Keeara Rhoades

Cutie Beauty & The BAT-SWING Fly

(Episode 8) filmed live at Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA)

It’s a BAT-SWING Fly under the tornado sky! Horses swat the flies from the other’s eyes, and Cutie Beauty spies from the fence line. Spotting a cloud of dust in the distant hills, she breaks a picket from the fence, squeezes through and ventures toward the action, “Walking While Cute (is not a crime)”, marching while cute is! Equipped for defense with her super cute, white inside-out unstuffed animal bear BAT, Cutie Beauty discovers a field where bats swing and girls sing, “We are our own team”. Within fragmented space four girls play a cryptic game – a lingo of sorts where actions are used to substitute words: It’s a baseball game played by a Pitcher who throws things like a bone to a DOG while eyeing the Batter’s strike zone; a Catcher who crouches like a FROG; a Batter who is in a fog or a daze while under the Pitcher’s gaze; and an Umpire who is a board or a LOG – against all odds she is not bored and unalike a boar HOG. Beneath and behind, Cutie Beauty engages the team to discover just how far they are willing to throw the ball or SWING the BAT.

Scene 1: Cutie Beauty & the Adoration of the Horses

Scene 2: Walking While Cute (is not a crime)

Scene 3: In a Field Beyond the Horses (where bats swing) we are our own team

[scene from screenplay]

Off in the distance movement catches Cutie Beauty’s eye. Above, the sky begins to darken –

 CUTIE BEAUTY
(thinks to herself – )

 It’s a tornado sky!

As she waits time escalates, she is going to be very late --

CUTIE BEAUTY
(singing)

 It’s not my fault that I’m always late but what people don’t know is that I have to wait … I have to transport vertical lengths, and sometimes the white caps rise and fall, yeah sometimes the white caps rise and fall. Fall fall fall thirty-feet within seconds, fall fall fall thirty-feet within seconds.

Curious about the distant action, CB grabs her BAT, breaks a picket from the fence and squeezes through -- With picket and BAT in hand, she ventures into the pasture to investigate… Along the way she picks a lovely branch of steel blue, bloomed petals.

CUTIE BEAUTY
(singing)

It’s a BAT-SWING Fly!

Under the tornado sky

Horses swat the flies

From the other’s eyes …

Walking While Cute (is not a crime), marching while cute is.

As CB closes in on the distant action, she discovers four girls playing in the field, and they are making much dust. CB hesitates for a moment, uncertain if she is crossing an unwelcome boundary.