Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 19

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abandonment and feelings of isolation as a lesbian in a rural town. Nobody understood or
accepted her, from her family, to neighbors, to women she’s attracted to, or even a prostitute in
one situation that is implied as being the point of her “outing” to the community. The second
monologue comes from Emma, who tells a tale about an old, blind turkey who sings to attract
other birds to him to come dancing. One day he’s singing at Thanksgiving dinner, and when the
chef comes at him with a knife, he thinks it’s just a bird pecking so he stays put and the chef kills
him. When they open him up, they discover “a place to live in there” with furniture and brightly lit
windows, covered in duck feathers and dust. In this place was a table set for a feast, and two
hundred girls who killed all the bugs so they couldn’t get in there. As the story delineates into
this sort of semi-senile rant, we discover a kind of parallel to Della’s story: These two once
attractive characters who were the centers of attention became misunderstood by those around
them, and by themselves in the process. It is only once they’re ostracized (or killed), they
discover the home that lives inside themselves with everything they’ve ever wanted. The last
monologue is Cora’s, where her story on about going to market to get some things for Della and
the understanding that the shop keepers provide for her furthers both Della and Emma’s
monologues about acceptance, love, and family. We end with a tableau reflecting on the deaths
of these characters, sometimes tragic and sometimes normal, which serves to normalize the
sensation of the piece with a concrete example of how universally the stories portrayed could be
accepted.
One of the major points of the early history of the WOW Café Theater was to subvert
heteronormativity in pop culture, and to pay homage to the television that played a part in
developing their ideas of subversion such as the biracial love story/strong business-oriented
female lead of I Love Lucy and the deconstructing of “typical” family structure in shows such as
The Addams Family and Gilligan’s Island. Young queer women could identify with these shows,
and the “weirdness” of it all, and shows like Split Britches serve to further these points made in