From the Other Side of Darkness
(When There’s No Place Like Home)
by Levi Wise-Kenneth Catoe Jr.
PRELUDE: WAR IS STUPID
Daytime in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. DOUG stands alone.
A slow heartbeat rhythm pulses from an AFRICAN DRUMMER seated downstage. Beside the drummer, an AFRICAN DANCER moves with deliberate grace, beginning what feels like a quiet ritual.
The setting is the modest living room of Doug’s family trailer. The space is humble and lived-in: three worn easy chairs loosely gathered around a low coffee table, and a small love seat pressed against one wall. The furniture does not match, but it carries the warmth of long use.
Christmas decorations linger in small details. A crocheted throw drapes over an armrest. A stack of prayer books and unopened mail rests on the table. Somewhere offstage, a box fan hums softly.
Through the static of a radio broadcast, a voice cuts in.
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DJ MARVEL PROFESSOR
(aside)
Salutations scholars and intellectual thinkers all across these Sleepy Eye, Minnesota airwaves—season’s greetings.
For those who are not woke, let me teach. Some folks want to be a star.
(TOMMIE enters and sits.)
Some refuse to move, neither near nor far. (DOUG sits center.)
And some? Well, some don’t even know who they are. (MITCH enters.)
Class is in session.
Lesson one: the blues is not just music—it’s survival.
You are now tuned into the Evening Blues… with the DJ Marvel Professor. The drumbeat grows louder. Then stops.
TOMMIE speaks.
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TOMMIE
Doug, you talk about home like it’s cheap. Nobody our age is buying unless they’re rich.
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MITCH
Same with college. You graduate already drowning in debt.
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TOMMIE
Which kills your shot at a home. That’s why I picked tech school—videography. Way cheaper. College ain’t for everyone.
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MITCH
Meanwhile rich kids get into Ivy League just because of family names.
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TOMMIE
Who cares about the elites?
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MITCH
Duh… I do.
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TOMMIE
Well… they’ll cut DEI before touching white entitlement. Legacy still trumps all. (beat)
Get it? Trumps all…
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DOUG
(burns himself with his lighter) Ouch! That… burns.
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MITCH
The truth or the fire?
(TOMMIE and MITCH continue smoking.)
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TOMMIE
Yeah, and the same folks twisting Black culture. Hip hop becomes gangs, drugs, strippers—like it’s all we are. Just the crack era repackaged.
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DOUG
And guns?
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TOMMIE
No other country’s got gun deaths like us. Republicans won’t fix it—just blame cities or the border.
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DOUG
When it’s governors bussing asylum seekers and refugees across the map.
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TOMMIE
Abbott. DeSantis. Shipping people like cargo. And Trump? KKK without the sheet. Runs on fear—conspiracy—tearing rights apart.
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DOUG
But Trump’s trying to bring back law and order!
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TOMMIE
Law and order? He let the January Sixth mob walk free. That wasn’t protest—it was a coup.
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DOUG
Maybe. But abroad too… Russia, Ukraine. Colombia. Calling out antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian stuff happened… but now twenty million dollars going to Jewish organizations because someone stirred the pot and someone’s paying the price.
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MITCH
(looking out the window)
Sometimes I wish we could just leave this broken universe behind.
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DOUG
Where? Behind the moon… beyond the rain?
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AYLA NURU
(aside)
Behind the moon.
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MOVING CLOUD
(aside)
Beyond the rain.
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TOMMIE
Naw, D-boy. Some place closer to the sun.
The radio crackles. Smoke drifts through the room as the three boys sit in a haze of thought.
Outside the window, clouds seem to shift in unnatural patterns.
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DOUG
Is it me… or are the clouds moving?
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MOVING CLOUD and AYLA NURU
(aside)
One cloud. One storm.
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MITCH and TOMMIE begin to drift into sleep.
The clouds gather as if responding to a hidden rhythm. The voice on the radio returns.
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DJ MARVEL PROFESSOR
(aside)
It’s DJ Marvel Professor on your dial once again. Cyclone coming for Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. Don’t sleep on it—this storm does not play.
Might take you someplace you never dreamed. Designer boys? Don’t be toys.
Material girls? Don’t lose yourself in a material world. (laughs)
The cosmos does not lie.
You’re tuned to the Golden Ray Frequency—where fashion fades but soul survives. Hold tight, people. The winds are changing.
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DOUG
Designer boys? Designer world?
I don’t want any world that doesn’t have my mother in it. She’s my whole breath. My vow. My promise.
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MOTHER EARTH
(aside)
Promises sometimes break.
But I—Mother Earth—have always carried you.
In the soil. In the breath between storms. In the silence you mistake for absence. You run from me. You doubt me.
Still—I rise in your footsteps.
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The wind grows stronger.
Clouds swirl into a storm.
The radio crackles violently.
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DJ MARVEL PROFESSOR
(aside)
Reports say the wind’s got teeth tonight, folks—and it’s biting back. Cyclone patterns shifting faster than a hustler at a county fair.
This ain’t your grandma’s twister. Pressure’s dropping.
And somewhere above us… the sun just cleared its throat.
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MOTHER EARTH
(aside)
Welcome inside.
You have now entered the sun.
Hold fast, children. The ground you knew is gone. But roots travel with you—even into fire.
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