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What, I say, my foot my tutor?
âSHAKESPEARE,
The Tempest
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The curtain opens.
It is a sunny day.
In the back of the stage we see, as the stage backdrop, the façade of a farmhouse.
The stage is not deep.
The left side of the stage, from our vantage point, shows a view of a cornfield.
The right side of the stage, from our vantage point, is formed by a view of a large beetfield.
Birds are circling above both fields.
In front of the farmhouse we see a peculiar, longish object and ask ourselves what it might represent.
A rubber coat, black, covers the object partially; yet it does not fit like a glove, and so we cannot recognize what the object represents onstage.
To the right of the picture of the farmhouse door, from our vantage point, we notice a wooden block with a hatchet in it in front of a window; or rather, a large piece of wood is lying on the block, which is not quite level on the ground, and a hatchet is sticking in the piece of wood. Round about
the chopping block we notice many pieces of chopped wood, and also, of course, chips and splinters, strewn about the stage floor.
On the chopping block, next to the large piece of wood with the hatchet sticking in it, we notice a cat: while the curtain opens the cat probably raises its head and subsequently does what it usually does, so that we recognize: the cat represents what it does.
Upon first glance, we have seen someone sitting next to the chopping block, on a stool: a figure.
Now, after having briefly taken in the other features of the stage, we turn back to this figure sitting on a stool in the sunshine in front of the picture of the house.
Heâthe figure is that of a maleâis dressed in rural garb: that is, he is wearing blue coveralls over his pants; his shoes are heavy; on top, the person is wearing only an undershirt.
No tattoos are visible on his arms.
The person wears no covering on his head.
The sun is shining.
It is probably not necessary to mention explicitly that the person squatting on the stool in front of the picture of the house is wearing a mask. This mask covers half of his faceâthe upper part, that isâand is immobile. It represents a face which, moreover, evinces an expression of considerable glee, within limits, of course.
The figure on the stage is youngâsome recognize that this figure probably represents the ward.
The ward has his legs stretched out in front of him.
We see that he is wearing hobnail boots.
The ward is holding the underside of his right knee with his left hand; the right leg, in contrast to the left, is slightly bent.
We see that the ward is leaning with his back against the backdrop representing the house wall.
In his right hand the figure is holding a rather large yellow
apple. Now that the curtain has opened and is open, the figure brings the apple to his mouth.
The ward bites into the apple, as if no one were watching.
The apple does not crunch especially, as if no one were listening.
The picture as a whole exudes something of the quality of what one might call profound peacefulness.
The ward eats the apple, as if no one were watching.
(If you make a point to watch, apples are often eaten with a good deal of affectation.)
The figure thus consumes the apple, not particularly slowly, not particularly quickly.
The cat does what it does. If it should decide to leave the stage, no one should stop it from doing so.
If at first we paid too much attention to the figure, we now have sufficient time to inspect the other objects and areas (see above).
Can one gather from the manner in which the ward consumes the apple that he enjoys dependent status? Actually not.
Because we have been looking so intently, we have almost overlooked that the figure has already finished eating the apple. Nothing unusual has occurred during this process, the figure has no unusual way of consuming apples, perhaps a few seeds have fallen on the floor; chickens are not in evidence.
Now it's the second apple's turn.
To accomplish this, the ward stretches out his right leg completely, and with his left hand reaches under the coveralls into the right pocket of his pants. Obviously he is not making out too well.
He couldn't reach into the pocket with his right hand, however, since he would have to lean back to do so but sits too near the wall to be able to lean back as far as he would have to.
He slides forward with the stool and leans back against the picture of the wall: no, the upper and lower parts of his body are still at too much of an angle for his hand to be able to do what it wants to do.
The pause is noticeable.
The ward stands up and while he stands reaches into his pants pocket and easily extracts the apple.
While still in the process of sitting down, he bites into the apple.
With his bottom the ward shoves the stool closer to the wall of the house again and assumes a similar, though not precisely the same, position as the initial one; the cat moves or does not move, the ward eats.
From behind the cornfield backdropâfrom our vantage point, the leftâa second figure emerges, the warden, judging from all visible evidence: rubber boots covered with mud up to the knee, gray work pants, a checkered shirt (white & blue) with rolled-up sleeves, tattoos on his arms, an open collar, a mask covering the upper half of his face, a hat with a pheasant feather stuck in it, an insignia on the hat, a carpenter's pencil behind his ear, a very big pumpkin in front of his stomach.
Now that the warden has entered the stage, we see that the backdrop representing the cornfield consists of many small movable parts which are falling back into their original positions ⦠the cornfield is calming down, the birds are again circling on one and the same spot.
The warden sees the ward.
The warden steps up close and takes a look at the ward.
The ward is quietly eating his apple.
The warden's watching the ward drags on.
Gradually, as we watch, the eating of the apple also begins to drag on.
The longer the warden watches the ward, the more the eating of the apple is drawn out.
When the warden has stared down the ward, the latter stops eating the apple.
The pumpkin which the warden is holding in front of his stomach is, as we see, a real pumpkin.
But we hardly notice this any more, for after the warden has outstared the ward and the ward has simultaneously ceased eating his apple, which is now lying oddly half-eaten in the ward's hand, the stage is already becoming gradually dark. The scene is finished.
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A new scene now begins in the dark, we can hear it. What we hear is a loud, prerecorded breathing that is piped in over a loudspeaker. After a period of silence the loud breathing suddenly sets in, and it continues neither evenly louder nor softer but constantly wavering back and forth within its prescribed decibel range, in such a manner that we are made to think: now it will get louder and louder and become the loudest possible breathing, but at this point it suddenly becomes quite soft again, and we think: now the breathing is about to stop altogether, when it suddenly becomes loud again, and in fact far louder than what we consider natural breathing. It is “like” the strongly amplified breathing of an old man, but not quite; on the other hand, it is “like” the strongly amplified breathing of a wild animal that has been cornered, but not quite, either; it is “voracious,” “frightened,” “ominous,” but not quite; at times it seems to signify someone's “death throes” to us, but somehow it doesn't either because it appears to change location constantly. In the Italian spy film
The Chief Sends His Best Man
(with Stewart Granger and Peter van Eyck, directed by Sergio Sollima) there is a sequence in which an apartmentâwhich someone has entered and in which he has found his dead friendâsuddenly becomes dark; after a few moments of quiet the aforementioned breathing suddenly becomes audible all over the room, and for such a long time and so intensively
that the intruder, in his desperation, start's shooting and jumps up from behind his chair, whereupon he is shot and the lights are turned onâa young man stands above him, a small tape recorder in his hand, which he now switches off, whereupon the “hideous” breathing stops: that is the kind of breathing that is meant here, without the same consequences, of courseâas suddenly as it started, it stops again after a certain time.
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We are sitting pretty much in the dark; judging from the noises coming from that direction, the stage is being rearranged.
While it is gradually becoming completely dark, we hear music, a succession of chords piped in very much at random, with the pauses between them varying in length. Occasionally several chords follow each other in quick succession.
The chords are taken from the tune “Colors for Susan” from
I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die
(Vanguard VSD 70266) by Country Joe and the Fish. The piece only lasts five minutes and fifty-seven seconds, so it's repeated over and over during the course of events, except for the very end of the tune, which is reserved for the end of the events.
Onstage, ward and warden are in the process of rearranging the stage: what was inside before is now turned inside out.
If the stage is of the revolving kind, this process is managed by turning the stage 180 degrees.
If the stage is not of the revolving kind, ward and warden simply turn the backdrops of the cornfield, beetfield, and house façade so that the backs of the backdrops now represent the inside walls of the house.
We look out through the back window, behind which the birds are circling.
Lacking a revolving stage, ward and warden take the objects that stood in front of the house (the object under the rubber coat, etc.) to the back of the stage, and now, as
it becomes bright again, they bring the furnishings for the house onstage.
This is what is required for the play: a rather large table, two chairs, an electric hot plate, a coffee grinder, an assortment of bottles, glasses, cups, saucers, and plates (on the floor in back), an oil lamp, a rubber hose, a bootjack, a newspaper which sticks in the crack of the door.
On a nail on the door hangs a bullwhip; on the same nail there also hangs a pair of scissors.
We see a large monthly calendar hanging on what is, from our vantage point, the right wall of the room.
But so that we can see all of this, the following has transpired in the meantime: the warden lit a match in the dark and turned up the oil lamp. As we already know from many other plays, the entire stage gradually becomes bright when someone lights an oil lamp: the same happens here.
Now that the stage is brightly litâlet us not forget to listen to the music, which becomes neither softer nor louderâwe see it in the following condition: it now represents the room of a house. But this room is still empty, except for the paper in the crack of the door, the objects on the door, and the calendar.
We see ward and warden, who come onstage from the left and right sides respectively, distribute the aforementioned objects throughout the room: each brings in a chair, then the table is brought onstage by the two of them, then comes the warden with the rubber hose, which he drags across the stage before dropping it, then comes the ward with the bottles and plates, then the warden with the glassesâunhurriedly but not ceremonially eitherâjust as though we weren't watching; circus workers would go about it differently. No evincing of satisfaction, no contemplation of work well done, no moving to the music.
They both sit down, the ward almost first but he stops midway and the warden is seated, then the ward sits down too.
They both make themselves comfortable.
The music is pleasant.
The warden extends his legs under the table.
The ward also extends his legs under the table and comes to a halt when he touches the warden's feet; then, after a pause, the ward slowly withdraws his legs; the warden does not withdraw his.
The ward sits there. What to do with his legs?
Quiet, music.
The ward puts his feet on the front crosspiece of his own chair, and to accomplish this he uses his body to shove the chair back, producing the customary sound; the warden doesn't let himself be disturbed, he replies by taking off his hat and placing it on the table.
Quiet, music.
The ward slowly looks around the room, around, up, and also down, but avoids grazing the warden with his eyes, makes an about-face, so to speak, whenever he is just about to look at the warden: this is repeated so often that it loses its psychological significance.