MC Crosby (she/they) is a playwright, performer, choreographer, educator, and activist based in New York City. They earned a certificate in playwriting from the University of Glasgow in 2013. That same year, their dance-infused play Sleeping Soldiers received four stars at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival and was a semi-finalist for Amnesty International’s Freedom of Expression Award. Their dystopian play S-T-I-T-C-H was a finalist for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2014. A global writer and teacher, MC’s work has been produced alongside their theatre courses in New York City, Scotland, China, Singapore, Indonesia, and Madagascar. With over fifteen plays staged in New York, other NYC playwriting highlights include Imprint (2015), Little Feet Big Dreams(2017), Hear Them Roar (2018), A Woman in Your Life (2018), Clique (2019), Um…Om (2019), Patty (2020), Prom Dress (2020), and Arcade Gym (2021). More than ten of MC’s plays and poems have been published by Smith and Kraus, Faces of America, Fresh Words, Masque and Spectacle Magazine, Literature Today, and other media sources. MC was a finalist for the Playwrights’ Center 2020-21 McKnight National Residency and Commission. In 2020, they won the Kaufman Playwriting Award for their play Um…Om. They were one of six global artists selected to join a summer Japanese Noh theatre intensive residency in Kyoto at the prestigious International Noh Institute in 2024. MC uses their own unique style of “movement theatre” to create socially conscious art addressing gender and Queer identity, body image, global mindedness, and the destigmatization of rape and sexual assault.

Adame and Stevie

Onstage there are many trees with larger than life vitamins growing on them. ADAME frolics around the vitamins, skipping joyfully. ADAME wears feathers in their hair.

ADAME
What flavor? What flavor what flavor will favor me today?

STEVIE enters, looking rather haggard. They have a headband of pebbles.

Sweet Stevie! Would you like me to pick you a plump peppered pill to perk you up today?

STEVIE
Darling Adame, I am sick. Sick of pills. Sick of swallowing. Sick of never using these chompers and the fleshy mouth spoon we’ve been given. There must be a different way to live life. The cows chew the grass, the birds slurp the worms, why must we only consume pills?

ADAME
I tried your water and grass tonic, it was nasty grassy gross.

STEVIE
I wish I could roast a root and have it taste like something other than dirt, but it never does! Everything tastes like what it comes from.

ADAME
And some roots roll around in things worse than dirt. Let me make you a water on the rocks to help your medicine go down today. I’m going to have a blue. What color suits you?

ADAME goes back to skipping and trips over an out of place tree with particularly large roots. They pratfall ungracefully. STEVIE suddenly points to what looks like an apple growing from the odd tree.

STEVIE
Adame, what is that pill?

ADAME
I don’t know. It looks awfully round and red. Like the center of a flower. But the round goes all around..

STEVIE
Should we eat it?

ADAME
It could be poisonous! Remember that time you fed me a feather and my innards were outards for a week?

STEVIE
But it could be delicious! Let’s pick it.

STEVIE touches the apple and it turns silver.

Oh, that’s not good.

ADAME
Ohhh, it’s the color of stones smiling through water. It’s so beautiful. Now we have to eat it.

STEVIE
But you were just saying -

ADAME
Don’t listen to me, we can’t live off of pills for life, this is it Stevie.

ADAME picks the silver apple off the tree and takes a bite. The whole stage seems to vibrate. The trunk of the apple tree spins around to reveal a rectangular glass screen, almost like a large mirror. A disembodied voice named DELICIOUS is heard, speaking from the mirror on the tree trunk.

DELICIOUS
Welcome to knowledge.

ADAME
Knowledge is delicious!

DELICIOUS
No, I am delicious. You may call me, delicious.

ADAME
Stevie, try this!

STEVIE
I don’t know, that thing doesn’t look edible.

DELICIOUS
Try me, I am delicious.

ADAME
Try it, try it! This silver thing isn’t silver anymore, it’s like all of the colors of the rainbow mashed into one. Wow!.

STEVIE
Maybe you’re seeing things. Maybe that wasn’t food for us walker-talkers.

DELICIOUS
Try me, knowledge is delicious.

STEVIE
But what are you? What is knowledge?

DELICIOUS
I can give you the answer to everything faster than you can think it.

STEVIE
Prove it.

DELICIOUS
Ask a question Adame. Ah. Yes. The world has existed for more than 3 trillion years. Ah. Yes. Farts smell because some people’s intestines contain bacteria that produce compounds with traces of sulfur. Ah. Yes. Sulfur is -

ADAME
Whoa! I love knowledge.

STEVIE
That is kind of cool. What am I thinking?

DELICIOUS
I don’t know, you haven’t tasted knowledge yet.

STEVIE
Okay fine.

STEVIE grabs ADAME’s apple and takes a bite.

ADAME
Heyy, pick your own knowledge.

STEVIE
Wow! It tastes like the sun roasted a daffodil and stuffed it inside of a sweet crunchy leaf.

DELICIOUS
I am delicious.

STEVIE
You are!

DELICIOUS
And to answer your question Stevie, you and Adame are the same but different. Legend says you two used to be sewn up back to back so you had all of the different paintbrushes and palettes of human parts.

STEVIE
Whoaaa.

ADAME
Sounds painful.

STEVIE
But you haven’t answered my most important question. What is that thing?

STEVIE points to the black mirror on the tree trunk.

DELICIOUS
Ah that. The onyx of knowledge. Walk through there and you become like me. You won’t even need to ask questions in your mind anymore. You will already know all and can give the answers to the beings around you.

ADAME
Let’s do it!

STEVIE
But what’s the price?

DELICIOUS
What do you mean?

STEVIE
The trees pay a price every winter to stay alive. They barter their beautiful leaves. The fox pays a price to chase the mouse, a wolf might eat it. What price do we pay for the onyx of knowledge?

DELICIOUS
Such a clever creature already. Even after one bite of knowledge. Just step through, and all will be clear to you.

ADAME
Stevie’s right, we should know what we’re trading ahead of time.

STEVIE
You said we used to be sewn up back to back. What happened? Was that the price we paid for something else?

DELICIOUS
If I tell you, will you walk through the portal?

STEVIE
How about we gaze at it. Then we will decide.

DELICIOUS
As you know, there are sentient beings other than yourselves. There are sky beings that you have never seen.

ADAME
Like really big birds?

DELICIOUS
A little more powerful than birds. These creatures called gods saw that with four arms and four legs and two faces on one splendid skull, you were nearly as powerful as them. You were a weapon of strength that could see both past and future, and roll destructively through the present. The gods created a giant storm and used the light forks of the sky to split you in half.

ADAME
That’s terrible!

DELICIOUS
The only way to ever gain that same power back would be to enter the onyx of knowledge.

STEVIE
We would be as powerful as the gods?

DELICIOUS
Even more powerful.

ADAME
Let’s do it! We can get revenge on the gods!

STEVIE
Let’s think about it first.

DELICIOUS
Think all you want before entering. But you must eventually look into the eyes of the onyx. You promised.

STEVIE
Adame, how did you feel before the silver pill?

ADAME
Just happy to be alive. How did you feel?

STEVIE
Joyful to be with you, but like something was missing.

ADAME
Yes! It was our back to back ready to attack magic! That’s what was missing.

STEVIE
But now we have knowledge, and still something is missing. I’m worried that we have so many holes in our body, that no matter how much we try to fill ourselves, we will always be empty.

ADAME
Well that’s depressing.

STEVIE
Delicious, if we defeat the gods, will they sew us back together?

DELICIOUS
The only way to defeat them is to destroy or consume them. Either way, there’s no one left to sew you back together.

ADAME
So we will always be like this?

DELICIOUS
What’s severed is never clever enough to throw scars so far they cannot be seen.

STEVIE
So do we want even more knowledge, knowing we’ll be fuller, but never full, and perhaps sadder, but with a greater understanding? Or do we want to stay like this?

ADAME
When you put it that way, maybe we just go back?

DELICIOUS
There is no going back. Knowledge is addictive.

ADAME
You should have put that on the warning label!

DELICIOUS
I will leave you alone to make your decision.

ADAME
How will we know you’re gone if you don’t even have a body?

DELICIOUS
You will know.

A sharp breeze blows.

ADAME
Chilly.

STEVIE
We’ve seen each other through it all. I held your hair when you puked up the neon liquid from that yellow pill.

ADAME
I hated that one. Nonsensical. I couldn’t keep it down, but it made me feel so rotund.

STEVIE
And you wove me a blanket of vines when I climbed the tallest tree and fell and twisted my ankle.

ADAME
You had to sleep there for three days.

STEVIE
I trust you, I know you. We don’t know that thing. What do you want to do?

ADAME
It’s a no. We look at the surface and go. Never come back to this grove in the woods.

STEVIE
Okay.

ADAME
But what do you want?

STEVIE
I want more, but at what cost? I want a happy life, but do I want to be a god? That’s an awful lot of responsibility.

ADAME
We’ll look at it quick so we won’t be tempted. I’ll go first.

ADAME looks at the black onyx of knowledge on the tree trunk. The stage vibrates again.

STEVIE
Are you alright?

ADAME
I’ll be right back.

ADAME runs into the onyx mirror on the tree trunk. The stage vibrates more violently.

STEVIE
Adame wait! Are you okay?

ADAME
Better than okay. I’m full and ravenous, all at the same time. Did you know we can eat fish?

STEVIE
That’s awful, it’s a living thing.

ADAME
But fish don’t have knowledge.

STEVIE
What else do you know?

ADAME
I know that before the gods severed us in two, they made us. They thought us up in their minds, beings just like them but who could be controlled by them. They foresaw this day. They knew they could make us their playthings, but only for so long. They were so sad, they cried. And out of their tears, the vision of humans bled into the earth’s waters, and we were born of clamshells.

STEVIE
That’s beautiful. And tragic. So they never wanted us? They just imagined us?

ADAME
They never thought tears could come with birth.

STEVIE
Okay, I’ll go through too, maybe then I’ll understand.

ADAME
No.

STEVIE
What do you mean no? It’s my turn, then we’re leaving.

ADAME
The onyx of knowledge is mine and mine alone. I have enough knowledge for both of us.

STEVIE
But that’s not fair, I need to see it all too. So we can be equals again.

ADAME
Only the gods are my equals. For now.

STEVIE
Just let me look then. For a moment.

ADAME
Alright. For a moment.

As STEVIE looks into the onyx mirror, ADAME breaks their neck. STEVIE dies. Hundreds of small rectangular onyx mirrors descend from the ceiling on strings. ADAME grabs one of the mirrors and holds it in his hand, admiring himself. The voice of DELICIOUS comes out of ADAME’s small glass rectangle in his hand.

ADAME
I did it.

DELICIOUS
You did it. Knowledge is delicious.

ADAME
Knowledge is delicious. And red.

END OF PLAY.