be bodies from the Greco-Roman age or something?

[20:26] Claudia: Maybe, but also more recent, you know?

[20:30] Inez: From the Yeah, okay. Let's not go there. I can't. Not yet, at least. The question is, can we make food out of this piece of broken earth?

[20:41] Claudia: Even if there were only bones growing here. Bone is an excellent source of nutrients for growing a garden.

[20:48] Inez: See those bags of the sponge meal.

[20:53] Claudia: Yeah, but what about human bones?

[20:57] Inez: The earth is a tomb and a womb, too. Please, for the last time. Please put your phone away.

[21:03] Claudia: Don't worry, I'll share these with you guys. Look, I got a good one at you and Claudia.

[21:09] Inez: Okay. How do you two know each other?

[21:14] Claudia: We grew up in the same neighborhood. And Claudia pretty much saved my family's lives during the war.

[21:21] Inez: Inez exaggerates. I just helped them find a shelter to stay in. What brings an American poet to these parts?

[21:29] Claudia: I am here to plant words. I'm trying to get my act together. Make some money. Y'all got any pot?

[21:43] Inez: So this is part of the America project, then. Inez, these aren't all Americans, are they?

[21:52] Claudia: No. They're from all over. There's also a bunch of kids that are part of a new diplomatic program for international youth.

[22:01] Inez: Yeah. What's that?

[22:04] Claudia: Not sure. Cleus digs for a moment and then finds an old alabaster jug. She starts to polish it off.

[22:10] Cleus: Oh my god. Now. Beginner's luck. Let's not get distracted.

[22:18] Claudia: What, you want me to take put it back?

[22:24] Cleus: It's not gold we need, but good soil and water to grow stuff. To eat, to feed our families, to not starve.

[22:35] Inez: I really think we should take a longer look at this.

[22:40] Claudia: Hermes took up the wine jug and poured it for the gods. Peace reigned in heaven.

[22:48] Inez: Is that a quote of some kind?

[22:50] Claudia: Yes, from the immortal Sappho’s.

[22:53] Inez: The Greek poet?

[22:54] Claudia: The greatest poet ever. Only fragments are left of her massive body of work.

[22:59] Inez: How can you be the greatest poet if only fragments are left? We have the fucking fathers of the Holy Roman Empire and other brilliant contributors of the boys only club of literary Canada. Thank for that.

[23:10] Claudia: Are we all just fragments?

[23:13] Inez: You have a point. I always feel like I'm living in a state of a million broken pieces, always in survival mode. I worry and worry about every little thing, and I try not to think about the bills. Like it'll all just go away. And my kids.

[23:33] Claudia: So I'm here making a few dollars working on this community garden project. I'm not complaining. On the contrary.

[23:46] Inez: I'm like scattered to the four winds every day. But please, Cleus. That jug needs to go through proper channels. It needs the right people to examine it. There might be a crack you don't see that it causes to fall apart. Please.

[24:06] Cleus: Forever. This is right, I know it. I'll have someone come out and catalog it this week. Cleus shrugs, pretends to place the jug back where she finds it, but then puts it in her backpack when the others turn their backs.

[24:25] Inez: Meaning. What if it's containing like the next dead sea scrolls or something?

[24:31] Claudia: That would be wonderful indeed, Madame Poetess. But you can't eat scrolls.

[24:38] Inez: Thanks for the sarcasm, Mrs. Gardiner. Why can't we have both? The art and the food. Shouldn't we do things differently since we are starting from scratch to rebuild this place?

[24:48] Claudia: Of course we want both, but that jug doesn't belong to us. It needs to go to a museum.

[24:55] Inez: Wait, how do you know those bureaucrats won't want to keep it and make a ton of money on it, sell it to the British Museum like everybody else does? Inez and Claudia go back to work near where Cleus found the jug.

[25:09] Inez: Claudia! I found something. Inez puts her hand up in a signal for volunteers to stop digging and working. Everyone stops. Claudia comes over.

[25:20] Claudia: Yeah. It looks like a human bone. Everyone begins to pack up.

[25:26] Carol Lee Campbell: Scene two. The excavation. Two weeks later. People are working the area now as a recent mass grave instead of a food garden. Claudia is standing with the group, talking, unheard, looking at maps. She walks over to Inez and Cleus.

[25:53] Cleus: Maybe we should just pick up hydroponics.

[25:56] Inez: You need plenty of water for that. Cleus, I don't think you should be poking around there.

[26:02] Claudia: You and your safety obsession. Isn't this why we were here? To poke and dig and make some life out of this overly dead piece of earth. They've gotten most everything out, right?

[26:19] Inez: Claudia, how do you not freak out every time you pull out a dead body?

[26:24] Claudia: I'm a professional.

[26:26] Inez: Wow. It's about the work, not about the emotions. I had a dream that we made a beautiful lush grove and there was enough food to feed everybody.

[26:39] Cleus: Let's do a couple quick selfies. But we can't go by dreams. We must go by facts. You have to be able to convince the powers that be that what you're talking about is legit.

[26:51] Claudia: Like the fact that these kind of programs have been proven to work for everyone. To create community, to invest in our children. Cleus is poking around and finds cloth. It is a piece of a dress. She pulls it out of a bunch of broken rock.

[27:07] Cleus: Wow. This place has a lot of little treasures. Look what I found. I just got the pour it on my phone, guys.

[27:15] Claudia: This side may be a mass grave. Don't touch anything else until I get my guys here.

[27:21] Cleus: Oh my god, what is it? It's my what? My sister? My sister. It's her dress.

[27:29] Carol Lee Campbell: Scene three. Song of the bones. A procession of women mourners following the coffins. People throw flowers and touch the coffins as they roll by. Hear the bones speak. Listen to the bones whisper and call. Hear their crackles, their plea for unearthing. Listen to the bones beg for their proper burial. Listen to the bone marrows of our loved ones, beg to be reunited with those they loved. Wash them. Honor them, wrap them in the silks of the ancestors, bury them gently deep down in the belly of the earth, where the seeds quiver, where the ancestors dream, sing them a lullaby, or farewell to find their restful sleep.

[28:29] Carol Lee Campbell: Scene eight. Cleus, at her lodging, pulls the alabaster jug out of her backpack. She opens it, reads an old piece of papyrus that was stuck in it. She settles down to sleep. Suddenly we hear children crying and calling for their mother. The children's cries get louder.

[28:52] Children: Don't go, Mama. Stay stay with us. Why are you leaving us alone? Grace who's gonna take care of us. Stay!

[29:00] Cleus: I'll be back soon, I promise. I have to make money, a lot of money, for a new house, for new toys, for new clothes, for a new car, for a new life. I'll be back before you know it, I promise.

[29:11] Children: You never never keep your promises, Mama. We don't need any money and a new house, and toy, and a new arm. We only need you.

[29:21] Cleus: I am not enough. I am not whole, and I can't provide for you. I am not enough.

[29:28] Children: We don't want any provide. We need you, nothing. We hate provide we hate toys and a new car and a new house, and we hate money. We hate you.

[29:39] Cleus: Sob in her sleep.

[29:41] Cleus: She searches feverishly through her bag until she finds a bottle of pills that she opens and swallows a few. Then she lights a joint and smokes. What was that line? Come now, become my speaking instrument. When Sappho’s comes, there will be rain. There will be water like liquid diamonds, flooding us with life, flooding us with the yearning to be alive. There will be drops of water, gulps of water, gulches, waterfalls, our faces will be covered in silvery fresh water. Our bodies will be bathed in the coolness of the pouring of the flowing, like the first beginning. A fresh, watery beginning, like no other. She will arrive from the fresh waters of humankind, unsullied, bursting from the belly of the earth in fierce spurts, bursting from the cunt of the earth in rainbow-filled transparency, a volcano of beneficent waters like no other. Come to me, mother of all waters. Come to me, mother.

[31:08] Sappho’s Garden: (enters on a pelican, dressed in a silver goddess dress) Is it really you, Sappho’s? Awed by her splendor, stars near the lovely moon cover their own bright faces when she is roundest and lights the earth with her silver. No, really, are you a hallucination? Can you tell me what it says? Valastochoma Mono Tusporus Putelis Nafitrosu. Limoctonist Afedes puscanivalisan. Pour only the seeds into the ground that you want to see grow. Starve the masters who cannibalized you.

[32:26] Cleus: What does that mean? It's a prophecy about one's future. Oh can you tell me is it good or bad? Will my kids be okay? Everything is up in the air. I know this alabaster jack. I have traveled here before. It is a relic of my faith in love. It is a sign that near to me someone who I once loved. But time and tragedy separated us. Twenty-five centuries have passed. She's here in the soil. She speaks to me and to the garden that will grow here. She's bones, but she is my heart. She's the garden made of dew and softness.

[33:18] Sappho’s Garden: I agree. But there is joy too within the grief. Afraid of losing you, I around flattering like a little car.

[33:33] Sappho’s Garden: (gets back on her pelican and flies away in a swirl of colorful clouds)

[33:39] Cleus: (tries to reach for her as if in an attempt to fly, but loses consciousness and falls to the ground)

[33:46] Scene 9.

[33:52] Inez: (enters and stands in line)

[33:55] Claes: (enters and stands in line) Inez, what are you doing here? Looks like same as you, getting a paycheck.

[34:05] Claes: (goes to stand next to Inez and cuts in front of someone) It's not the same without you on the site. You made everything flow. Is there any way that you could come back? Everybody says you're the person who started this project.

[34:22] Inez: My family has been through something really horrible. And even if I had the time or the energy to begin again, I imagine that I'd be reminded of things. Every time I was there.

[34:47] Claes: So much time on their hands, they get to wallow in their pity. Next.

[34:55] Scene 10.

[34:59] Inez: (at the cemetery, kneeling next to Elsa's grave) While she speaks, a blue butterfly flutters by. I remember you in colors. All the pretty colors. You laughed in orange and whispered in blue. All the seasons. Every hue. They found your body not far from here. But you're everywhere. Parts of me will be everywhere too, from now on. But where is home now, Elsa? You, you were my home. You were sunset yellow on the back porch, and green, green grasses that used to grow by the willow. The willow where we played together. Climbing, never falling. I will remember you everywhere.

[36:14] Scene 11.

[36:17] Claes: (at the new plot site for a potential garden, engaging in a conversation unheard while volunteers and Claudia work in the background) I miss Inez.

[36:41] Claudia: Well, if she wants to quit, it's her choice. Stupid men take over everything anyway.

[36:46] Claes: What's gotten into you? It's not your style.

[36:48] Claudia: What do you know about me or my style? Just back off.

[36:52] Claes: Claudia, wait! Just leave me alone. You don't know anything. Those whom I treated well are those who do me the most injury now.

[37:02] Claes: Are you quoting Sappho’s again?

[37:05] Claudia: Things have gotten really complicated.

[37:07] Claes: I'll say. I'm crushing on that new guy, Carl.

[37:11] Claudia: Trust me. Stay away from him. He's bad news. The cute ones always are.

[37:18] Claes: I heard he brought in bulldozers the other day to take out some of the standing trees near the new site where we were launching the dig. That willow, it's not even dead.

[37:25] Claudia: I know exactly what willow you're referring to. How stupid does someone have to be to cut down trees in order to plant a garden?

[37:35] Claes: And a bunch of guys from the project jumped in front of the bulldozer to stop him. This will not end well, I figure.

[37:42] Claudia: No, seriously, if you knew details on this guy.

[37:46] Claes: So what's wrong with him?

[37:47] Claudia: He asked me out yesterday.

[37:49] Claes: It's way worse than what you could imagine.

[37:52] Claudia: I'll never get my kids back if I lose this income.

[37:55] Claes: The times. The past can just be too heavy. Hard to overcome.

[38:01] Claes: What is going on with your kids?

[38:03] Claudia: What? You want to know the gory details that I lost custody of my kids because I used drugs?

[38:11] Claes: Jesus. Are you happy now?

[38:13] Claudia: No. I'm sorry to hear you're going through that.

[38:17] Claudia: (exits)

[38:32] Claes: Claudia, wait up.

[38:34] Claes: I'm sorry, okay? We gotta get Inez back. People are quitting, and there's talk of this whole program shutting down. Please.

[38:41] Scene 12.

[38:43] Claudia: (and Claes go visit Inez) As they approach the house, they see her walking towards them to their surprise. Nice to see you out of the house.

[38:54] Inez: I had a weird dream.

[38:56] Claes: Whatever works. What was it about?

[38:59] Inez: It was a visitor's dream. My sister. Finally. It was so good to see her again. And there was this woman, too. She was beckoning to me. It's like she knew everything about my sister, about us. I woke up with a yearning to come back to be a part of the garden again.

[39:20] Claes: Don't worry. I can come back as a volunteer.

[39:24] Inez: Oh my god. Check out this news.

[39:27] Claes: I hope it's good for a change.

[39:29] Inez: One of the volunteers just filed a report that Carl assaulted her.

[39:34] Claes: Is this enough to get him off the project?

[39:36] Inez: Yes. And if I go and do what I should have done three years ago, damn! I'm so lame.

[39:43] Claes: So are you gonna do what I think you're gonna do?

[39:46] Inez: Oh my god, I get it. I'm so sorry, Claudia.

[39:51] Claes: Don't ever blame yourself for anything. If you mean I will file a report against the bastard, then yes, it's about time.

[40:00] Scene 13.

[40:02] Sappho’s Garden: (and Claes in a candlelit area near the garden at twilight) There's been so much written about you. I've read it all, but some experts say none of it's real. And they've also said the things about you for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

[40:19] Claes: Like what?

[40:20] Sappho’s Garden: Like you jumping off a cliff for the love of a man.

[40:23] Claes: Yes. Men always want to see women kill themselves for the love of them. Show cliché.

[40:31] Sappho’s Garden: What would you die for?

[40:34] Claes: My children. No question about it. There is nothing I wouldn't do for them. Even if it meant letting go.

[40:44] Sappho’s Garden: For a while, for their own well-being until I get myself in better shape. Being a single mother has its advantages. You get to make all the decisions about the kids, but then there is always someone pointing fingers at you and assuming the worst. And then one slip and you lose custody and it's like the end of the world or something.

[41:04] Sappho’s Garden: The truth is that you aren't doing much differently than we were in my day. Given the length of time that has passed, and that science has gotten so far as to fly you across the oceans. Make it possible to talk to each other from across the world through weird little boxes and even see each other on little pictures from one end of the world to another.

[41:27] Claes: And yet, you're still beaten up, raped, and killed by raging males. You're still lagging behind the men in your world. You don't seem to have much leadership power, and worst of all, look at the state of Mother Earth. How she's screaming for help and how she's fighting for breath.

[41:49] Sappho’s Garden: Maybe you should take me back to your time in between your genius and my knowledge of this world together. We can change history.

[41:57] Claes: We were just talking about this earlier. The women in my time are so splintered, pulled in so many directions. We're not whole anymore.

[42:06] Sappho’s Garden: I feel I'm just a fragment of who I'm supposed to be.

[42:11] Claes: Maybe the fragments are part of a greater connection. Maybe fragments are like the phantom limb reminding us to find our belonging to the wide breath of life, to others, to nature.

[42:27] Sappho’s Garden: What is lost in nature is lost in us too. Sometimes we feel it in our bones, in our flesh, like a lost part of ourselves.

[42:37] Claes: I'm sorry to have to tell you this, dear daughter.

[42:57] Sappho’s Garden: Your poetry always spoke so deeply to me. But how am I your daughter, really? Am I your spiritual daughter, or was I the place that you write about in your poems? If this is the case, what will become of me? Will I look back and have memory of anything good?

[43:16] Claes: You will remember for we in our youth did these things. Yes. Many beautiful things.

[43:36] Sappho’s Garden: We know this much. Death is an evil. We have the gods' word for that, too. They will die if death were a good thing. And yet, all is not over after you die. And the same is true when it feels as though you've reached an ending. There's always something on the other side.

[43:59] Claes: You mean like reincarnation or something?

[44:01] Sappho’s Garden: Your spirit has many lifetimes. You can call it as you want.

[44:08] Claes: I recognize you.

[44:12] Sappho’s Garden: (exits) I want to sing the story of when the earth and the sky were one. When longing becomes seeds that sprouted in the dewy soul, when she who danced upon the waves was a joy in human form, and the wind swelled into the black ink of all possibility.

[44:36] ♪ Musical number ♪

[44:55] Cleus: Scene 14.

[44:57] Cleus: Praying for rain.

[44:59] Cleus: Time has elapsed.

[45:01] Cleus, Inez, Claudia, and Sappho’s are standing in a circle next to the garden site under the work tent.

[45:08] Cleus: Sappho is dressed in rags.

[45:10] Cleus: Only I know who Sappho’s is.

[45:20] Cleus: Who's counting? It hasn't rained forever.

[45:21] Inez: Always speaking in hyperbole.

[45:25] Claudia: It's not a hyperbole. It's the truth. When it hasn't rained for 100 days, the earth no longer has the memory of rain. To her, it hasn't rained for forever. It's a forever drought. And her children dry up too, and her womb is nothing but a hollow tomb.

[45:44] Sappho’s Garden: What are you?

[45:45] Cleus: The spokesperson of the earth.

[45:48] Inez: You could say that. She is my mother.

[45:52] Claudia: No, that's a hyperbole.

[45:54] Cleus: A hyperbole in a gondola. We are all each other's mothers, sisters, lovers.

[46:02] Inez: You're funny. You're not from around here, are you?

[46:03] Cleus: Are you?

[46:09] Inez: She's from nearby. Not too far, of course, distance is relative.

[46:14] Claudia: I knew it then, and here is the proof. War ravaged land, dried up the earth, cities crumbling, bodies devastated, disjointed, out of balance, and the women are still at strife with each other over crumbs.

[46:31] Cleus: You're right. This place is filled with the bones of our relatives and the blood and wound above all places.

[46:41] Inez: But to me, it's hollowed ground. You want to find water? See that wallow tree over there? It's water loving.

[46:51] Sappho’s Garden: (transforms herself from the modest-looking woman in rags, and she appears in the full magnificence of her person, dressed in her goddess silvery dress) Now you know.

[47:11] Claudia: Odd in her splendor.

[47:13] Cleus: Scene 15. Between the worlds.

[47:17] Inez: The next day, Claius and Claudia observe a bulldozer revving up and moving to crush semi-green growth underfoot in preparation for a raised area, including the willow tree.

[47:28] Inez: (stands between the willow tree and the bulldozer, putting her hand up) The bulldozer stops.

[47:36] Inez: (talks to the driver who drives out of sight) Inez ties a rope to cordon off the willow grove with a sign. Protected area.

[47:49] Cleus: Scene 16. Invoking the goddess and the phantom Lynn.

[47:54] Inez: Nighttime. Inez, Cleus, and Claudia are standing in a circle in the moonlight around the willow tree near the garden site. Dreamlike atmosphere. Sappho leads a goddess circle invoking Aphrodite.

[48:18] Sappho’s Garden: We ask for your permission to begin our garden. We seek a place to begin a relationship with you. We seek water and a place to grow things, to help ourselves. A covenant of care.

[48:56] Inez: Somebody had scooped out a lung or a piece of my heart. I can't explain it. An aching emptiness that hurts like hell. The memory of my father enveloped me. The thought that he had been an ornithologist who loved birds more than anything else in this world.

[49:18] Inez: How he cried every time a new species became extinct. The names of birds became holograms of the disappeared birds. Perfectly real and equally unreal, intangible. The names of birds became holograms.

[49:37] Inez: The laughing owl. A Liverpool pigeon. I remember everything about each of them. How they fed their babies, how they called their mates, how they made their nests, their calls, their fight, their journeys.

[50:02] Inez: Did they change countries with the season? Did they stay put in one place? Were they monogamous or did they have multiple mates? I remember their plumage, their dazzling colors, their modest grays.

[50:27] Inez: I wanted to tear it out of my chest. I wanted to stab myself to death to put an end to this pain. The birds howled in my solar plexus.

[50:45] Inez: Then suddenly, in the place of the bird's holograms, I grew wings, and the pain disappeared. A soothing flutter swished over the entirety of me. I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to caress the bones of the dead.

[51:12] Inez: Call them by their names, then wrap them up in soothing cloth for all eternity. The name, each and every one of them by their names, then put them to rest, then plant seeds and trees over them, so the new birds can make their nests and fly away and eat the bugs that feed on the new leaves.

[51:37] Inez: Then something flew through me. And I could breathe again. It's exactly like that Sappho’s poetess said. When something dies in nature, we feel it in our bones.

[51:55] Cleus: So what's the solution? Build back what is lost. Be creative. Be cunning. Nature loves a good witch. I know what I must do. Plant the trees and the flowers that attract the birds and the insects we are losing. Create a garden for all creatures, a house for singing birds and pollinating insects.

[52:19] Inez: The pain in my limbs is already going away in the thought. Thanks, Dad. Forever in my heart you will be. Laughing owl.

[52:33] Cleus: Scene 17. Sappho's lover.

[52:37] Sappho’s Garden: (sings to the jug) She conjures up her lover, pale, ghost-like. They share one embrace. Sappho cries and sings to her beloved.

[52:49] Sappho’s Garden: Stay a while, my love. I've yearned for you for two and a half millennia. And now that I found you, I will never let you go. I will hold you for the next two and a half millennia.

[53:06] Sappho’s Garden: I remember perfectly when I last saw you. It was a morning like no other shimmering in the golden light of dawn. And after, died appeared to me in her luminous glory as I walked toward you.

[53:24] Sappho’s Garden: You stood in front of the gate of your door, and I saw you waiting for me, or so I thought you were waiting for me. Then your father appeared and pulled you inside the house with rage.

[53:42] Sappho’s Garden: I had forgotten it was the day he was marrying you to an old man. We were going to run away together. We were going to live on Lesbos with the other women. A dream of happiness.

[54:25] Sappho’s Garden: On the seventh day, I wore my golden sandals, my white frock dress, I put a garland of freshly picked yellow and magenta flowers on my head and picked up my lyre. Claius was still sleeping in her cradle next to me.

[54:46] Sappho’s Garden: I sang to you, and I promised I will make you live through the ages. Stay. (Sappho embraces the ghost of the lover) The ghost fades in her arms. A light remains in place of the lover's ghost and is absorbed into Sappho’s's heart.

[55:10] Sappho’s Garden: When they were tired, night rained her thick dark sleep upon their eyes. The God bless you. May you sleep then on some tender girlfriend's breast. Goodbye, my fairest friend.

[55:30] Cleus: Scene 26. Claius, Inez, and Claudia reunite.

[55:41] Inez: I'm happy to see you. You've been hard at work gathering evidence about the war and never sharing anything with me.

[55:55] Claudia: You didn't think I could handle it. There's a lot of documents I couldn't share, and let's be frank, you've been through enough. It was work I needed to follow on my own.

[56:06] Inez: I will bring my children here.

[56:10] Claudia: Why not? They could be part of this endeavor. Even your little one.

[56:15] Inez: What is she? Three?

[56:17] Claudia: It's what I did. My family benefited from my desire to grow food. My kids and I make me think bringing my kids here makes me think of a game I played when I was little.

[56:31] Inez: It's called dousing. Have you ever heard of it?

[56:35] Claudia: I've heard of it, but never done it. I know a scientist who swears by it. You take two willow sticks, and supposedly the negative ions in the water make the two sticks move to point to each other.

[56:46] Inez: Yes. Where the rock is disrupted, water should come out. There certainly has been enough disruption here.

[56:54] Cleus: (Claus and Inez wander during bright daylight around near willow trees) They wander and end up exactly in the same spot. Wipe your tears and look to the future.

[57:05] Inez: Elsa, we live again in the garden you are growing. In the children you saved, just now, the golden sun of dawn. There will be another dawn. A golden dawn for us, women gardeners, mothers, sisters, lovers, friends.

[57:24] Cleus: Here. Scene 27. When Sappho’s comes, there will be water.

[57:32] Inez: Water gushes from where they are standing. Shouts of gladness from the whole group ensue. The women run through the water, leaping, dancing, singing.

[57:42] Sappho’s Garden: Suddenly, the vision of the lush vegetation of a garden appears. Sappho stands with them.

[57:51] Sappho’s Garden: Love blaze up my breast. Red tomatoes emerge. As a whirlwind swoops on an oak, love shakes my heart.

[58:02] Sappho’s Garden: Marigolds of all colors spring up. Come to us, gentle gaiety, revelry, radiance. First, the sound of bees, and then flocks of birds appear.

[58:17] Sappho’s Garden: When the earth is bright with flaming heat falling straight down, the cricket sets up a high-pitched singing in his wings. Crickets enter, chirp. Butterflies of all colors enter, fluttering around.

[58:32] Sappho’s Garden: Women continue birthing their vision upon the garden that will grow. When Sappho’s comes, there will be water. Sappho envelops the women in light.

[58:43] Sappho’s Garden: You may forget, but let me tell you this. Someone in some future time will think of us. Think of us. Think of us.

[58:56] Cleus: End of play.

[59:15] Inez: Take a nap.

[59:34] Domnica Radulescu: So you can take these. We're just gonna move these out of the way. We're gonna cut all of the scene change stuff out of the podcast. So thank you very much to our amazing actors. And let's have our authors come join us. But the actors too.

[59:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Cast if you want to come out and disperse around. What would it be? I know you guys want to ask how like they got into character and all that fun stuff. So we have a few, yeah. If you want to find some seats, we have some a couple of seats over here as well. So at this point, we have a few more minutes left, and we open it up to all assembled if you have any questions about this play, the history of this play for our authors.

[1:00:34] Audience Member: How do you decide which fragments to use?

[1:00:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So the question was, how did you decide which fragments from the Sappho’s poetry to use in the play?

[1:00:45] Carol Lee Campbell: So we have we borrowed some from some different sources, including Paige Dubois. There's several different translations of Sappho’s's work, and we certainly cherry-picked, but we fell in love with some of the stanzas and some of the pieces, and we made them fit. And then other times we're writing the story, and it was the other way; we'd be like, oh, and then we would discover something that just was seamless how it fit with something she said with something that was going on with the story.

[1:01:10] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah, so exactly. As we delved through Sappho’s's poetry and we're building our play, what interests us most in Sappho’s's verses were the ones that spoke to female love, female desire, as well as love of nature. And then in a way, Sappho’s's poetry and our own ideas and our characters fed off of each other, and then it all grew like a tree.

[1:01:39] Carol Lee Campbell: With deep roots.

[1:01:40] Domnica Radulescu: Did you search through a lot of different translations as you were doing that research?

[1:01:47] Carol Lee Campbell: Maybe a few translations, two or three, yeah. We also read a lot. This was a very complex and complicated project because we also did a lot of research and scholarship.

[1:01:58] Domnica Radulescu: So you have all of that in your introduction about the play to really excavate Sappho’s's connection to us as well as to the earth, and our response as women of the 21st century to her work, and really we kept being time and again, we kept being so blown away by how relevant she still is.

[1:02:32] Carol Lee Campbell: I teach Sappho’s almost every year in a world literature class, and I never get tired of her poems. And it's very interesting because the preface to our work was written by Sarah Werner, who teaches at Cornell. She's a feminist scholar, and in her preface, she says that Sappho’s is now very attractive; she's being rediscovered by Gen Z. And there are a lot of there's a lot of art in various genres that takes inspiration and a lot of new creations inspired by her.

[1:03:08] Domnica Radulescu: I'm gonna jump in there with that because it's interesting to see how when you look through history, there's so much of what Sappho’s's work was actually found, was found as a reference or a footnote by other male writers, and they would give a nod to her about something about her prose or something. And there's a lot of reductive reflection on her, thinking because she must have been privileged and she was so all she did was talk about the flowers all day, which is really BS.

[1:03:36] Carol Lee Campbell: It really is when you start to really sink into the marrow of her work, you really get to see this amazing connection between this relationship she had with nature and everything having to do with just that exploration of joy and desire, like we've been talking about. And her poetry is just it's just we're able to just dance around the edges a little bit about what really it must have been.

[1:04:00] Domnica Radulescu: Yes, there is so much joy, and it's wonderful for us living in this sometimes terrifying world to find this oasis of joy in an interview that Carol and I did recently about the play. I said that she is like reading her as drinking cool crystalline water in the middle of a scorching desert.

[1:04:19] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah. This is why we wanted to give a very uplifting, life-affirming ending to the play to really show destruction and show possibilities for reinvention, recreation for creating new worlds and new possibilities for being in the world.

[1:04:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Any other questions?

[1:04:39] Audience Member: Can you please talk more about your creative collaboration? What was what together created more than you could have done on your own?

[1:04:49] Domnica Radulescu: The question is: can you talk a little bit about your creative collaboration and what did each of you bring to each other that was more than you could have done individually on your own?

[1:04:59] Carol Lee Campbell: Oh, that's so good. Before I just said it, ours has been an ideal artistic and intellectual collaboration.

[1:05:10] Domnica Radulescu: I go with that.

[1:05:11] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah. I guess that but yeah, we've been collaborating for so long, and it just grew so organically. We did. We so both because we're both feminist scholars, we teach humanities, we teach about human rights, et cetera, et cetera. We're very like crazy feminist scholar people.

[1:05:28] Domnica Radulescu: And what there's really there's an interesting divide when you look at cultural feminism versus intersectional feminism. And I'll just in a nutshell, what that is is looking at there's a lot of critique going on that's been going on for the last however many years, since maybe third wave feminism that really talks about how you gotta be careful with this proto-feminist stuff of goddess culture because it can be very limiting, reductive, and it can also demonstrate like you're just linking it to women and nature, essentializing essentially.

[1:05:55] Carol Lee Campbell: But and so, of course, when I went back to graduate school, and that's what I found, I didn't really find goddessology. I really found a lot in terms of criticism of goddess culture a lot of it. But there's also an interesting and interdisciplinary approach by looking at linguistics, narratology, folklore, history, as well as feminist studies. I think there's continually new eyes.

[1:06:18] Domnica Radulescu: And so when Domnica and I met, we both got it. So I didn't really lock into it with some of my closest friends and colleagues, but when she and I met, and we started working together, we started talking about goddess and how you can't ignore some of the truth that might have equaled female leadership 4,000 years ago. There is data there.

[1:06:39] Carol Lee Campbell: There's an associate, maybe it's a spiritual leadership, maybe whatever, but our conversations began to really take root around all of this discussion of what did ancient history really look like for women? And we found power there. And that's what we built on, but that we didn't necessarily find with other colleagues, et cetera.

[1:06:58] Domnica Radulescu: And we went all the way back actually, way before Sappho’s, because we have both been doing research in this area. For instance, the discoveries of Maria Gimbutas in the 70s, who discovered this extraordinary Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures that were goddess and mother worship culture, where the male and female principles were working in beautiful balance and equilibrium and which is very controversial, by the way.

[1:07:21] Carol Lee Campbell: Maria Gimbutas is very controversial.

[1:07:23] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah, she is.

[1:07:23] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah, but at the same time, they've now circled back and found that some of her theories have actually proven to be true. Like where they found—never mind, we can go into that.

[1:07:35] Domnica Radulescu: That is definitely a rabbit hole.

[1:07:36] Carol Lee Campbell: I'll go down with you anytime.

[1:07:38] Domnica Radulescu: So then at what point, once you two had met, did you decide to take the strengths that you had in the shared perspective and turn it into theater?

[1:07:52] Carol Lee Campbell: We both are theater women. We've been writing plays, and we've been directing, we've been engaged with engaging with theater in all of its forms as playwrights, as directors, as actors, as teachers of theater, as scholars of theater. So really very multidimensional engagement with theater.

[1:08:13] Domnica Radulescu: And it felt like just the most natural thing to just dramatize it.

[1:08:18] Carol Lee Campbell: Can I just jump in? So I it was really funny because I remember it was like June of 2021 or 2022.

[1:08:23] Domnica Radulescu: No, I don't want.

[1:08:24] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah. And then but you were like, no, really, we're gonna I want to send in this application for a summer grant. Let's come up with some ideas. And we just started throwing out there, and you threw it and you put this whole proposal together and we went to it.

[1:08:36] Domnica Radulescu: Because I was having visions of Sappho’s; she was visiting me, and I was talking to her on my daily walks through Lexington. What else are you gonna do for COVID?

[1:08:44] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah, and then so we wrote the play. We wrote the initial draft of the play in one week during this residency, and then we started. And then over the next year we just kept rewriting and developing the introduction and everything.

[1:08:56] Domnica Radulescu: And the introduction, because the introduction actually took quite a bit to write.

[1:09:00] Carol Lee Campbell: It's more scholarly.

[1:09:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think we have time for about one more if someone has, but you'll have a little bit of time with the authors in the back.

[1:09:10] Audience Member: What was the inspiration behind the three characters that are in the play?

[1:09:14] Carol Lee Campbell: Oh, so the question is what was the inspiration behind these three characters because of how different they feel.

[1:09:21] Domnica Radulescu: Okay, so I guess there's a little bit of each of us in all of them. The part about the earth, the dystopian landscape universe that is the site of a genocide with mass graves. I guess that comes a lot from my own experience with research that I have done and with my other obsession that is not Sappho’s, that is a genocide. And I had actually visited genocidal sites for my—I'm also a novelist—for one of my novels in Bosnia and Serbia. And that was life-changing and a very dark journey. Visiting the devastated earth and the tombs, and I'm an heir of my parents. I'm Romanian, so I grew up in the stories of war, of World War II, of the Holocaust, of Soviet invasion, all of this. These themes and realities, very dark of our times that keep repeating themselves, were very present in me.

[1:10:21] Carol Lee Campbell: I’m also a successful gardener.

[1:10:25] Domnica Radulescu: No, I would say, but I haven't okay. Well, what I wanted to see was just this real distinction between the characters. So with Inez as the gardener, I saw Earth and Earth Mother. These are just different manifestations. Claudia was the scientist, and Claudia's character was actually based on an artist friend of Domnica's who had done some amazing work with survivors or with disappeared people from Argentina; she's Argentinian, and we went and so her exhibit actually—her name is Claudia. So it's the exhibit in Stanton here, Lexington was all inspired by genocidal events and particularly by her having worked with femicide in all.

[1:11:05] Carol Lee Campbell: Yes. And what really touched us a lot is that when she does her paintings in blue, she has to wear hazmat because she paints with very toxic paint.

[1:11:19] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah, so it's like she's honoring the dead by putting herself in danger and risking and pretty well.

[1:11:27] Carol Lee Campbell: Yeah, that was like a usual exhibit. So it seemed it was like body, mind, and then Cleus that was his heart and emotion and passion, right? As the poet. And Domnica really pushed for Cleus to be a character as Sappho’s's daughter, and I really pushed for Cleus to be more messed up and amusing.

[1:11:47] Domnica Radulescu: And this is what gets her more into trouble as she goes through her arc kind of thing.

[1:11:51] Carol Lee Campbell: So those are—and I'd say you achieved both. You found the balance.

[1:11:57] Domnica Radulescu: Thank you.

[1:11:58] Carol Lee Campbell: That's good question. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here and for your questions. Thank you to this wonderful cast for presenting the excerpt of the work. Can we get a bow?

[1:12:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Come on, let's get a bow.

[1:12:09] Domnica Radulescu: Get a bow. Come on, come on, go a bow.

[1:12:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we are back.

[1:12:13] Domnica Radulescu: I love a good production.

[1:12:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Again, I love when this is to all future guests.

[1:12:20] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah.

[1:12:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's fun when you bring something new and bring a different experience than just we're just gonna sit and talk. I love a sit and talk about books, don't get me wrong.

[1:12:27] Carol Lee Campbell: Oh, yeah.

[1:12:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But when you come in with actors or especially sort of singers, yeah. If we can see or hear a piece of it, show us that theatricality.

[1:12:36] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah, the audience loves it as we do.

[1:12:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It translates well. It's just a—and you know that people can't wait to go home and pick up where you left off.

[1:12:46] Domnica Radulescu: Exactly, exactly.

[1:12:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's an incredible night at the theater of the bookshop.

[1:12:51] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah.

[1:12:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Loved it. But we're gonna go from gardening to robots.

[1:12:57] Domnica Radulescu: Yeah.

[1:12:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh with our next slide.

[1:13:00] Domnica Radulescu: I thought I thought we were—no, yes, I it is both events.

[1:13:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, but our next episode is 43 stages of grieving a comedy.

[1:13:07] Domnica Radulescu: Oh grieving a comedy.

[1:13:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I knew that a lot.

[1:13:11] Domnica Radulescu: When there aren't as many jokes, so shouldn't we?

[1:13:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so we'll delve into the story, the robots, all of the grief, the grief.

[1:13:20] Domnica Radulescu: But I'm also excited because it's another production.

[1:13:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[1:13:23] Domnica Radulescu: Another author who brought in some actors and performed a bit of the show so you can enjoy it.

[1:13:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[1:13:30] Domnica Radulescu: So excited. Something to look forward to.

[1:13:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show podcasts. Please subscribe to the Drama bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can see when we add new in-person events to our calendar. Remember, all the books we talk about can be found here at the bookshop. And so can we and we will see you at the bookshop?