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The Golden Cage – A One-Act Musical - Overview Deborah Henson-Conant Musicals • P.1

CONTACT: Deborah Henson-Conant • Arlington MA • email: [email protected] FileInfo:goldencage_ovw_musical_v7.doc..gcserver • SD: 11/3/16 10:07:00 PM PD:11/3/16 10:07:00 PM

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The Golden Cage

A Two-Person Musical Comedy Music, Book & Lyrics by Deborah Henson-Conant

A world-weary birdman and the ultimate diva meet atop a

500,000-foot-granite cliff and wage a deadly battle of wills over a golden cage – a battle that will destroy them … or set them free.

“It’s not exactly your conventional woman-meets-man story. Consider:

Birdman is blown by a storm to a mountaintop, where he meets the ultimate housewife in her golden cage carved into a 500,000-foot-high granite cliff.

Weary of his wanderings, the half-man, half-bird schemes to take possession of her home. He rips the bars from her cage, coaxes her to the top of the mountain and … pushes her to her death.

Then he gloatingly takes up residence. A safe home at last! But wait – now he is the one who can’t get out.”

San Francisco Chronicle



SYNOPSIS

THE GOLDEN CAGE A Musical by Deborah Henson-Conant Meet Boris. He’s a world-weary Birdman, on a lifelong quest for the mythical ‘Golden Cage,’ the ultimate symbol of security and success in ancient Bird-man lore.

In an epic storm, Boris crashlands, lost on a remote, craggy peak and falls asleep, exhausted and hopeless.

When he wakes he realizes he’s landed right on top of the Golden Cage and - glorious in the sunlight - it’s everything he ever dreamed of.

Except for one thing: there’s someone inside it. She’s not a pleasant person and she’s not leaving.

Meet Alphea, a frumpy, melodramatic, opera-singing Diva, who wields a sword and dresses out of a costume-box, a housewife one minute and a

Valkyrie the next. She claims the cage is mystical prison built of granite and iron that she’s a Prisoner of Fate and can never leave.

Boris is mad with desire for the cage and desperate to remove her. Playing to her sense of drama, he concocts a lie so magnificent he begins to believe it himself: the lie that Alphea can fly.

Caught in the passion of his own lie, Boris paints an irresistible dream of freedom, invents a Rite of Passage, then lures her to the cliff, pushes her off and she crashes down the mountain.

Finally the cage belongs to him, and Boris rushes inside, triumphant. But the moment he replaces the bars from the inside, the cage transforms. Golden bars become iron, walls turn to granite, and he can’t get out. What’s more, his wings disappear.

Slowly it dawns on him that the cage is a trap he played right into, tricked into a murder that makes him the rightful prisoner - and that he’s just as lost inside the cage as he was when he was searching for it.

Sunk in guilt and despair, he doesn’t notice Alphea at the window with a glorious pair of wings — and a sudden recovery of a lost memory: as she fell she remembered she was born a birdman, had searched for the cage and found it, locked herself inside, lost her wings - and in time, forgotten how she even came to be there - but only remembered she was trapped.

Now she realizes that though your wings may disappear, you never lose your ability to fly. Boris has learned that being lost is not about where you are - and together they realize that it’s isolation that makes the cage a prison.

They realize they need each other in order to free themselves … and that sometimes you need someone else to push you to fly.



Characters

Boris Oridnikov Slepnik O’Hara – Tenor/Baritone; legitimate voice

Alphea J. Simpson-Hughes:

Soprano/Mezzo; operatic range

(for opera parody);

legitimate voice



The Golden Cage Scenes & Songs SCENE 1

“Overture” Instrumental "Storm & Travel” - Song Boris

"We started with a mission…” "The Golden Cage” - Song Boris SCENE 2 "Today" - Song Alphea "Nothing's Ever New" - Song Alphea "Monsterphobia" – Song Alphea Dialogue (character's first meeting) Alphea & Boris "Here I Am" - Song Alphea & Boris "Can't You See?" – Song Alphea & Boris SCENE 3 Dialogue – ("Prisoner of Fate" intro) "Prisoner of Fate" - Song Alphea Dialogue – ("But you could get out…) Boris & Alphea "Humor Her Madness" - Song Boris "Then At Last" - Song Boris & Alphea "The Seduction" – Song Boris & Alphea "Flying Song" - Song Boris & Alphea Interlude – Instrumental Instrumental "A Capella Duet" – Song ("I believe”) Boris & Alphea SCENE 4 Dialogue – ("I can't fly…" and Incantation tutorial) Boris & Alphea "Incantation Duet" - Song Boris & Alphea Dialogue ("What if I’m not meant to be free?") Boris & Alphea "My House is Nice Like This" - Song Alphea "Flying Song Reprise" – Song Alphea & Boris SCENE 5 "It's Mine!" - Song Boris "Gone" – Song Boris Monologue ("The prison is for me.") Boris "First Came the Dream" - Song Boris "Flying Song Reprise" - Song Boris & Alphea “The Golden Cage” Reprise – Song Alphea “Alphea’s Story” Alphea Dialogue Boris & Alphea Finale: "All Your Life" - Song Alphea & Boris Bow Music

One Act vs Two Act: "The Golden Cage" is a one-act musical approximately 90 minutes long.

For more information contact Deborah Henson-Conant • [email protected]

the golden cage - deborah henson-conant / hipharp.com · the golden cage a musical by deborah...

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