The Last Paving Stone
© 1998

Photos by Brad Goda from the Honolulu Theatre for Youth

Everyone is celebrating the placement of the last paving stone covering the last unpaved patch of ground on the planet—that is, everyone except Ito, a girl with ears so big she can hear the ground talking. Everyone else thinks Ito's "sound from the ground" is her attempt to justify her humiliatingly large ears. Even Jassmin, a lass with a nose so big she can smell a lie, doesn't believe in Ito's sound. Threatened with the forever-silenced ground, Ito risks the ire of her Pa to share the ground sound ("spoken" in music) with normal-eared people.

photos: Idaho Theatre for Youth

This modern comic fable about being different and sustaining the environment was workshopped at The Sundance Playwrights Lab and premiered at Idaho Theatre for Youth. In Idaho, the Voice of the Ground was "spoken" by a brass-percussion quartet playing a score written by Wayne Horvitz & Robin Holcomb. At Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the Ground was played by the legendary Hawaiian musician Henry Kapono.

2 male, 4 female, the Ground (1 or more musicians)
unit set
60 minutes

Seattle Pacific University

available from Dramatic Publishing

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