The original NTS production of Prudencia Hart is beginning a world tour which will visit, intitially, Scotland, England, Ireland, Brazil and New Haven Connecticut. There are plans it will also visit Australia later in the year. Full details and updates here:

http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_PrudenciaHart

PANDA IMPROMPTU

Let us go now shy Amanda,
To the Edinburgh zoo,
Let us watch the lonely pandas,
They will show us what to do.

At this, their starry caged first meeting,
How they seem like me and you:
Quiet, gentle, pained at greeting;
Awkwardly they eat bamboo

Will they mate, Tian Tian and Yang Guang?
Can careful hearts be made to melt?
Oh Amanda yours and mine can,
We can mate, all fear dispelt.

But for now we eat our shortbreads,
In the zoo canteen, apart.
In the panda cage of our heads,
Far from the forests of our heart.

Panda Impromptu #2

 

Oh Amanda, why so pensive?

I know the coffee here’s expensive

But the zoo café’s our favourite lair

And, I have paid for it, too be fair.

 

An hour you’ve sat with distant look

Occasionally glancing at your book.

As if you nurse some ache or yen

It started at the panda’s den.

 

Among the vulgar crowds there waiting

For the long awaited mating

We watched as Tian-Tian bathed in rushes

Cooling her hormonal flushes

 

Wednesday they say, today’s her day,

She’ll maybe let him have his way.

She might not, though, or he might

Decide not to mate but fight.

 

I found it rather crass and said so

If I was Yang Guang, I said, I’d say no!

No anthropomorphic voyeurism!

That’s when I noticed our little schism.

 

A something, a darkening of the sky

And I’m at a loss to fathom why.

Amanda please, tell me what’s wrong

For what lost object do you long?

 

Oh Brian, it’s obvious? Must I say it?

Doesn’t my every move display it?

In disarray, I’m overturned.

And frankly, now, I’m feeling spurned.

 

Didn’t you notice me brush against you

As we stood and watched the Coypu?

Didn’t you see me fix my hair

In the glass of the tigers’ lair?

 

Or when I got a little bolder.

And slipped my t-shirt off the shoulder

To felt the cool thrill of exposure

Near the polar bear enclosure?

 

Didn’t you notice any of it?’

Well, I did think you seemed a bit

Hot, but that didn’t seem unreasonable

Given the weather’s so unseaonal.

 

Unseasonal! Brian the spring wood’s sown

With wild garlic and pheromone

The air is warm and sweet and heady

The daffodils are out already!

 

Must I use semaphore? Must I dictate it?

I’m in love Brian, and I want to make it.

Love, not of head but crotch

Who cares if people want to watch?

 

Well, Amanda, goodness, jings,

Obviously I’ve been missing things

‘Making love’ you say, you mention ‘crotch’

But surely love’s a job we’d botch.

 

The likes of us so clumsy, hurried

Embarrassed, anxious, slightly worried.

You’re no libertine, I’m no rake

Love’s too complex for us to make.

 

Brian, it’s simple, here’s the thing

We just must give in to the spring,

Let melt our winter skins, be fecund

Bloom, for just one day, one second.

 

We’re Panda, yes, but animal too,

We meet bi-weekly at the zoo,

Let Pandas glory in their Panda-ness

We glory in Brian-ness and Amanda-ness!

 

Take my hand, come, say you will

Follow me up Corstorphine hill.

Six months now we’ve been going steady

Today it’s Wednesday, today I’m ready.

 

‘Oh Amanda, how I tremble,

In these woods I can’t dissemble.

I want you but I fear my wanting,

The whole thing feels so very daunting.’

 

Brian, shh, take off my dress.

Are you all right? ‘I think so, yes’

Is this ok? ‘That’s lovely’ This?

‘Would you mind terribly if we kiss?

 

And so we kiss and far below

That sound of tinkling, do you know?

Is it bells, or starlings flocking

Or is it Tian Tian’s cage unlocking?’