PDF of full script

Welcome:
Data screen video shows performer in SCIENTIST PERSONA welcoming the audience into the space.

Data screen voice-over.
Welcome to BioHome™! In a few moments ladies and gentleman, you and your families will be able to enter the model biotech home and see the range of rooms and products that are on display for you today. We have a fully appointed kitchen, nursery, lounge room and bedroom, even a miniature biotechnology display home. Today you will experience the latest in biotech science as it meets the everyday technologies of your home! Explore the products on offer and make up you own minds! Feel free to experience Chromoknit™ technology!

We think you’ll agree that some of our products promise an amazing future for you and your children, but there are some traditional comforts as well! Take time to relax, interact and try things out, it’s yours to explore. Please enter and enjoy BioHome™!

SCIENTIST PERSONA and assistant appear outside the space bringing the audience in. They encourage audience to enter the space.

Assistant hands out lab coats and gloves.

Scientist/play persona
You will need to prepare for full laboratory safety, as we will be dealing with biotech-products. We treat every product as hazardous until we have a working knowledge of the product.

I’d like you all to wear these lab coats and put gloves on in preparation for PC1 lab procedures.

Once inside, the audience will be allowed to wander through the installation and hear a full lab protocol over the speakers.

As the audience walks through the installation, an Introduction to the General Rules of Safe Laboratory Conduct is played:

Scientist Persona/Safety Voice-over
Safety in laboratories is an individual and personal responsibility. A casual attitude should never be adopted. Always be conscious of potential hazards.

Clothing suitable to laboratory conditions must be worn; e.g. closed shoes with non-slip soles, laboratory coats, etc. Thongs must not be worn. Gloves must be worn when handling corrosive chemicals. If you are wearing gloves, remove them before you leave, if you have a hazardous chemical on your glove and turn the door handle, it may be passed on to someone else.

Never run in the laboratory or along corridors in a laboratory area.

Persons working in a laboratory should make themselves aware of the positioning of fire and safety equipment within the room.

Fire escape routes must be kept clear at all times.

Washing facilities are available in laboratories and should be utilized after any laboratory operation.

NEVER allow toxic materials to get into the mouth or touch the lips
NEVER pipette substances by mouth
NEVER sniff at possibly toxic substances (white powder in laboratories can be dangerous!) -
NEVER store flammable solvents in a domestic refrigerator
NEVER work alone

Chemicals: Regard all substances as hazardous.
We are dealing with possible mutagens.

Always work with the smallest possible amounts of chemicals.

At some stage the assistant and performer introduce audience to the kitchen area, and some specific safety instructions. The kitchen unit will have a small set of seedlings on the bench top, as well as some kitchen containers and a centrifuge.

Scientist persona
This is the biotech kitchen area. You can see we’re dealing with plant materials here, nothing too scary at first! Today we will be extracting DNA from these seedlings in a simple technique, which you will be able to do at home!

Scientist Persona prepares to put her own gloves and coat on, and tie up hair in preparation for the experiment. She does this in a performative/showy style.

One important aspect of lab preparation is grooming. The aim is to introduce as few contaminants as possible. We need to wear our hair up, and some skin cream to make sure our skin is not flaking. Sometimes the thing most likely to cause contamination is ourselves!

Show rubbish bin with biohazard safety marker.

Biohazard bags are used to destroy any genetically modified organisms, which could contaminate other activities in the laboratory.

These are put in autoclaves- a giant oven, which heats things to a temperature that will destroy possible hazardous materials. We need to protect outside organisms as well, if aphids enter a biotech house or lab, they could take possible mutagens outside. GM material can escape.

Indicate some screen/video images here: Some slide/powerpoint display of laboratory features- eye baths, dump showers, autoclave/biohazard bag etc.

If you are effected by a chemical spillage, Dump showers can deposit the equivalent of 20 litres of water in 2 minutes. Eye baths can wash toxic chemicals or contaminants that have spilt or sprayed into your eyes- your partner in a team may have to lead you to the eye bath, even though they may be the person who accidentally sprayed acid in your eyes!

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE.
Scientist Persona introduces DNA isolation from plants. Choose two participants to take part in experiment, with help from assistant.

Live video of the experiment is put up on screen. (Assistant to hold handycam?)

Scientist persona
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material of an organism. These very long double stranded molecules contain many genes. DNA has been called the “building blocks of life”. Everything contains DNA - moss, honey, humans, herrings.

Once isolated and purified the DNA can be used for further research such as cloning of plants and animals.

Scientist Persona takes the audience through the following procedure.

1. Take about 0.5 g leaf material. Weigh this on a scale that has been zeroed.

2. Cut the leaves into smaller pieces and place them into a mortar. Add 2000P1 (2 ml) of extraction buffer, and grind with a pestle thoroughly to disrupt the cells and release the DNA.

Scientist Persona Commentary
It’s important to use young leaves, very fresh. Even if they’re cut for a few hours the DNA starts to break down. Young leaves from peas, nasturtium, tomatoes; the fresh vegetables from market where the vegetables are still alive, carrots in bunches or anything with the leaves still on.

It needs to be very fresh, just the tips, the bits that are growing. Once a leaf has grown to full size, or a plant is old, it has stopped growing. The cells won’t be splitting; there won’t be much DNA.

3. Transfer the plant tissue and buffer to a 1.5 ml micro tube. -

4. Centrifuge the tube for 5 min at high speed in a micro-centrifuge to sediment debris. The debris contains cell wall material and will pellet at the bottom of the micro tube. The DNA stays in the liquid above which is called the supernatant.

Scientist Persona Commentary (During 5 minutes of centrifuging):
You can do this at home too- push it through a muslin cloth or a wire mesh, or tea strainer. If you need to make a lot of DNA you can use a food processor.

DNA contains four nitrogenous bases- Adenine (A) Guanine (G), thymine (T) and cytosine (C) - these four letters spell our genetic code, this is continued in strings. A series of three base pairs form a ‘codon’ or genetic word, when codons are strung together, like ‘words’ that make up a genetic ‘sentence’ or a gene’. These genes are passed on in chromosomes, which are contained in the gametes (ova and sperm), 13 sets of chromosomes, one from each cell is passed on to become the genetic makeup of the new organism.

This gene will code for proteins - like enzymes or hormones, collagens. It will control the amount and timing of ‘expression’ of these things. Saying =’one gene, one ‘expression’.

Of course cloning plant DNA is relatively easy. Even cows and sheep are relatively common these days. We simply remove the nucleus of the female gamete and replace it with DNA we want to clone. Cloning a human is proving a little more difficult; no one can claim to have done it successfully, except the raelians and the Italian Scientist, Antinori. It has been claimed that for $65,000 you could set up the laboratory equipment needed to clone a human, but it would need to take place on a boat at sea, in international waters, to avoid the various government bans on cloning humans.

5. Transfer 300 ul (0.3ml) of the supernatant to a fresh micro tube (do not disturb the pellet).

6. Add 800 u1 (0.8ml) of cold ethanol by carefully layering it on top of the supernatant.

7. Dip the sealed glass pipette or crochet hook up and down in the micro tube, gently mixing the alcohol with the supernatant. The DNA will precipitate as a white (or green), stringy mass which adheres to the glass rod.

Scientist persona
That’s great, you’re holding the building blocks of life in your hand.

After participants have extracted DNA, performer moves to the front, takes off glasses.

SFX: Mitochondrial waters- track 11, radio Play cd.

CELL MOTHER
Performer starts to fall to ground and get up again laughing, trying to interact with the audience and regain composure. Eventually after three falls, she succumbs to the cellular persona.

Assistant disperses crowd.

The performer creates the Cellular persona working with internal (butoh) images to create a sense of organic movement in the space, a body memory that is cellular, or inter-species, not necessarily human.

INternal Image a container teaming with cells.
INternal Image the cells become strands.
INternal Image strands straining towards the light.
INternal Image strands becoming like wool, powerfully pulling this way and that.
Possibly grow up one of the curtains like a plant?
Let the force of those strands contort the body for some time.
Attempt to grasp kitchen desk.
Move about as if buffeted against desk.
Grab for mixer/centrifuge- turn on machine.
Grab for cooking sieves.
Reach sieves to light and move with them.
Eventually rest in image with sieves over eyes (Fly image.)

Sound track: Radio play ‘woman who knitted’ track 10.

Transition. (Stepford persona.)
Performer gets up off floor. Immediately into ‘Stepford persona’. Place the sieves back on the table. Look around the audience. Regain composure. (This incorporates Crafty/creative style. - woman is obsessive and gets carried away with craft decoration with the wool - making macramé, wrapping things, making wool outlines of chromosome dollies, creating ‘hangings’ in the space. During the performance she does ‘present’ some of her creations - i.e. the micro tube mobile.)

Stepford persona
You find that if you tidy up as you go, you can feel a lot better about yourself during the day. You can use almost anything in the biotech house for decorative purposes as well. These sieves could form a lovely frieze, and even the micro tubes can make a lovely mobile for baby…Please come in, welcome, come inside my house, wipe your feet on the mat… it’s a bit sticky around here, the chairs are a bit slippery, mucousy

SFX: mothers theme from ‘The Marigold Hour’.

Commence dusting of curtains. This is a mock 50’s style; the Stepford persona echoes the long arm movements of the cellular persona, putting her arms onto the curtains as if to ‘present’ them for the audience. She mutters abit to herself, also hums a dusting song.

Stepford persona
Lovely curtains, great lengths of curtains, different curtains. More curtains. Hang, drape, cover, hide… you can hide things behind the curtains… you can hide behind them yourself.

SFX: dusting humming

Present all of the different spaces in the house. She highlights the different areas as she moves around and tidies sheets, bassinette cover.

Stepford persona
Do feel welcome to look around, the bedroom, the display house, nursery, knitting area…

Eventually get to the secret space.

Curtains can create a lovely private space!

Wraps herself in curtain (hidey game). Stays behind for longer than you’d think….beat. Open the curtain and reveals herself smiling to the audience. Move over to the knitting space.

KNITTING 1.
Commence looking at the basket, getting wool balls.

Stepford persona
With the use of pattern stitches, knitting can become more than a craft - it can become an art form.

Fern stitch, herringbone, moss stitch, honeycomb. With literally thousands of different designs to choose from, the knitter is never bored.

Becomes ‘Play/puppet’ persona.

If you’re knitting a leg say, you can cast on, 12 stitches. 2, 4 6, 8, 12 and then knit and purl rows if you want t stocking style stitch, or if you want a rugged look you can just knit.

She starts to knit and as she does, assumes the position of the storyteller. Takes full focus and is lit accordingly, this is a chance for the audience to sit and listen. Put knitting down at first. Draw people in.

Story 1
Storyteller Persona
Once there was a woman microbiologist named Cecilia Moon. Every day she worked hard in a laboratory with twenty other scientists and sometimes she stayed late into the night. She was not married and she had no children. There was nothing stopping her from her experiments.

One night she was in the laboratory alone. She was sitting beside her Petri dishes with her teat pipette in hand, completing the days’ work. Sometimes, like tonight, she cloned cells of animal viruses and waited for them to multiply.

Then came the part she didn’t like. The part when she, like any other scientist, had to sit and wait. How she hated waiting.

The reason that Cecilia Moon hated waiting was that it gave her time to think. She thought about many things, especially the fact that while all the other microbiologists and geneticists or plasma-wave specialists had gone home to their families, she had no child at all.

What did she do? She walked. She tapped her feet, tra-ta -ta. She twiddled her thumbs, trum-te-tum. But no amount of twiddling and tapping made the cells divide any faster, or the chromosomes rush their splitting, or her thoughts disappear. Finally, she decided to sit. And that’s when it dawned on her. She needed to find something to do to pass the time.

Then she remembered the hobby she loved as a child. She would start to knit.

She found an old knitting basket at home, the one that her grandma had given her. She brought this basket to the laboratory, even though it smelt of mothballs. Did she mind what her colleagues thought? No! After all, she was the one sitting up night after night, minding the babies, so to speak.

The next time those cells were doing their thing (oh so slowly); she began to cast on a few stitches. She began to knit. Clickety-clack.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, her needles clicked and clacked as she started to knit up all manner of creations. Snakes and rabbits, dolls and trolls.

Lets put it plainly. She wasn’t bored any more. Instead she found this occupation of her fingers was creating a calming effect on her mind. She imagined herself as Marie Curie, or Edison with his light bulb, or Crick and Watson who discovered the double Helix of the DNA. But most of all, the more she rocked and knitted and dreamed about the future, the more she imagined she might fashion her own child.

One night, when the full moon was gleaming through the plate glass windows, she was possessed by a strange whim, and decided to knit a baby doll. She cast on two, four, six, eight, ten stitches, beginning with the hands.

Have you ever stayed up knitting, night after moonlit night? Have you watched strange shapes appear, out of the corners of your eyes, Have you heard noises or seen shadows or smelt strange smells? This is what started to happen to our microbiologist, Cecilia Moon.

She tried stay calm and concentrate on the pattern, but while she kept her hands and mind occupied, her chair became more and more furious in its rocking motion. Were her own knees rocking? Or did an invisible hand do it? All she knew is that suddenly she heard a thud, and she had fallen to the ground.

Storyteller persona falls to the ground.

For a second, just a second, she was gone from this world. And when she returned, things were different.

Had she traveled during that tiny amount of time, that wink of an eye? From the falling of her body to her eyelid stirring, had she descended to an underworld? Whatever had happened, she returned with some part of her changed, though at first she did not recognize it. She sat back on the rocker and picked up the cast on stitches. She started her doll again.

The knitting seemed to have a life of its own. The wool curled around the needle and her arm, it snaked through the air and twisted around her Petri dishes, scooping up the cells, forming shapes that she didn’t recognize. Tiny blobs which looked like knees. A long chain stitch that resembled a spine. Her breathing was getting faster. Her heart was thumping loudly. The whole laboratory seemed to dance to a strange beat.

She struggled to get up from the rocker. When she went to see what had happened to her experiments, she noticed the Petri dishes on the bench start to float and glow. She saw shapes like small hands growing from them. She cleared a corner of the bench and started to assemble still more equipment. She needed six jars, one for arms, one for legs, one for the body, one for the head and the hands and one for the organs. She decided to put this in a corner where her colleagues were unlikely to look.

Finally she grew tired, but when she thought about going home, she felt afraid that the cells might stop dividing if she was not there with them and decided to stay the night in the laboratory, and rock in her chair until she fell asleep.

Go into Play persona

Immediately kick the ball of wool away. Reel it back in. Kick it away. Reel it back in. Make it clear this is about ‘good baby’ bad baby’ desire and revulsion. Play with audience, when baby is good, act very pleased, when bad, be annoyed.

A large amount of wool has unraveled.

SFX: Mitochondrial waters- track 11, radio Play cd.

Chook Mother
Go into cellular/pethadine persona.

End up with it in hands, get up with the wool, and experience it as a mucousy blob, run it over the face as if you are feeling fetal/body material. Wrap it around head in the same way you do when imagining the wool internally. Wrap it around feet also, fall to the ground, let wool ball come out as if it is being birthed, clasp the egg to chest, roll over with the wool egg, love the egg.

Sit on egg, hide egg from the audience like broody chook, the chook becomes insane and over heated. Egg keeps rumbling beneath you, you check it, and put it back under you.

(seductive chook naughty with audience, sexy/saucy with audience? Do cats cradle with wool as you are waiting? This may go out of persona…)

SFX: broody chook noises.

Egg keeps rumbling.

Finally hatches. Again hold it close, throw it away again. Pick it up, put it to breast. Assume pose of Madonna and child.

Get up, immediately become Stepford Persona.

SFX: mothers theme from ‘The Marigold Hour’.

Decoupage
Clean up the wool and wool ball. The wool is twisted and in an abstract shape, explore this as if it is a cover for a cushion or some sort of decorative use of wool. Hang on the curtains, use in the different spaces. Hang on a chair in KNITTING SPACE.

Stepford Persona
You can make a lovely throw with this sort of design, or decorate the curtains, hang this like a sculpture. If you want to you can hang something in it (place the knitting needle in the wool design). I’ve made some lovely small covers for my cushion, or you can make a throw for a bassinette or even a frame for your pictures. You can have a wild imagination, go as wild as you like, you can be very creative, very carried away if you want to. It’s such fertile ground, you can have hours of fun, and you need never say that being at home is boring.

Do some more cleaning and arranging. Find the needles in the biotech dollhouse (open the secret curtain, for yourself only, reveal them to the audience. Don’t show them what’s inside yet, place on the bed.)

Become Play/puppet Persona.

Move over to the BED space, pick up the blue chromosome dolly.

Describe the chromosome dolly (first the one in the knitting basket?)- Lifting them like a doll/puppet

Play/Puppet persona.
This is a chromosome dolly. These are the bands of genes, where you might find the coding for disease…muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis. Muscular dystrophy was found attached to the x chromosome, passed on by the mother… This is the blue doll, not that chromosomes have a gender, but one of each pair comes from the female and male gamete.

Walk it, step by step.

Walking is as easy as your ABC, won’t you walk along and come and play with me, ABC, 1,2,3 that’s right’…

Egg extraction.
Sit down with the chromosome dolly on lap. Use it as a puppet to enact the egg extraction.

Live video of the procedure is put up on screen.

Lay chromosome doll back on lap.

Play/Puppet persona
Lay back. Get comfortable. That’s good!

We’re going to do a little egg extraction. After the follicle stimulation that should have created a large number of eggs, its time to have them harvested.

Going in for an egg extraction, you’re in the waiting room in a gown, a lot of other couples or singles waiting as well. You hear their low voices. You’re waiting for your E.T. (Egg transfer)

In the room the three fates are waiting to cut/snip and spin. Three fates in the shape of nurse, head scientist and anesthetist.

Take doll. Enact syringe.

First you have a pethadine injection,

“there we are, you’ll feel a little drowsy”

Laugh spontaneously

Now you have the local anesthetic

Inject chromosome dolly with Knitting needle/syringe again in the vaginal area.

Then the ultrasound probe goes in, with the needle placed in the centre, the needles about 30 cms long, then you’re looking at the ultrasound of the ovaries on the monitor, and you’re watching the eggs get harvested by the needle,

Actual image of follicles in Black and White on monitor?

‘Pop’,

Then its going in the tube the long tube coming from the needle-full of pink liquid from the blood and fluid then it’s handed to the scientist and she’s placing it inside the sterile area, then she’s putting her arms in through the covered gloves and she’s manipulating the egg with the pipette, she’s washing the egg by pulling it up a couple of times into the pipette and she’s placing it in the Petri dish…

Then you see the egg on the screen just like it’s right in front of you, the screens linked to the microscope and you see the egg, its huge like a rising sun a big golden egg. It’s a highly mediated experience. The egg is 20 cm on the screen, when really you can fit it onto a pinhead…

Images on screen here

The egg goes off to the lab, in four hours it will be fertilized with donor sperm or your partner’s sperm and if it fertilizes it becomes a blastocyst, and then you come back for your egg transfer…

If the egg extraction isn’t successful, there are many possibilities for buying an egg, if you move out of this country. Selling an egg in this country is illegal, though you can give one away to a person or to science. You can buy one from a clinic in South Africa, Russia, Greece or Spain. The prices range form $20,000 in South Africa to $5,000 in Russia. Russian eggs are cheap. I’m not sure if it’s the exchange rate or that they’re not so popular. If you’re keen to go on a holiday to any of the locations, you may need to consider price and the politics of the country, as well as genetic considerations.

Sperm can also be purchased over the internet, from the many ‘cryobank’s' which exist. Typical donor profiles include the age, height, sports, and academic interests. In some cases, such as the Scandinavian cryobank, all donors are required to be over a certain eight, and to have blonde hair and blue eyes. This sperm is sought out throughout the western world and can be ordered over the internet. This prompted a newspaper article titled ‘The Vikings are taking over Seattle’.

Afterwards put the chromosome dolly to bed. Pull the curtains around.

I am going to give the dolly some more pethadine; you can’t come in for a minute. Would you please wait outside?

(to Doll) just relax its all over now…

SFX: Mitochondrial waters- track 11, radio Play cd.

frog mother.
Go into Cellular Persona space. Push all the equipment/sheets off the bed. Lean on the bench, use the bench for support and go into deep collapse, try to collapse onto the surface. Laughing. Laughing like in the pethadine space. Super aware of lights, groaning, deeply grounded on the floor, feeling in pelvis. Laughing, Slowed speech. Point at lights.

They’re very bright!(laughing)

Go onto the bench and feel body on the flat surface, feel the surfaces of the body on the bed, become the frog mother. Unaware of audience.

Get up off table. Immediately into Stepford Persona.

SFX: mothers theme from ‘The Marigold Hour’.

Clean up the debris from before.

You find that if you tidy up as you go, you can feel a lot better about yourself during the day. Sometimes just making the bed can make you feel like you’re in control. The rest of the house can be a tip, chaos, that can be enough, making the beds…

Pull curtains, continue dusting.

Move to bassinette space and immediately start to wheel it.

It’s great to have your bassinette on wheels. That makes it very easy for you to move it around the house.

Move the bassinette and sheet around. Place it next to KNITTING AREA.

You can put it in a different room, you can hear it if it needs you.

Then you can wrap the baby, wrap it tight and keep it safe, …you can listen to the baby. If you’re knitting you can keep it nearby.

Go into PLAY/STORYTELLER persona.

Sit down at knitting chair. Start to wind up the wool from the previous scene.

Start to sing as if singing to baby.

If it weren’t for the sake of cotton eyed Joe, I’d have been married a long time ago, I’d have been married a long time ago.”

Repeat this a few times.

Did you know the needle for an abortion was called a ‘cotton eyed joe’? The eye was the eye of the needle.

Possible comments here…

In India and Pakistan there are still so many women dying form back yard abortions, because the US has refused to fund any women’s health organizations that provide voluntary abortion.

The spread of ultra-sound technologies and genetic tests has made it easy to find out the gender of the child before birth, unwanted daughters are being aborted at startling rates in China and across much of India.

‘Women on the waves’ have a boat, which operates in international waters, to perform abortions for women in countries where the government forbids them, Poland, Ireland, and Mexico. The female doctor who runs it, was originally the ships doctor for Greenpeace, and her travels to the developing world made her realize how important this was for young women.

Many of these countries have some of the highest growth figures for middle class families wanting to access IVF for infertility problems.

I had a gut feeling, the first time I saw an embryo being cloned maybe it was a knee-jerk reaction…

Reach for knitting again. Start to cast on. Go into STORYTELLING PERSONA.

Now you can cast on, you might choose 10 stitches, say, if you’re knitting an arm. 2, 4 6, 8, 10 stitches, and then knit and purl rows if you want t stocking style stitch, or if you want a rugged look you can just knit.

Become Stepford persona, will include an element of cellular memory.

Look up at the basinette again. Put down knitting. Move to bassinette. Feel the outside of the bassinette lovingly (using Margaret Cameron exercise ‘Go to where the pleasure is’)

SFX: Mitochondrial waters- track 11, radio Play cd.

Push back muslin cloth. Reveal what is inside. Microscope, Love it, sensitively, like a baby. Move the microscope arms up and down. Clean with muslin cloth.

Live video of the procedure is put up on screen.

Pick up the vial of cells. Hold up to light. Play with them. Look. Gaze. Hold to cheek. The wished for child. Baby hunger. Precious object.

Tell thumbelina story…

Storyteller persona
Once upon a time, a beggar woman went to the house of a poor peasant and asked for something to eat. When she had eaten, she gave the woman a seed to plant and the next day the most beautiful tulip had sprung up and in the middle of the flower sat a tiny little girl, so delicate and lovely and not half as big as my thumb, and therefore the woman called her Thumbelina.

Place the cell container over pubic bone, with nozzle down to floor, as if it is a womb. Move it slowly, gradually up the stomach and breast bone. Hold in hands and carry back to bassinette.

Scientist persona.
These tiny cells are part of a cell line. Did you know these cell lines have become immortal? They just keep on reproducing. If you wish for something special you never know what you’ll get. Only sexual reproduction leads to death, all bacteria and viruses live forever! The price of sex is death, unfortunately. I keep these butterfly pupae alive with SPF medium; it’s standard, vitamins, and some serum that is made from fetal calf placenta. The calf does die in the procedure.

Place the cells back under the microscope. Take the muslin cloth and again clean the whole microscope. Indicate to the audience the baby is sleeping now.

Stepford persona.
My little one is immortal, isn’t that special. Kept alive with calf placenta. A bit yuk factor really, still can’t be helped, these are the decisions we have to make to keep this precious bundle alive!

Place the muslin over the bassinette frame. Put finger to mouth again to keep audience quiet.

Move the bassinette back to the original BASINETTE position.

Go back to KITCHEN space, hushing the audience as you go.

the grind
SFX: mothers theme from ‘The Marigold Hour’.

In stepford persona. Move to the KITCHEN SPACE.

Start to grind the mortar and pestle, using it as an SFX behind what you are saying.
Stepford persona.
I find if you clean up as you go along...I said that before didn’t I? Tell me if I’m repeating myself. (Laughs) When you’re at home with a little baby you can get terribly bored. Almost insane with boredom. It’s important to find ways to decrease the daily grind. You can use cooking as a pastime for yourself and then, as the baby becomes a little older, a toddler say, you can use cooking as an activity that he can enjoy.

Start to pour water from a container to a jug, making pouring noises.

You can pass the time in any number of ways. Life can seem to trickle away.

I’ve made some lovely fountains for the garden using the sharps containers or the biohazard bins once you’ve finished with them. Or composting, but make sure any genetically modified material has been removed to the autoclave before hand!

You never know what you can find about the house or display home to use for your creative ventures.

Show some of the sculptures she has made.

She moves off with her duster, towards the curtains in the secret space of the dollshouse.

She hides in the curtains a few times again, peeping out. Go into Play/ Puppet/scientist persona, playing at hidies. Grab some of the dolls from the dolls house, and the small vials of follicle stimulating hormone, and injections.

She pretends to give some injections to the tiny dolls and chromosome dollies in the secret house.

Play/puppet/scientist persona.
The ovaries are stimulated for the egg extraction procedure using a follicle stimulating hormone, puregon, which stops the follicles competing with each other and allows the largest number of eggs possible to be harvested. It’s common for these hormones to be created from pharmed animal hormones, in this case, the FSH is collected from pharmed hamsters. In the case of HRT , it is collected from Pregnant mares urine, where mares are kept in constant state of pregnancy, with their foals removed regularly, for up to 8 years.

Rarely but seriously, during follicle stimulation, a stimulated ovary might twist on itself cutting off it’s blood supply. This is called ovarian torsion. It is acutely painful and there is usually sudden and intense nausea, unless the situation is corrected immediately by operation, it can mean removal of the entire ovary. Long-term effects of ovarian stimulation could lead to an increases risk of later developing cancer of the ovaries.

SECRET SPACE. BODY MEMORY.
Immediately becomes Cellular/Pethadine persona, wanting to be more secretive, the curtains are drawn again.

She enters into the biotech dolls house space, and picks up a medi swab, she moves to the front of the curtains. They are still closed, but lit from within. She opens the lab coat slowly and swabs an area of her stomach.

Live video of the procedure is put up on screen.

She uses an empty syringe from the dolls house to draw liquid from the Puregon (FSH) vials and enacts injecting herself in the stomach. Throws the needle down onto the ground. She takes a second swab, and swabs another area of her stomach and repeats the injection procedure 3 times in total. Each time she opens the curtains a little so that the audience sees more of the procedure.

She finally lifts her garment so her full stomach is revealed (Makeup bruising?)

SFX: Mitochondrial waters- track 11, radio Play cd.

She commences a cellular state, dropping slowly to the floor and resuming her cellular space.

INternal Image a container teaming with cells.
INTERNAL IMAGE the pelvis is teaming with growing eggs.

The performer is moving pelvis around in a random chaotic manner (Nikki’s guided pelvis exercise) There is a sense of nature interfered with, out of control, the red shoes?

INternal Image strands becoming like wool, powerfully pulling this way and that.

She gradually picks up the small vials she has thrown to the floor, and immediately becomes stepford persona and cleans up, puts away,

Stepford Persona.
Everything with a place and everything in its place! Now these lovely little glass bottles can be used for Christmas decorations, attach them to a small flashing light, paint them in a few different colours. You can see what I mean? (Shows an example) Brilliant!

Before she moves over to the KNITTING SPACE.

SFX: mothers theme from ‘The Marigold Hour’.

Reach for knitting again. Start to cast on. Go into STORYTELLING PERSONA.

If you’re knitting a torso, you can cast on 14 stitches. 2, 4 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 stitches, casting on. Then knit one purl one all the way to the end of the row.

Story 2.
Storyteller
When Cecilia woke in the morning she remembered nothing at first. Then she remembered the strange incidents that occurred the night before. She got up wearily from her rocker, to start another day.

When she walked around the laboratory, her regular experiments were just as she left them, no longer the ghoulish visions she had seen in the night. But there in the corner were the glass vials, strings hanging down, with the small clusters of cells that had started to grow and take shape. A spine, an ear, a toe.

Her colleagues entered the laboratory one by one. None of them realized she had not returned home. No one made any comment on her small gathering of limbs.

In the nights that followed the frenzy continued. She no longer returned home and every night she knitted. As she cast on each set of stitches, so the rocker started its furious motion and the knitting on her needles took on a life of its own, twisting and snaking towards the limbs in the large standing containers, which seemed to animate and grow.

One night when her co-workers had gone, Cecilia Moon went to the corner to see how her experiment was growing. She saw that it was nearing completion. Hanging in the glass vials were all the full limbs with which one could fashion a body. Two small arms, a rather sweet face and head, two legs and a torso and bottom of plump proportions.
Cecilia Moon lifted the limbs from the vials and she placed each of them lovingly on the bench, and commenced assembling the small body she found in front of her. She took the same needle she used to assemble the pieces of her knitting and lifted it, ready to stitch the pieces together.

She gathered all the limbs together in her arms and she started to stroke them. She felt their trembling aliveness. All of a sudden she had no doubts, no fears. She moved almost like a woman possessed. With nimble fingers she pierced the skin with the needle and started to join the limbs to the torso, the ears to the head, the head to the body and so on. As she squinted and rethreaded her needle, her work almost done, she looked out of the window and saw the sun rising. She was nearly finished. She was making herself a child.

When she stopped her concentrated efforts she placed what was in her arms on the ground, and there before her stood a little child, quite perfect, with dark hair and eyes, immediately giggling and laughing as it ran about the laboratory, chasing and hiding.

She only half heard the door open as her colleague entered the room.

“Cecilia, you didn’t get home at all last night?” her workmate said, smiling. “ What have you knitted up this time?”

Cecilia raised her eyes, surprised. “ Not knitted this time, look at my beautiful baby!”

She beamed and proudly gathered up the body between her hands, only to see that dangling on two woolen arms was the body of a knitted doll, lovingly stitched together.

Performer starts to pull in the wool ball and wind wool and notices the audience. Immediately becomes STEPFORD PERONA.

Stepford Persona.
You can make all sorts of choices about what sort of baby you knit. If you want an innie belly button for instance, you might drop a few stitches, or add a few more for an outie, you can create all sort s of looks for the eyes, Asiatic, almond, button noses, black hair, blonde. Wool is wonderful!

Thanks so much for visiting, I hope you’ve enjoyed the home hints I’ve been giving you and if you want patterns for some of the sculptures you’ll find it on my web site, or I do have several of them for sale. In fact the whole house is for sale of course except for my precious little jarful.

And I you’d like to leave us a special message in the visitors book, it’s right there next to the biotech dolls house. Let me know what you think. Be honest! Don’t be backwards about coming forwards!

Start to wind up wool and clear up space. Assistant explains the performance is over and audience is directed by to look around space if they would like. Indicate to the audience the laptop where they can leave interactive voice or text message.