An excerpt from "Steelbound"
By Alison Carey
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"Steelbound" by Alison Carey, a collaboration
between Cornerstone and Touchstone Theatre. Photo credit: Lynn Jeffries
[image gallery]
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PROMETHEUS
I'm a steelworker. Steelworkers don't consult.
HERMAN
So you'd rather just stay here? Chained like you are?
(PROMETHEUS nods.)
Not me. I think this place is kind of scary.
PROMETHEUS
This scary is my scary. I know this fear.
HERMAN
It's almost like you like it.
PROMETHEUS
You wouldn't understand.
HERMAN
Don't blame me for that.
PROMETHEUS
Then I'll blame history. The rolling mill of history
That squeezed me down and pushed me along
At all those miles an hour and then left me to rust.
HERMAN
But it was dangerous to work here.
You know that. The heat, the light, the fire,
The asbestos, the sulfur, the ammonia, the cyanide,
The steam, the smoke, the graphite, the falling scale,
The chromium, the molten metal, the cranes, the flying
And spinning beams, the trucks, the splinters,
The, the everything.
Don't shave, your beard protects your face!
Put on your dust shields, your gloves, your leggings,
Your wooden shoes with conveyer belt rubber soles!
Careful of the burns down the back of your throat,
The sandy, burned eyes of welding flash,
And the headaches for three days from the epoxies!
Can't keep all the bells and whistles straight?
Too bad, but everybody still loves a Tilly switch:
"The thing still runs you over, but it stops soon after."
All that and you still get complacent,
Walking around like you're in your own bedroom.
But you still could die any minute,
Crushed in the beam yard, burned doing a reline.
The list is too long.
Look at what it did to your body.
Men weren't made for what this place
Was capable of doing to them.
PROMETHEUS
I know everything this place was capable of
But I know the men and women
What they were capable of, too.
You have a list of words there
But I lived the list.
A ladle overrun, the spill hits the water,
Steam everywhere, graphite falling,
You can't see a thing. So you don't move,
And you hear your buddies yell, "Don't move!"
And you can feel the molten metal between your legs
And you can feel the mouth of hell has opened up
To swallow you. And you don't move.
You will never know. No one will ever know
Who didn't stand there, not moving,
What it's like when the building blocks of a planet
Reach up to take you back home with them.
You will never know.
Max said it, I think it was Max,
"Steelworkers don't have blood in their veins,
They have steel." How can I go back
To just having blood in my veins?
HERMAN
I've only ever had blood. It's done me okay.
PROMETHEUS
That's you.
HERMAN
I guess so.
PROMETHEUS
I'm tired.
HERMAN
Me, too. I know, I know.
I don't know tired until I've put in a triple shift
Down in the butcher shop.
I understand as best as I can, but I'm still tired.
You know, it's true:
There are some people who get satisfaction
From what's happened to you.
People who could never get a mortgage
Because they didn't work at the Steel.
People who never felt they had a job for life
Because they didn't work at the Steel.
People who never knew that they belonged somewhere
Because they didn't work at the Steel.
People who always worried about their kids
Because their kids wouldn't work at the Steel.
There's not many in this world who had everything
Like the people who worked at the Steel.
Most people outside never thought the world wouldn't change
Like people did who worked at the Steel.
But I'm not sorry for anything you ever had.
I'm glad you built the bridges and buildings and rockets
And so many things that make my life possible.
But I'm not sorry that I didn't get to build them.
I'm not even sorry that I'll never know what it's like
To stare down molten metal, your eyes aching,
And have the metal blink first.
Standing in the dark,
I can close my eyes,
I can hear the echoes
Of the bangs and the hisses and the yells
When I close my eyes.
I can see the shadows
Of the blues and the oranges and the glowing white.
I can smell the lingering scent of the tangy perfumes of your days.
I can taste the last acrid tendrils of smoke.
I feel the memory of the heat when I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes it warms me still.
And that's enough for me.
There's one thing I'll always be jealous of, though.
Most of the days of your lives, you knew
That the people who stood next to you
Would watch your back. You knew
The people who stood next to you
Would risk their lives to save yours.
You knew because you saw it happen every day.
Not because they had to, or because they should
But because they wanted to. Because they were proud to.
The history of this place is not just the history
Of injustice and battles,
Or accomplishment and courage,
It's the history of fellowship, of care.
And that's what you carry away from here,
Whenever you leave and wherever you go.
And it's not something I'll ever know,
Not like you do.
WOMAN WITH HOT DOGS
There's a festival up on 4th, kids running around,
Balloons, barbecue and cold glasses of lemonade.
(The other FESTIVALGOERS enter.)
WOMEN CHORUS LEADER
We want to be up there, and we want you to be there, too.
You need to figure out how to come with us.
PROMETHEUS
I know where all the dead are. The famous ones
On Nisky Hill and those buried out back without a marker.
I know how they died, on the job or off,
By their own hand or their bodies failing.
I can give a tour of this plant by every place the dead
Sat or worked or ate or waited or laughed.
I miss the ones I knew and the ones I didn't.
I miss them.
HERMAN
I bet they miss you, too,
But they never asked you to bury yourself with their bones.
Any more than you'd ask all these people give up their lives
To stay with you.
STEELWORKER CHORUS LEADER
You say you know history.
Can't it tell us anything that'll set this man free?
YOUNG PERSON CHORUS LEADER
He's still standing next to people
Who will risk their lives for his. We will.
(HEFFY, FESTA and UZ enter)
HEFFY (entering)
You still here?
Damn, I thought you would have had those things off
By the time we got to Nick's.
FESTA
Think those welds are real?
UZ
Sure, the forces of progress are pretty powerful,
But we're in the union.
We got rules against welding fellow members to things.
HEFFY
Those two are too busy trying to ruin everyone else's life
To be back anytime soon.
FESTA
They could come back a hundred times. It doesn't matter.
We could outsmart them a thousand.
We take care of our own.
FESTIVAL GOER 1
He doesn't want to leave?
UZ
Anybody tell him there's free food out there?
FESTIVAL GOER 2
He won't leave.
FESTIVAL GOER 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 (Tugging on various adults' sleeves)
Why won't he leave?
HEFFY
Every day I wake up and I remember
I'm not going to work where I went to work
All those years. And every day I ask myself
"Which story you going to be telling yourself today, Heff?
The one about the steel mill that accomplished things
That no one could ever have imagined possible?
Or the one about the steel mill that closed down
And ended a way of life?"
Some people are afraid
That you undercut the achievement
If you acknowledge the tragedy.
I don't think so.
I have them both with me always.
You have the right to feel whatever you need to feel
And say whatever you have to say
For as long as you want.
UZ
If anyone says you don't,
You have them come to us.
FESTA
But just because you have the right to be angry,
That doesn't mean you have to be angry every day.
UZ
We don't build America anymore because we already built it.
We finished the job.
And everything we built is still out there,
Wherever you look.
And it's going to be out there a good long time
Because, after all, it's made of steel.
HEFFY
I wish things hadn’t worked out this way.
I miss the smell and the noise and the way you feel whole
When you do something as well as anyone could ever do it.
But I’ll tell you a secret: sometimes, just sometimes,
I like the clean air and the quiet just fine.
Come on, brother.
(PROMETHEUS looks down at chains, then turns the chains so
the welds fall off easily, but he still won't leave.)
Come on, brother.
All those years we all knew it:
The walls, the machines, this place was the body.
But we were the soul. The people. You, too. All of us.
Don't you try to tell me the soul can't go on
After the body's turned cold and lifeless.
(Looks around the empty mill.)
Don't you even think of telling me that.
THE CAST
PROMETHEUS, PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS, PROMETHEUS...
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS,
GOTTA COME ON OUT, NOW (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
BETTER COME ON OUT, NOW (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
CAN YOU SEE US HERE? (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
CAN YOU HEAR US STILL? (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
IT'S BETHLEHEM. (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
YOUR BETHLEHEM. (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
WE KNOW IT'S TIME.
PROMETHEUS,
YOU KNOW IT'S TIME.
PROMETHEUS,
LIFT UP YOUR HEAD.
PROMETHEUS,
REACH OUT YOUR HAND.
PROMETHEUS,
FOR BETHLEHEM. (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
YOU ARE BETHLEHEM. (2X)
PROMETHEUS,
COME OUT UNBOUND. (4X)
PROMETHEUS,
COME OUT HOPEFUL
COME OUT JOYOUS
COME OUT WISER
COME OUT FREE
PROMETHEUS,
UNBOUND
PROMETHEUS,
UNBOUND... (REPEAT INTO FRENZY)
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS,
PROMETHEUS!
PROMETHEUS
No matter how many years I worked here,
I still had to stop and watch every time the oven was tapped.
It was beautiful.
I was happy when I worked here,
And I didn't think I'd ever leave.
But here I go.
(EVERYONE looks at him expectantly. He steps away from his chains.)
So let's go.
(Blackout.)
THE END
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