SCENE 2/10: Morning Star

SCENE 2: Morning Star

EXT. FOREST – DAWN

(The lights fade to black and a flame from a match lighting a candle appears. When the lights quickly return, a man dressed in black holding the candle suddenly appears.)

NARRATOR
Who are you?

ONE
(Pointing)
If she is Zero, then I am One.

NARRATOR
OK, that’s great I say, very much at ease by the archetypes I’m suddenly aware are helping me to understand my teenage life.

ONE
(ONE blows out the candle and crouches down on the ground motioning to do the same.)

NARRIATOR
What are we looking at?

ONE
You tell me?

NARRATOR
A crack in the ground?

ONE
Magic is derived not by what is there but what you perceive is there?

NARRATOR
Same with reality and miracles are anything that fall outside what we perceive to be normal reality.

(One holds something under my nose and I start to sneeze repeatedly. The lights flash on and off with each sneeze. With a flourish of his hands the trees and the forest disappear and so does One.)

Ruth Anne Wood © 1990-2008 “Circle of Self” Stage Play

SCENE 1/10: DAWN

SCENE 1: DAWN

EXT. FOREST – DAWN

The forest is buzzing with song. Images of society are projected on this giant, gently swaying cocoon.

(There is a man that pulls a curtain of dawn across the sky as light peers through the water droplets past the lit trees.)

NARRATOR
In the center of the forest there are three pairs of trees. Couple One stands before me. You have your feet rooted in the center with your trunks growing in a V.

COUPLE ONE
(Walks on stage and plants feet touching each other in the center with arms straight out holding each other you lean back into a V.)

NARRATOR
Couple Two, you have sprouted a distance from each other. Over time you lean in sharing each other’s sun light forming an A shape.

COUPLE TWO
(Walks on stage and stand arm width apart facing each other. Soon you lean into each other’s space in shape of an A and both need the support of each other to remain standing.)

The third couple of trees stand straight and upright with your feet firmly planted in the earth. You take turns growing simultaneously back and forth as your love radiates to each other and through out the forest. You take turns growing, moving with the seasons arm width apart standing upright facing each other.

COUPLE THREE
(Comes and stands with your feet firmly planted in the center, arm with apart and you beam your love and sway into each other’s space full centered and able to move and grow with the seasons.)

BUTTERFLY
(A beautiful, innocent butterfly emerges from the cocoon; breaking free of the finite projections of reality projected on the outside of what’s no longer her cocoon and flutters to each of the trees in the forest center and then out of sight.)
(Be here now Ram Dass)

NARRATOR
Off to the corner of the forest canopy, an artist who sets up an easel, starts painting the brilliant colors of the forest. Throughout this story you see her creating one amazing picture on top of the next, never starting over. How come she never signs her name, takes credit for her creations or ends her paintings and starts a new? Where is the ego that takes credit for her creation? Who is she? Is she the archetypal fool who walks upside-down on her hands and carries the seeds of the universe in her satchel, I wonder?

Earlier in the day I see the artist painting rich multicolor whites and thick blues from a pastel crayon called Craypas. When I return to this spot from my walk there are flames covering up the blue Crapas sky and another phoenix that brings healing to her three year old daughter’s murder rises from the ashes!

ZERO
Then one day out of the blue the artist turns to me in my visit to the center of woods and says, if I ever needed a name I know what it would be?

NARRATOR
Trying to appear cool, calm and collected, Yes, I say at the edge of my seat? What is your name?

ZERO
My name is Zero. By myself I am nothing. Yet, when I stand behind something I am empowering.

NARRATOR
Wow! I am blown away as I remember the Mother Peace Cards I am gifted during my five day spirit journey, camping in my friend’s back yard as a teenager. The Tarot card “Fool” has the number zero below it!

Zero, I ask boldly. Can you do a hand stand, the question leaps from my mouth?

ZERO
When I was in high school, I won contest for standing and walking on my hands the longest.

(FADE OUT)

Ruth Anne Wood © 1990-2008 “Circle of Self” Stage Play

Is my cup really made from plants or plastic plants?

Yesterday at my local pizza joint I was impressed on two accounts. First by the sign near the cash register that talked about their “Gastronomical Stimulus Package”. Since the exorbent price of cheese and flour went down slightly the owners of Jules This Crust Pizza passed the savings to their customers.

The second cool announcement at dinner was printed on the side of my complimentary water cup. A company that makes Eco-Friendly Packaging claims that my cup which I kept is made from plants instead of plastics. When I saw their URL I imagined what I’d say if we continued to use environmentally toxic products that take thousands of years to breakdown rather than a couple decades.

The good news is there are more and more heart centered entrepreneurs near by that are what my friend Beth Meininger calls a Cultural Creative. Susie Beiler is another one that comes to mind and I am very inspired by the Healing Sanctuary and Retreat Center you are in the mist of creating! Here’s a million and one hugs which with the right exchange rate will translate into more than enough capital to buy your green property!

The View

MEREDITH: Our next guest went on a quest to find an “Enlightened Comic” while doing research for the opening scene in her future film “Five Rites”, a story about a dying 80 year old woman who discovers “the Fountain of Youth” doing the “five rites” yoga everyday. Her research hit an existential wall when she tried to locate an “Enlightened Comic”, someone who she notes derive jokes from funny observations on personal feelings and experiences rather than judgments or criticism of self or others. We’ll discover what she learned from her comedy research and how activities such as yoga inspire full length comedy, adventures. Please welcome, “Visionary Writer” Ruth Anne Wood.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success
Written for Meredith Vieira on The View

Have you read what Dorthy Hamill said about the blind figure skater in You Can’t Get It ‘Cause You’ve Already Got It!

The Un-enlightened Comic

When Do You Know It’s To Throw Out Your Jack-O-Lantern?
When the face starts looking like Robert Redford before Botox.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success
Written for Jay Leno

Heart Centered Comedy

At lunch on Sunday, I had the opportunity to gather evidence to support my claim that there is such a thing as an enlightened comedian. I believe my friend Kalie Marino gave me the complimentary insights I had been cogitating last week. I’ll give her an opportunity to comment. The gist of what I heard her say was that an enlightened comedian focuses on personal feelings and experiences rather than judgments and complaints. She also reminded me, anyone seeking personal truth turn to the simplest message or answer. That’s usually the most powerful and heart centered. That’s what love about capturing inspiring moments from my day when I’m living in what The Course of Miracles calls “The Holy Instant” or what I call the comical, Ah ha! Oh and when I told Kalie I was on a quest to find and enlightened comic she immediately thought of Jimmy Tingle. Please send me more comics to add to my enlightened comedian research, which all started a couple of weeks ago when I was writing the opening scene to my screen play “Five Rites”.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success

Infirmary or Affirmary?

The year I graduated high school I worked at a holistic summer camp for adults for two and a half months , called Omega Institute up in Rhinebeck, NY where they had daily yoga, meditation, organic gourmet food and renowned speakers on mind, body and spirit come and teach. For two and half months I slept in a tent in the woods staked on a soft bail of hay. I was a float so I had the experience of working in the café, house keeping, and production. That year there had been a large population of lime ticks. One day I noticed a strange black spot surrounded by a red circle on my arm and choose to get medical attention to make sure I was O.K. When I got there, I told a staff member about the spot on my arm.

Across the room they said. “Oh, you’re O.K. Everything is just fine.”

“Great, I said, do you want to look at it closer?”

“Oh,” she said, “you may want to go to the Infirmary. This is the Affirmary, where we affirm your well being.”

The good news is when I finally did get to the Infirmary, they gave me pretty much the same answer.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success
Story Written for Oprah

MONOLOGUE: Warner Bros

ELLEN: Tonight one of my friends is going on a blind date with the best friend of a guy she dated a couple times over the last three years.

I told her, “Hey, that’s a good endorsement if he’s fixing you up with his best friend.”

That’s when Chris said (Beat.) Chris my girl friend not the guy she’s going on a blind date with. Chris, Chris. Oh that’s funny.

Anyway. My friend Chris, she told me the blind date and the guy she previously went out with both have tattoos on their left shoulder. One has the Road Runner and the other guy has The Tasmanian Devil.

That’s when I jokingly said. This is confuning from now on I’ll just call them them the Warner Bros.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success
Written for ellen the ellen degeneres show

What is an Enlightened Comic?

Today, I’ve begun my quest to find/ be/ friend an Enlightened Comic. At one time or another we have all been one. Babies and children are perfect examples of “enlightened comics”. So ares lovers who have only starry eyed devotion, valuing every uplifting and awe inspiring thing their companions says or does. Their mere existence is love, play, comedy as they discover fresh aspects of their new world through a deep connection with another magnificent human being.

For a week I’ve been excavating and documenting comical observations in my computer, which I’ve collected since I meet my husband on (no joke) April 1, 2004. When ever I’m privy to something humorous, awe inspiring that we said or observed it goes into jokes2.doc. I now post these insights/ observations recorded in the form of a joke, skit, story or dialog.

It got me thinking, what are the tenants of an “Enlightened Comic” and how do you know when you find one? I made the suggestion that the Dalai Lama becomes a regular guest on Late Night talk shows. He could branch out from lectures on peace and compassion and consider being billed as “The Enlightened Comic” providing a powerful focal point for his audience before we drift into a deep mediation.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success

Day 1: Quest for the Enlightened Comic

JAY LENO: My next guest went in search for an Enlightened Comic, you know someone who doesn’t peeper their jokes with judgments or complaints- (Beat.) I know. I know, and instead focuses on personal feelings and experiences, perhaps a Seinfeld without the sarcasm. She first did a Google search for jokes by the Dalai Lamai, and couldn’t find any.

Here’s my suggestion. In addition to giving lectures on promoting peace through compassion, why not bill His Holiness as the Enlightened Comic. Unsuspecting fans would tune into Late Night to get a blast of spiritually uplifting humor before drifting off to deep meditation.

So who will host His Holiness as the Enlightened Comic first? Should it be me, Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brian, Jon Stewart, Craig Ferguson, Stephen Colbert or my next guest who has been dubbed as “The Writer of Our Lives” and has written a book with a blind figure skater. Please welcome the very talented young lady, Ruth Anne Wood.

© 2008 Ruth Anne Wood, Scripting For Success
Written for Jay Leno