Tortoise Boy: A Chamber Play

by Charles Tidler

Four disparate people confront each other, their memory, and their responsibility at the emergency room of a hospital when brought together by the crisis of a teenager suffering a psychiatric episode. Tortoise Boy is a “chamber play,” four monologues, or mono-dialogues, if you will. The actors play many characters to tell the story, and they are also four voices, four instruments—a quartet—allowing them at times to step beside characters and show the story from other points of view. Can we have a future without a past? Is there any meaning to a past that has no future? When do our memories open doors, and when do they close them? What’s best forgotten? What’s indelible? The ancient Greeks believed that memory is the mother of the muses, and the words memory, muse, and music all share a common root.

64 pages

First published January 1, 2008