LA BRUJA and EL BRUJO are nearly identical plays. The shaman is male in El Brujo, and female in La Bruja. A performance of either should carry a warning: THE COMBINATION OF CANDLE LIGHT AND GUIDED FANTASIES USED IN THE PLAY IS VERY POWERFUL. NOT FOR EVERYONE. From LA BRUJA: RALPH You had something Johnny? JOHNNY Yes. I want to bring a guest to our next meeting. A wonder woman who will amaze and delight. BILL (Rolls his eyes.) I don’t know Johnny. That theologian you brought last time didn’t exactly amaze and delight. JOHNNY You and Jean were all over that poor guy. JEAN We were just testing his sainthood---he didn’t pass. I didn’t know human faces could get that red. (Laughter.) JOHNNY Well, the woman I want to bring isn’t a saint either, but I doubt you can get her face red. She’s not a theologian, not a philosopher not a physicist. She’s a shaman, a bruja from the Sonoran desert. JEAN Johnny, you have to be kidding. Is she like that creepy character out of Castaneda? Or just a pretty little thing, gulling the gullible, as she lifts a few more dollars from the poor saps? JOHNNY (Laughs but is becoming irritated.) That is for you to decide. I just hope she can get past your iron-plated skull. JEAN (Said with a slight trace of condescension) No problem there, if there is any merit in what she has to say. But, I don’t waste time on nonsense. And, you shouldn’t either. JOHNNY How can you evaluate an idea before you hear it? JEAN You play the odds. You know in advance that ideas coming from some people are just not going to be worth wasting your precious brain cells. RALPH I feel sorry for that poor theologian. We never gave him much of a chance. JEAN He didn’t deserve a chance. He still lives in the middle ages. And this shaman still lives in a cave, somewhere far out in the wilderness of the Sonora desert. Stones talk to her as she walks by, and the friendly crows she meets are smarter than she is. JOHNNY And now the stones are dead, and crows are just big, black birds. Science sucked the magic and mystery out of life, and left us with what? JEAN Your safe, easy life for starters. You’d rather eat cactus grubs and live in a cave? JOHNNY Some days, that is exactly what I’d like to do. But, you’re right. I love my computer and micro wave to heat my morning coffee too much for that. And, so sad, I lost the magic and wonder of my childhood a long time ago. I know how T. S. Eliot felt when he wrote, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing for me.”