Cloudy with a bit of Twilight: A Satyr Play

by Matthew Keet

Bella and Edward want to get married. They didn't expect a chorus of Satyr to oversee the wedding.

Cloudy with a bit of Twilight: A Satyr Play

INTRODUCTION

During ancient Greek, Tragedies were the rage. Likewise, today, Tragedies are the rage. Unlike other genres, things haven't changed that much. Forbidden love, random death scenes, usually involve murder, suicide, and other the top violence, you name it. Usually these Tragedies were grouped together as trilogies, which were then followed by a special genre of plays called Satyr plays. The basic idea: take a random plotline to an already existing story, but then add drunken Satyrs that run around everywhere and get in the way, including having sex, while the rest of the characters remain semi in canon. The main purpose of these plays were meant to be comic relief, most audience members walked out of the cinema dazed and confused (hence the introduction of comedies, which served the role as comic relief better).

Although these plays never survived ancient Greek times (most likely because they were crap), no one has thought about reviving this genre… until now. I, Benry, present to you the first Satyr play written since the Greek times, 2500 years ago. It is based around the Twilight series, a modern example of Tragedies (for the worse reasons). So sit back, relax, and enjoy…

CHARACTERS

EDWARD – Down on his luck, fearing that he will suck the living life out of Bella, his girlfriends. He is also a blood sucking vampire (in case you stumbled onto this play by accident, and have no idea what Twilight is about).

BELLA – Also down her luck, but for different reasons, Bella wants her boyfriend to suck her blood. The likely chances is, this won't happen, unless a little bit of alcohol is involved.

SATYR CHORUS – A group of random Satyrs that sing and drink and pretty much gets in the way. They have strong sex urges, and will do anything to egg anyone on to have sex with them, or let them watch them have sex. None of them are very sexy.

HIPPIE SATYR – Unlike the other satyrs, this guy is on more than just a bottle of whiskey. Word of advice, if he offers you anything, food or drink, for god sakes, DON'T DRINK OR EAT IT!

SATYR PRIEST – Marries anyone. Also has sex with anyone. But he does prefer Maenads, although will do Nymphs.

YOUNG SATYR – If you think grown up Satyrs are bad, wait to you met their younglings. Added inappropriate, it might be a good idea to avoid subjects such as sex, drugs, and LCD when talking to this guy.

DIONYSUS – He is the Greek god of drug, sex and rock 'n' roll. Likes to party like its 2012, even though he knows that it's all a load of rubbish. After all, he is a god; he should know this stuff (unless the other gods aren't telling him important information).

PLEASE NOTE:

I am not the best of all spellers. I have dyslexia, so there will be most like mistakes in this play. I have tried my best to fix them, but knowing my luck, there will be a few mistakes here and there. So if you happen to spot a mistake, feel free to PM me or mention it in a review notifying me of the mistake. Thank you.

ACT I

CURTAINS OPEN

Edward and Bella are sitting at their desk during science, which is in an open paddock with a dense forest nearby, due to plot restrains. It is late at night, with although forecaster claim would be a starry night, the sky looked dodgy, with lots of clouds forming (does it not rain in Seattle?). Although school usually never happens at night, the teacher`s excuse is "Night School".

While Edward and Bella are discussing random romance crap, some random Satyrs are dancing around the class room, being merry and uncaring of anyone else around them. They are also a little bit too drunk. Everyone but the Satyrs is taking things seriously.

EDWARD [sombrely]: "I am not like most guys. You shouldn't trust me if I was you. I love you so much; I would not want you to get hurt. No! Not at any cost."

BELLA [pleadingly]: "But I have undying love for you. I would throw myself of a bridge if you were to go away. I will willingly become a statistic. Please don't leave me. Not ever! If you can live for ever, why cannot I?"

EDWARD: "Please don't. I would feel guilty about myself. Well, if it is to stop my guilty conscience, I should maybe turn you into a vampire, just to be safe. Although turning you into a vampire would turn you un-dead, so it would benefit both of us."

BELLA: "Dearest Edward, please bite me. Bite me now. I cannot take it anymore. I think I have suffered for too long knowing that you would live far longer than I, a mere mortal. Death is what I have been cursed with. I am doomed to die. Such a fate you will never have experience. So Edward, heed my call, bite me now."

SATYR CHORUS [singing drunkenly]: "Hear her call: Bite her now! Hear her call: Edward Cullum!"

EDWARD: "A doomed fate which I would wish I could suffer from. It is you Bella that is the lucky one. I have to live the rest of my life as a vampire, watching love ones die, suffering from painful illness I will never suffer. I also suffer from a nasty stereotype of being a self-centred, blood sucking being, unable to tell between friends and foes. So, it is you that is the lucky one, dearest Bella."

BELLA: "Lucky one? I want to live with you for ever and ever. Only then will we be the lucky ones. Bite me now, suck my blood, and turn me vampire. We could get married, and have baby vampires. Although having a bloody sucking creature jump out of my stomach does not sound well pleasing. Second thoughts, we just get married, screw the kids. So please, bite me, marry me, and we can live forever young."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "Forever young, you want to be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever!"

YOUNG SATYR: "Just suck her! I want to see the bite marks!"

EDWARD: "Yes, I agree. I don't want to have a group of snotty noise kids around me. Nor do I want to turn you into a vampire."

BELLA: "If you don't turn me into a vampire, I will die, and you will live forever as a lonely old man. If you leave me, this life of mine will be far shorter. So be careful, if you don't turn me into a vampire, there will be consequences. So think about it, my dearest one."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "You gotcha think! You gotcha think!"

Edward leaves his seat and sits down at a desk nearby it. The hippie Satyr is sitting there, who is smoking something that doesn't look all that legal.

EDWARD [desperate]: "I need advice, wise Satyr.

HIPPIE SATYR [laid back and slightly stoned]: "Yeah man, you came to the right place bro. What do you need? Oh, take one of these."

The Hippie Satyr hands a pill to Edward, and Edwards foolishly swallows it.

EDWARD [slightly dazed and confused]: "I have been having problems with my girlfriend at the moment. She wants be to bite her to that she turn into a vampire. However, I don't want to do this. Doing this is against the code of being a good kind-hearted vampire. I don't want to give her the same curse that I suffer from. I don't want her to leave for eternality, watching all that she knows die away, while she lives on and on, knowing that she won't experience the same fate. It will be too cruel. Now that you know the problems I have been experiencing with my girlfriend, can you give me advice on solving this puzzle of mine?"

HIPPIE SATYR [excited enough to still be laid back]: "Thanks for telling that to me, man! You really did come to the right place. Tell you the truth; you gotcha bite her, man. She`ll leave you and you`ll never see her again. This is your only chance. And the only curse you will give her is the ability to stay with you for all of eternality. You can love and marry her and have a kid; which means you need to have sex man! Take my advice, you won't regret it."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "Take his advice, you won't regret it! Take his advice, never forget it!"

EDWARD [gladly]: "I thank you, wise hippie. I will use this advice to my advantage. Although the children bit might not take my fancy, the rest does. I love Bella very much, and turning her into a vampire just like me wouldn't be that bad. We can live forever and ever, side by side. Neither of us will worry about death, nor of our other half dying. That makes sense. Thank you for that advice, wise satyr."

HIPPIE SATYR: "You are welcome. Now bite her!"

Edward leaves the desk and walks up to Bella, and suddenly bites her in a romantic, seductive manner. He realises what he has done, with everyone else including the Satyr Chorus staring at him shocked. He then quickly storm off embarrassed. Bella however looks pleased with herself.

CURTAINS CLOSE

ACT II

CURTAINS OPEN

A group of satyrs are standing around a forest of trees on the right side of the stage. The sky is still cloudy, but luckily it hasn't rained… yet. The satyrs are standing in a circle talking to each other. Due to plot restraints, they talk in unison, which beats the point of actually having a conversation, but who cares, I don't make the rules.

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "We wait for the arrival of Edward, for he spoke about coming here some time during this night. He seemed distressed, but we know from experience that he will get over it. Our plans always work, no matter how distressed our victims become, things turn our way in the end. The plan we talk of, it is simple: to get Edward and Bella to sleep in the same bed while we watch them from afar. Our first task has succeeded; Bella is now a vampire and Edward is feeling the guilt from that fatal mistake. Now he must marry her as Bella is now his responsibility. All he needs to do now is accept his fate, and we hope to succeed in this by egging him on, like a good group of satyrs, who serve the great god Dionysus with gifts of fertility. He then rewards us with the wine of our course. This task is worth it."

Enter Edward and Jacob. Edward leans against a tree on the right side of the stage while Jacob sits down near him. They are unaware of the Satyr: another fatal mistake.

EDWARD [sadly]: "I am distressed; I don't know what to day with myself. What have I done? This wasn't planned, but what is planned? Our lives are filled with one accident to another; I do not know how others can put up with this. Those mortals are lucky, they make a mistake and then move on, and when they die their mistakes means nothing. For me, I have to live with my mistakes for all of eternality. I envy and that is why I am distressed. I need your advice."

JACOB [comfortingly]: "Worry not, for I am here. Although we have had our differences, especially when it concerns Bella, I will be honest to you now. So tell me friend, what is bothering? Reveal it all if you must, I will listen to it eagerly."

EDWARD: "I fear to tell you this, for it concerns our friend Bella. Today I turned her into a vampire. Before you have a go at me, please let me explain myself. After that, you can curse me, spit on me, or whatever you feel like doing to me. But please hear me out first."

JACOB: "Although I am disappointed with you, I will hear you out. But first I must ask you something, do you actually love Bella, or is she a hobby, something that can be discarded when it begins to bore you? Answer this, and I will let you speak further, explaining your decision."

SATYR CHORUS: "Finally we will be able to find out if our plan has worked. If Edward tells Jacob that he is in love with Bella, then we know that Edward and Bella will get married, and from there, they will sleep in their bridal bed. We will be successful, as this will be a gift to Dionysus, and we will be rewarded with good wine. So we will cease to talk, so that we can hear the conclusion to all our troubles."

EDWARD [unaware of what they satyrs have said]: "Thank you friend for giving me the chance to explain myself. I will answer that question. I do love Bella; there is no mistake about that. But I fear that I won't be able to commit to her, and be a loving husband, which she expects me to be. Now let me explain my reasons in turning her into a vampire. She asked me to do so. Even though I didn't want to do at first, after consulting a hippie, I made up my mind to turn her into a vampire, which I have now learnt was a fatal mistake. So this is why I am distressed. I think I have made a mistake, and I need some advice on solving this stressful problem."

JACOB: "Although I condemn you for turning Bella into a vampire, what has happened is now in the past, so it is better to look to the future. I doubt my advice will help, and maybe insulting, but here goes: you must take it like a man. Now is the time to prove that you are not a coward, with running away from your problems. By accepting your fate and commit to her by being a loving husband, I might then turn a blind eye from your action, no matter evil they were meant to be. So that is my advice: take it like a man and look toward the future instead of pitying yourself for past deed."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "What great advice. Let's hope Edward takes it. If all works well, that good wine will look closer than ever before."

EDWARD [satisfied]: "Thank you for the advice. I will take it gladly and in welcome arms. I will go as soon as possible to buy an engagement ring. Tonight we will dine in heaven for I will propose to Bella under a starry night, hopefully, as long as it doesn't rain, or I might delay it for a day or so."

SATYR CHORUS [singly loudly and demanding]: "Propose tonight or Dionysus will curse you with even worse weather than there is now."

EDWARD: "Fine, tonight I will propose."

Edwards and Jacob leave the stage. The satyrs move to the centre of the stage.

SATYR CHORUS [gladly sing]: "Victory is close, with the marriage draws near. It won't be long before we can offer their marriage as a gift to Dionysus. I can imagine the taste of the wine that will be our reward. But now we must wait, for the wedding draws near."

CURTAINS CLOSE

ACT III

CURTAINS OPEN

Bella and Edwards are sitting at a table at their wedding reception. Dionysus is Edwards best band, and Jacob is nowhere to been seen, despite convincing Edward to marry Bella. Satyrs are dancing around more drunkenly than usual. Finally it is a starry night, but it might have something to do with Dionysus.

The wedding reception is being hold in the same open field as the science class was hold in. the city of Seattle has also mysteriously had a mass power cut, allowing the starry night to be more obvious.

DIONYSUS [pleasingly]: "I hereby give you the gods` blessings. As a gift, I present to you some of my best wine. So drink up and be merry, for tonight is the night to celebrate. Wine can take you a long way, go ask Amy Winehouse that. You can thank me for this starry night, for I asked Zeus, my father, to clear the sky up tonight. Okay, so I might have gotten him a little bit drunk. But none the less, it worked."

EDWARD [happily]: "Thank you for this good wine. We will enjoy drinking it. I like to mention the first time-"

DIONYSUS [demanding]: "Drink it, I hereby order. Wine is good for the soul, even a god such as me would know. Wine makes your mine clearer, allows you to see the mysteries of life are answered, and all judgement correctly made. So do as I tell you to do, and drink the good wine I have given to your as a gift."

EDWARD: "Let me say my speech first. It is customary for the groom to say his speech, even if god is demanding him to do something completely different."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "Let him speak! Let him speak! Then they shall drink!"

DIONYSUS: "Yes, if that is what you want, I will allow you to speak. But make it quick for I hate speeches, especially when it comes to listening to, although saying a speech is not that bad. But go ahead and enlighten me with your speech, but then you must drink the good wine I have for offer."

EDWARD: "Thank you Dionysus. I will use this time wisely to tell you all of my undying love for Bella Swan. The first moment I saw you, knew instantly that we were made for each other. I know that I left you once, but that was because I feared that I was going to hurt you. But Jacob convinced me otherwise, and once I turned you into a vampire, I knew I needed to marry you. Bella, I truly love-"

DIONYSUS: "Oh Zeus, not some sappy sloppy speech about someone`s undying love for another. Oh, sorry, keeping going."

EDWARD: "Thank you, I will continue with my speech. Please don't interrupt me again. Bella, I truly love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And because we won't die, I know for certain that we will spend all of eternality together. I know for certain that the next many years to come will be of joy. Let's hope we won't get separation, because I don't think I could cope with the divorce fee. But none the less, we must rejoice in our marriage and spend it happily and lovingly for the rest of our lives."

SATYR CHORUS [singly]: "Let's hope they won't get divorce. So far we have the best track record at getting couples together, even better than cupid. So let's hear what Bella has to say of their marriage. Hopefully she will have the same desires of love and sex! Please no divorces, please!"

BELLA [happily]: "I love you too Edward. I love you even before you knew me, when I use to stare at you all day in class. Oh, the mystery that surrounded you, it attracted me to you, and now that I know your secret, I will treasure it with our marriage, and our eternal lives. Nothing now can separate us, besides the rise in the cost of living, fantasies of doing it with another person, and playing Second Life all night having virtual affairs. But after than that, we have nothing to worry about. I love you, and I will always love you, literally."

DIONYSUS [pleadingly]: "Oh great. Why must the world torture me! Make it end!"

EDWARD: "Yes, certain factors, such as the cost of living, fantasies of doing it with another person, and playing Second Life all night having virtual affairs will never distract us from our undying love and tear us apart. This marriage is for all eternality. Nothing can get in our way. We will strive to make this marriage work. It will be a success story."

DIONYSUS [pretending to in pain]: "You are killing me! Save me Zeus, save me from this torture. I doubt I`ll make it through the night. I hate crappy romance novels, especially when it concerns vegetarian vampire. I love my meat Zeus damn it!"

SATYR CHORUS [loudly singing]: "We, the satyrs, hereby call this wedding reception to an end. Before we do finish up, we call for the Bride and Groom to drink some good wine given to them by the graceful Dionysus. Let this wine bring you fertility and everlasting love, or at least for tonight. So drink up, and let us wrap things up."

EDWARD: "If that is traditional, then I will partake in drinking the good wine of Dionysus. Let this drink of wine bring fertility and everlasting love."

BELLA: "I too will drink from the wine of Dionysus. I too hope for fertility and everlasting love from drinking this drink."

Edward and Bella drink a cup of wine. They then started look dazed and confused.

DIONYSUS: "My strongest wine, the greatest I have ever made. Good to drink in small doses, not so good to drink in larger. Not too sure what will happen with the dose you two got. Let it bring fertility and everlasting love. And let it bring entertainment to us, as we will watch you two make undying love, something which you've been boring me to death for the past half an hour talking about the bloody thing. But alas, we can witness what you were discussing. Now enter your bridal bed."

A bed appears at the corner of the stage. Still dazed and confused, Edwards and Bella walk up to the bed.

SATYR CHORUS [celebrating loudly]: "Finally we witness what we have been striving for. We have now presented to Dionysus a gift to end all gifts, two immortal vampires making undying love. May this give us blessings from Dionysus, and reward us with some good wine, but not too strong, we don't want to make fools of ourselves. We must now say fair well. Now wait and watch the entertainment that will be presented in front of you in a moment's time."

The satyrs and Dionysus crowd around the bridal bed. The curtains close as Edward and Bella get into the bed.

CURTAINS CLOSE

FINALE

Conclusion

Hopefully that didn't put anyone off ancient Greek literature. To be honest, even I think that what I've just is a load of crap. I cannot believe I've written possibly the worse play ever written. There is so many errors, I should avoid being embarrassed and delete this satyr play then and there. But I will keep it, just to give people a guide on how NOT to write a play.

The first set of errors: all the characters are majorly out of canon. A reason for this is because I have only watched the first two movies. Although people do struggle to keep their characters as in canon as possible; no one can perfectly recreate a character. I think I have barely done that. Despite trying to write it in an old fashion sort of speech, with each character speaking long and tiresome speeches, I highly doubt Edward and Bella would do. I highly doubt anyone would speak like this.

If I can remember Edward is extremely shy, and likes to stare at the ground all the time, and Bella had her mouth opened for pretty much all of the movie. And instead of speaking, there were long periods of staring at each other, hours on end. And there was also that evil vampire kidnapping Bella, jumping off cliff faces, and random scenes which involves Edwards taking his shirt off (why he doesn't get cold in Seattle is a mystery, but I bet there is some Twilight fan out there that can explain to it me why). Besides that, I don't think there was much of a plotline, and most of the characters were pretty shallow, so I think I did portraying these characters.

The Satyrs and Dionysus can be portrayed in many different ways. I just decided to portray them as being drunken sex addicts. Besides that, I had to portray them in any way I wanted, without fear of being accused of being out of canon.

The second set of errors: ancient Greek plays are not set out like this. Their plays usually had one act, which had a certain layout, which contained a prologue, which explained backstory to the play, the entry of the chorus, in which they sang the main theme. After that, the action would alternate between an episode, in which the characters (in which there were only three on stage at a time) would interact with each other and the chorus, and while the actors were offstage, the chorus would sing a song relating to the story. After a few episodes and songs, it would conclude, usually with a death and a little big propaganda on how awesome Athens was and how all the other Greek cities sucked. I did none of this, and pretty much failed at writing an ancient Greek play, let alone a satyr play.

I will try and write another ancient Greek styled play, but hopefully in another fandom, one that I know more about. It will most likely be Tetralogy, which will contain three tragedies, and satyr play. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this confusing mess.