The Wilted Plant: A One Act In Progress

I’ve been thinking about therapy, theater, resilience, and the ways systems gaslight people into believing their suffering is personal instead of systemic. Out of that came this play.

It’s still in progress — raw, ritualistic, part incantation, part testimony — but I want to share it as it grows. What follows is a draft of a 20-minute one-act. Two characters: a woman who used to be a therapist, now a truth-teller, restless and fierce; and a man who embodies a wilted plant. The play is about boxes, resilience, patriarchy, wilt, and the refusal to blame the leaf when the soil is poisoned.

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The Wilted Plant

Characters:

WOMAN — restless, fierce, priestess-like. She paces, collapses, kneels, circles, presses close, rants, prays, chants. She embodies both analysis and incantation.

Costume: She wears a long white dress, canvas or linen, covering her from head to toe. The dress is plain but striking, evoking ritual. Her hair is up and braided, echoing something timeless, almost ceremonial — part priestess, part rebel, part witness.

THE PLANT (a man) — slumped, wilted, mostly silent. His body droops, trembles, flails when touched or watered. He has only a few lines, hoarse and fragile.

Scene: Bare stage. A low stool (the “pot”). A small table with a glass pitcher of water. The PLANT slumps center. The WOMAN circles.

Lighting: starts harsh and clinical, shifts toward warmth and ritual, then back to starkness.

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