Imperia, Save the World

Imperia, Save the World: 'Cause Baby, No Worry, No Funk, Time to be Sunshine Drunk became a play with music and songs, incorporating puppets, video & projections, and starring: Imperia, a fictional goddess; Margaret Thatcher; Winnie Mandela, and Indira Gandhi, as well as their male counterparts. The play comments on the history of ownership through an examination of land, media, & power divisions. As the play opens, a war is being waged. The war is between L'Empereur & the Archbishop over the goddess, Imperia: to whom does she belong? There's a truce; the men agree that if Imperia is physically divided between them, they will stop fighting. Imperia will not be divided and flees. The men capture and imprison her and division negotiations continue, until the topic of her right breast arises. They both want it. There's an intense argument. Neither will yield, so the war restarts, and as imprisoned Imperia waits to be divided, the ghosts of the secondary stories descend upon her.

The lights rise on scene two of Imperia, revealing what appears to be a rolling, curving landscape. 2 armies, containing soldiers 4 inches high, who climb over the land and begin to battle, hurl weapons while the sounds of war rage. The armies part and envoys from each side march over the land. Soldiers then retreat as the earth begins to move and quake and rises to become a woman, Imperia, Mother Earth, who barely fits on the 20 ft. stage. For us, armies fighting over land that is revealed to be a woman's body connects wanting to own the land to wanting to have power over people and needing to own everything. will appreciate imperia's quest and the poetic language.