[Dark. Music. A figure is revealed in a tight cone of light. She is moved by the power of the words she will speak, not the music. Behind her she is watched by the PRESENTER whose face in close up is a presence on a giant video screen which dwarfs her.] FIRST STANZA SM: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rat's feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men [Blackout. The face remains. It begins to speak.] PRESENTER: I want to tell you the parable of the frog and the scorpion. One day a frog was swimming happily in the shallows at the edge of his river, content with his lot and the world as he perceived it, when he was approached by a scorpion. He pretended he wasn't frightened, but still, he swam a little further from the bank and kept an eye on him. "Frog", said the scorpion, "I wish to cross this river, but cannot swim, will you carry me across on your back?' The Frog replied, "Well, I may be innocent and trusting, but I'm not stupid. If I carry you on my back across the river, you will sting and kill me." The scorpion said, "How could that be? If I did, you would sink, and I would drown. I may be cynical and cunning, but I'm not stupid either. Brave frog, clever frog, won't you do what I cannot and swim me across?" Feeling foolish the frog agreed to the task, and however fearfully, he set of across the torrent. Half way across, the scorpion drove his sting hard into the frogs neck. In confusion the frog turned to the scorpion and with his dying breath whispered, " Why? You know that you will die here also." The scorpion replied, " Because it's in my nature." [VIDEO FREEZE FRAME AND FADE - MUSIC. The S.M. enters, a vague figure in the dark carrying a small mag-lite. In the corner is a heap which, Stimulated by the noise begins to heave, then groan, building to a crescendo which attracts the S.M.'s attention. She panics] SM: Jesus! Who's there whosetherewhosethere whosetherefuckfuckfuck fuckoff arsehole i'llkill you you bastard! go away go away goaway! nononononon...... [She searches for the source using the torch like a search Light, but she doesn't spot him. Voice can't actually speak yet. He makes grunting sounds, gargling and stuff, which just alarms her even more. She starts screaming in real fear and starts throwing all available objects close to hand at him. Eventually he finds his voice and shouts] VOICE: For Heaven's sake woman , Cease! Desist! Abate thy noise, to a nunnery GO - and quickly too. [The torch finds his bleary head amongst the pile of material] SM: Voice! VOICE: Yes! SM: I'm glad it's you. VOICE: So'm I. SM: You shit. You fucking shit, you scared me. VOICE: All I did was - wake up. [Lights up. We see the SM do it.] SM: What are you doing here? You're always late. You used to be predictable. VOICE: You used to be observant. S.M: I used to be young. VOICE: Pah! When? [She belts him, then stands, daring him to retaliate] S.M: [To the audience] Belting him makes me intensely happy. Why is that do you think? VOICE: Do you want to hear or not? S.M: No. VOICE: [Bogart] I got home at dawn to be greeted by a locked, dark and stonily silent house. I performed in the street for several minutes. Amused blandishments followed by earnest pleading, aggrieved entreaty, winding up with righteous anger and dire threats. [Drops voice] To no avail. Thus you see me, outcast and melancholy. SM: Did she say anything at all? VOICE: [Bogart] Bitter laughter and an exceptionally loud assertion to the effect I should return to the warmth of the bed I'd just left. [Gielgud] To bed, to sleep. To sleep perchance to dream. [Normal - shivers] Urggh! Cold comfort considering. [pause] I don't think the neighbours enjoy our company any more. She used a lot of bad words. SM: Ahhhh! She spoke the truth! I bet THAT was uncomfortable! VOICE: My offence is rank, it smells to heaven. SM: I don't care. Who was she? VOICE: The one in the pub. [The S.M. shrieks - a monster has walked into the room] She wanted to do it with someone famous. SM: When did she realise her mistake? She might fuck someone popular yet, you never know. [Aside] She'll have to move though, there's no-one famous here. VOICE: Would you be here if you were famous? S.M: I don't want to be famous. VOICE: Your ambition achieved, desire incarnate. O horrible! O horrible! Most horrible! SM: You're hopeless Voice! No wonder she locked you out. VOICE: Remove the log from your own eye first, sister. SM: I'M not MARRIED! VOICE: Neither am I any more apparently. Is that a tragedy? There is a sense of pressure lifted. Relief. Relief and fatigue. Relief, fatigue and ennui. Never mind. Now the hurly- burly's done, now the battle's lost and won. Never mind. [pause] She doesn't hate me though you know. No. It's much worse than that. SM: Indifference? VOICE: Am I that transparent? SM: You're an actor. [They get busy. She has a sudden suspicion.] SM: Voice? VOICE: Speak, I am bound to hear. SM: How did you get in here? VOICE: Through the window out the back. SM: But I locked it ! I'm sure I did...... VOICE: I unlocked it before I left last night. SM: I see. [Cold fury] $10,000 dollars worth of lighting and sound equipment, all of it borrowed, none of it insured and you risk it all for one apparently second rate root with an amateur lap dancer. Of all the stupid selfish pricks ....... VOICE: Rest, rest perturbéd spirit. SM: I'm RESPONSIBLE. VOICE: And thus, on occasion unutterably boring. SM: That could have been a very expensive poke, Voice. You leave the window open on the off chance of a casual bonk and - VOICE: [affronted] Dead set certainty if you DON'T mind. SM: You're insufferable. VOICE: Peace, Bottom. Help me find my trousers. SM: I'm a Stage Manager, not a wardrobe mistress. VOICE: You're not a mistress of whatever type. SM: Wash. You smell. VOICE: No madam. YOU smell, I stink. SM: [Tiredly] My call-sheet says you have to warm up now sir, I'll just go and clean the toilets, shall I? [SHE walks past. He reaches out and grabs her. They pause, smouldering, then they wrestle, choreographed to Hernando's Hideaway, and looking something like a bad attack of Tango. She wins by getting him in a headlock and hanging on grimly. He submits. They slump awhile in post-coital torpor] VOICE: What if we'd never met? S.M: We could hardly avoid it, living next door and all. VOICE: A little more than kin and less than kind. S.M: [declamatory] A RE-ENACTMENT OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT HAVE BROUGHT VOICE AND HIS STAGE MANAGER TOGETHER. VOICE: Two squalling infants, each ripped from the womb untimely, shuffling on to this mortal coil - S.M: - not entirely by coincidence. The infants had to be induced to co-ordinate their arrival- VOICE: - within minutes of each other on the same day, delivered in the Julian manner to a pair of life-long, lived-next-door to each other girlfriends who ... married ... twin ... brothers - S.M: What other solution was there? They'd been falling in love with the same bloke and fighting over the poor sod since early puberty. VOICE: [Manchester] Which of oos do you REALLY like? S.M: Damned if they did, damned if they didn't. At least with twins, they figured they got one each. VOICE: So, cardboard suitcases and assisted passages to the fore, they transferred their lifestyles from a very small parochial street in Manchester to a slightly more spacious, S.M: - but still very parochial, VOICE: - street in AUSTRALIA. S.M: The pregnancies were planned down to the last detail. They measured and charted and tested every facet of their fertility. Intercourse was regulated and regimented until the last vestige of enjoyment or interest or even humanity was extracted from the act. VOICE: [Wildly] POPULATE! INSEMINATE! PROCREATE OR PERISH! S.M: For some time there was difficulty. One would conceive, the other would not. Happily the gravid one would spontaneously abort in grieving for her less fecund friend. VOICE: Finally, as a consequence of frantic mid morning phone calls taken respectively in the paint shop and spray booth of the General Motors auto-assembly line Adelaide, demanding immediate conjugal contact, consanguineous conception was achieved. S.M: [admiringly] Bloody hell! That was good! VOICE: Thank you. Continuez s'il tu plait. S.M: They "did lunch", as it were, to the accompaniment of laughter and applause from the shop floor. VOICE: Despite the satirical response, T'was a consummation devoutly to be wished. S.M: Productivity rose 20 % VOICE: Our little lives are rounded on a sleep. Nine months later in the calm certain glow of rational decision, in the same ward of the same hospital, by twin gynaecologists to the strains of the same piece of music - S.M: "Desperado" , by The Eagles - VOICE: - and hasn't that little fact achieved an importance we'd rather it didn't deserve - were delivered unto them a pair of infants who didn't look anything like one another. S.M: Well, we weren't the same sex to start with. VOICE: [Manchester] SOOCH a disappointment. Ah well, moosn't groomble. At least they've got there 'ealth. [Normal]Christ, do you remember how it was? I thought I'd suffocate, or go mad. S.M: You did. VOICE: Everybody knew exactly what everyone else was doing. If you farted, everyone knew what you'd had for lunch - What? S.M: You did. You went mad. Barking, Farking mad. I reckon the only reason you weren't committed is because anything you were doing seemed relatively sane in comparison to your dad's antics. VOICE: Yeah. I suppose so. How come I scored the evil twin? S.M: Necessary character building. I was too fragile. VOICE: Anyway. I forgive him. S.M: Noble of you. VOICE: O wonderful son that can so 'stonish a mother. S.M: So ...... Mothers now. [pause] VOICE: Perhaps. S.M: Very well. For the moment then. [Story time, to the audience.]It was like they never grew up. Well, they did, but they stopped at about fifteen. You can look at them even now, and tell straight away what age they're being. Like, when they've had a row with each other, they're deadset five years old. Sulks, fevers and petulance, not a good look on a fifty year old face. [SHE gets a stunned look] I've just had a vision. Those two in twenty years - and they WILL last twenty years - they are going to be unfuckingbearable, unfuckingcontrollable - VOICE: I'm inconfuckingsolable S.M: What? Why? VOICE: The evidence is incontrofuckingvertible. S.M: What are you fucking on about? VOICE: Our mothers, they're going to be unfuckingplacable. No aged care facility will take them, and you know what that means - you're stuck with them. S.M: No. Not stuck. I won't mind. She looked after me when I wasn't able to do it for myself, so I don't mind returning the favour. And I only have one mother. I will care for HER, not THEM. VOICE: Don't you care for my mother? S.M: Don't wriggle fish, you're hooked. VOICE: I can't. S.M: You CUNT! VOICE: No listen, I can't, she won't let me, she reckons I'm hopeless. S.M: You are, but you're going to do this. In spite of yourself or anything you've imagined she's done to you, you will care for her. VOICE: How have you forgotten so quickly? The saccharine middle - class agony of it all. The futile, upwardly aspirant grasping. The complete inability to do anything other than fawn and suck in the presence of wealth or privilege - S.M: [Aside]Christ! What an act! Is there a producer in the house? VOICE: The tack that passed for taste - S.M: Oh! You've seen your costume then. VOICE: The hopes and dreams they saddle you with. Their absolute fascination with the persistently unattainable. I'm not cut out to be a brain surgeon - S.M: [pretending to be his mother] Well dear, what about the law, being a lawyer would be a lot like being an actor, you have to talk a lot and stand up and perform in front of an audience - VOICE: [He's into it now] Mum! Lawyers talk shit! They tell a lot of lies - S.M: They persuade people, convince people dear, you're very good at that. [To the audience] He's got charisma. VOICE: But all the twaddle that goes with it, memorising who did what to whom in a case a hundred years ago as if anyone cared. S.M: It'd be just like learning lines for a play, wouldn't it? You know I've always thought that about Shakespeare, and you should always remember - Together: IT PAYS VERY WELL! [They laugh] VOICE: I had no idea you got speeches like that. S.M: Worse. "You wait 'til you've got 'ome and 'usband my girl, you'll thank me for this then." The most valuable piece of advice my mother could think to give me was "Don't walk and smoke at the same time." VOICE: Mine always wanted me to be a doctor. What did yours want you to be? [pause] Well? Confess yourself to heaven. S.M: [mumbles] A doctor.............'s wife. VOICE: [stunned] Really? [laughs uproariously] S.M: Shut-up Voice. VOICE: Oh, 'tis sport to have the engineer hoist with her own petard! [She goes over and gives him a giant Chinese burn, and while he's recovering grabs him by the bare nipple and causes him agony impassively. He, knowing the rules, eventually manages a whistle that she will accept as an apology. She backs off warily, watching closely for a retaliation, and eventually they nod at each other, acknowledging who won that round. They do things in companionable silence for a while. Blackout - after a pause - music - same as opening - the cone of light reappears] STANZA THREE This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkling of a fading star. Is it like this in death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone. PRESENTER: This is how an agent stung its actors and drowned as a consequence. Only temporarily of course, as agents are actually the undead, as are vampires, were-wolves and zombies. The agent sent the actors on jobs, and made sure that they were paid for it. Eventually. The agent had an account into which was paid the money collected from the people who employed them - Oh! Did you think the actors were employed by the agent? Yes, well that's what the agent wants everyone to think. The money went into a short - term high interest bearing account and stayed in there until it had earned the agent lots of interest, and then it would dole out the money paying those who it liked best first, or were more famous, or complained more often or whatever. Four percent over 90 days doesn't sound like much, until you realise the account funds were never allowed to fall below a certain point, and over a year it adds up. Money for nothing, made at the expense of those who can least afford it. To the actors, who often wondered why it often took six months to get paid, it was carefully explained that this was the vagaries of the commercial world, and that it was not wise to question anyone about anything, especially money otherwise they would get the reputation of being difficult, and no-one would want to work with them any more. The actors didn't like the sound of this, but what could they do? [Lights up on Voice who is looking for his trousers. He doesn't find them. The S.M. enters and stands watching.] S.M. [conversationally] It was you that cleaned the toilets then. VOICE: [non-committally] Yes S.M. Thank you VOICE: [smiling] Think nothing of it S.M. [smiling too] How did you know what I was thinking. [they do some complicate handshake from childhood - pause] VOICE: What did I do that was so mental? S.M. Oh! Back to that then are we, [aside] or does the subject ever change? VOICE: You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice. What did I do that was so odd? S.M: You spent three weeks in the open drains all over Adelaide pretending the Holocaust had happened and you had to survive off the land. VOICE: That was research for a play. "Urban Mysteries" S.M: I beg the serious Method actors pardon. Dancing naked in the Victoria Square fountain? VOICE: Bad acid. I bought an unction of a mountebank. S.M: Ahh! A METHADONE exercise. You were a Ninja 24 hours a day for six months once. VOICE: All kids play make believe. S.M: You were seventeen, Voice. [Voice is silent] S.M: [Aside] For us it was just a matter of making ourselves believe, but he had to make everyone else believe as well didn't you? To start with he used to make me laugh, but then it stopped being a game didn't it Voice? It stopped being a game when he started playing with adults and he could make THEM believe - that was actually awe inspiring. Remember the day you decided you'd be the Russian Ambassadors son? VOICE: [Russian] I made you the daughter of one of the ballerina's in town with the Leningrad - Kirov ballet who didn't speak a word of English - S.M: [Aside] And we spent the whole day in town with him conning people into giving us things for nothing. VOICE: I've still got that kangaroo scrotum purse I think. S.M: That was the day I realised he was dangerous. VOICE: It was the first time either of us tasted Lebanese food. S.M: He had this power, he could believe things so strongly, that other people had no option but to believe him as well. VOICE: And that poor Taxi driver! Round and round for three or four hours, showing us all this stuff. Stuff people never guess at, and they live here. He was so proud, remember? Can you picture the looks though, when he turned up at the Russian Embassy looking for his fare? S.M: [Aside] That's what I mean. I felt sorry for him. [To Voice] For you he was - a fall guy, someone to practise on. VOICE: It wasn't malicious. Just harmless fun. People liked giving me things. For some of them I reckon it was the first, maybe the only time they were able to think of themselves as kind and good, and generous. S.M: That's what makes him dangerous. I caught myself just then, thinking that what he said was reasonable. The Voice of reason and responsibility eh? Remember Nazi Germany! Remember the plausibility of young Adolf! None of us were ever allowed to forget you and he share a birthday. VOICE: And so do you. S.M: Shit! ............ I forgot. VOICE: Your own birthday? MY birthday? You forgot MY BIRTHDAY!? S.M: No ..... No..... I just got caught up in it, in the rhythm of the thing ...... momentary lapse, that's all. [pause] It's your line. VOICE: Oh! Sorry! Look, I told you, it was just harmless fun. I needed to find out if I COULD do it. How far I could go. It was just exercise that's all. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It's a skill, a talent. It's the only talent I have. Would you take that from me? [she is silent] Art thou there truepenny? S.M: Voice! You lied to them! You betrayed them! You humiliated and belittled them. Even if half the time they never even realised they'd been conned, you had a power and you abused it and that was wrong. VOICE: O! What a rogue and pissant slave am I! Hold on! HAD a power? S.M: LISTEN to me you self centred prick - no - listen to yourself, make YOURSELF nauseous for a change. [She goes off, which in this set is ONSTAGE] VOICE: [He fumes. He stews. He speaks because he can't help himself] What if I admit that you're right? ............ Will that make any difference? Don't you be smug................... You've got no reason to be, so you're not to be smug. I WON'T HAVE SMUG, DO YOU HEAR ME! [silence - then he yells] VOICE: MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN, THAT ONE MAY SMILE AND SMILE, AND BE A VILLAIN! [silence] I CAN HEAR YOU. I CAN HEAR YOU SMILING SO STOP IT. [He listens carefully a moment, and then grunts and nods, satisfied. Stares off after her. Looks about vaguely, searches absent mindedly for his trousers, gives up, sits and starts scratching everything in sight] Stage Managers [coughs, sniffs, walks over to the desk, pinches a fag and lights it.] VOICE: They aren't frustrated actors you know. No, they couldn't bear to be on show. They could write volumes on the subject, though. Ruin a few careers if they chose. Luckily, Stage Management is in essence the art of remaining wisely silent. My best friend is a Stage Manager. [puffs] Actors! Who'd befriend an actor, for God's sake. I'd sooner bathe with piranhas. [puffs] There they are, dashing about like busy ants trying on characters like costumes, hoping to find one that fits. To be truly observant, he should have called it " Six Actors in Search of a Life" [puffs] Take a video camera to the Bistro when anyone even remotely important will be there - how do they know? No-one tells anyone, it's not like it's published anywhere, "The terribly interesting and flavoursome young director X will be drinking in the Bistro between 11.30 and 3.00am, but somehow, as if they've all got antenna tuned to a gossip station, within minutes of an arrival, even one not only not planned, but the result of complete whimsy, there they are, flocking like seabirds about the carcass of a beached and stinking whale. [puffs] Busy ants, auditioning furiously - "Simon! Peter! George! Colin! I LOVE your work, will you give me some? "No! IIIIII love it more than you do, give MEEEEEE some!" "NO! IIIII do! '" "Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me ME! [dropping character] Who am I trying to kid? You've seen Berkoff jerkoff in "Solo". What am I? [change] An Actor? But what do you do for a living? AN ACTOR!?? When are you going to get a real job? Who in their right mind would want to be an actor? Actors are moths. Consumed by the flame of their Art. Short futile lives spent bashing their brains out against a lamp that could go out at any moment. Where was I? My wit's diseased! Oh yes! Getting a grip and keeping it. SHE called me schizoid once. [laughs] [Brian Blessed voice] My boy! Who could be content with merely two personalities? [succession of voices] [High Camp] Not me [Peter Lorre] Me neither [John Wayne] Count me out, pardner [ Finishes up leaping about the stage hunched over, crying , Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Drops out of character] VOICE: You thought he said "The bells, the bells!", didn't you, well he didn't, same like James Cagney never said "You dirty rat". Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sank you very much! Tony Hancock, in "Hancock's Last Half Hour" by Heathcote Williams, last performed in Adelaide by Henry Salter during the 1980 Festival of Farts. Brilliant. The Art at it's very best. Seriously. But who remembers it? Nobody! Totally forgotten except in the minds of a very few. None of you, I bet. [In the interim SHE has drifted on stage and is leaning, arms folded up against a piece of set. Voice finishes and notices her somewhat sheepishly. They observe each other for a moment] Proselytising again. [pause. She stands up, striking a conscious pose.] SM: Ladies and Gentlemen of the cast and chorus of "Decline and Fall", this is your 30 minute call. [exit] VOICE: [a small screech of pain] I shall in all my best obey you madam. [flourish and bow, she exits] 30 minutes! [pulls it together.] THE ACTOR PREPARES. [rummages around and put on a pair of tights. The crutch sags spectacularly] VOICE: I filled these tights as a young man. [Sighs] When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. [during the next section Voice does a sporadic warm up, he could be good at it but he is lazy and sending it up]. VOICE: Salute to the Sun! It's pitch dark! Why am I doing this? It just hurts! And I WON'T feel better when I'm finished. I don't WANT to feel better. O! That this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. [Fake European accent] Your body is your instrument. To be played well it must be maintained well and finely tuned. To play your instrument well you must be aware of it potential and limitations. To extend beyond those limits the mind and body must become as one in order to reveal the soul. This is the actors task, this, the actors obstacle. [drops accent] Of course for [INSERT NATIONALITY] actors the problem is compounded by having to first re-establish contact with the brain. [Yells] Footbaaaaaaaaall![aggressive posturing] Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Nancy-boy queer ponce poofter gay Arsebandit! Receiver of swollen goods! Culture? Is it a tree? Cut it DOWN! [Shouts off] A nation of the disconnected, that's what we are! SM: [Off] Speak for yourself! VOICE: [to the audience] I was. I had a friend once. An acquaintance rather. Another actor. He used to have a thermo-nuclear shit every night at the half. Pavlov's original dog. "This is your half hour call" - John shat. I cured him of it tho'. Stretched a piece of Gladwrap over the bowl one night. He wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the run, which was a blessing without any diguise at all. He went to Melbourne. Said it was the only way he could pursue an acting career in Adelaide. And he was right. He graces the stage of the Playhouse as we speak. [As the S.M. enters] That's an idea! We could take this show to Melbourne! They'd love it in Melbourne SM: [Aside] What would he know what Melbourne thinks, he's never been. VOICE: I have so! SM: A day trip to do a Tattslotto commercial doesn't count. VOICE: I went for a week once. SM: You were 14 years old, visiting your aunt, and you never left Richmond as I recall. VOICE: And what a recall it is. You should have been an actor. SM: Spare me. I'm mildly masochistic, not nuts. VOICE: Is there anything from my past life you have forgotten? SM: How could I? I was there for most of it, and the parts I missed you've told me over and over until I reckon I could repeat it word for word. [he looks wounded] Don't look at me like that. It's me remember? Don't shit on me and pretend you don't have an areshole! Don't you dare try to treat me the way you treat the rest of the world. I'm the last friend you've got, so be honest, or I'm gone. You used to make me laugh, Voice, but I'm tired, and bugger me if I haven't finally tired of the shit you spout. VOICE: Are you telling me I should grow up? SM: For fuck's SAKE, Voice, I'm not talking about growing up, I'm talking about wisdom and dignity and even children have that. VOICE: What's dignified about what I do? Making a complete tit of myself 8 times a week for a pittance. SM: Ohhhhh! If I could just find the point, the event which caused you to become all piss and wind, I'd excise it and sear the wound so that that particular cancer never got a chance to grow. VOICE: Have you been attending University again?! I told you, I warned you what would happen if you did. S.M: Cut it OUT, Voice! VOICE: Careful surgeon, you might take the talent with the tumour and then where would I be? Do you imagine I'd want to live with a hole where my life used to be? Blundering around senseless doesn't hold much appeal. SM: You're mostly blundering around senseless now, if the past fortnight has been any indication. VOICE: That is so cruel. Jesus you pick your moments don't you?! Couldn't you have left this until after the show? What are you getting stuck into me NOW for? SM: Because soon you're going to have to be brilliant. Because in the past you have been brilliant but at the moment you are only competent. Because I need to remind myself that once you despised mediocrity. Because, because, because. VOICE: Does this mean you like me? [SHE slaps him] SM: Snap out of it! The only sympathy I feel is what I'd feel for a rabid dog. I'd feel sad, remembering the dog as it USED to be, but I'd still pull the trigger. VOICE: Me thinks the lady doth protest too much! SM: I'm warning you Voice. VOICE: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. No listen - you're the only one who has ever brow beaten me. VOICE: I don't know if you like me or not, but at least you care. SM: Don't flatter yourself. The interest is purely practical. All I want is to get you on and off stage in a reasonable condition because if you look bad so do I. That's all. VOICE: Piss-off conscience! [She goes. He shouts after her] Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered. STANZA FOUR The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men [Blackout - after a moment the cone of light reappears. The Presenter as before] PRESENTER: Once upon a time there was a happy little theatre company. It worked very hard, scrimped and saved, and with the aid of a magic potion called "creative genius", which we all know is made up of nine parts perspiration to one part inspiration, the happy little theatre company managed to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. It wasn't enough. They didn't get funding. Over the next two years they performed this miracle and many others, both major and minor, many times over in front of a wide variety of different and important nabobs. Finally the nabobs decided they had become a tall enough poppy to cut down, so they did, magically transforming the happy little theatre company into the goose that laid the golden egg. The nabobs said they could have $24,000. The happy little theatre company was ecstatic! Imagine the silk purses they could make now! And they could use real silk! But the nabobs tutted and fussed and said. "No! No! Half you must use to pay one of us to look after the other half." "Pay half just to look after the other half? But why?" protested the stunned little theatre company. "There must be someone to look after it, otherwise you will not spend it wisely, you are artists and irresponsible, you will squander it on pretty gewgaws and fripperies." "But you said you liked the silk purses! We do know best! Look what we've done with so little!" said the aghast LTC. "There you go you see, getting all emotional. It just goes to prove our point. No. You'll pay one of us half, or we won't give you anything at all." And all the people who gave their money in taxes to the nabobs thinking it was going to the artists so they could make beautiful things for them, never suspected a thing. [Video freeze frame - in the black -S.M:[v/o] Ladies and gentlemen of the cast and chorus of "Decline and Fall", this is your 20 minute call.Voice shrieks in the blackout. Lights up to reveal VOICE. He begins to move, a sort of warm up, then to dance in a grotesque punkish pogo style, the dance of death, primitive, striving, rhythm induced ecstasy or trance. It builds in passion and intensity until his frame can no longer contain it and he collapses, sitting, rocking, staring into space. SHE enters behind him, and gathers him up Pieta fashion. SHE strokes his hair as he lies in the comfort of her arms.] S.M. It's always as bad as it was the very first time for you isn't it? [He nods] You'd think that after all this time......... Not that it would get any easier, but that you'd become...... I don't know, acclimatised? Is that the right word? [he nods] VOICE: I have got better at it, I don't throw up like I used to. [pause] I get so frightened. S.M. I know. VOICE: It's like standing a little way from the edge of a cliff, wanting to fling yourself off, and not knowing whether you will fly this time or not. You have flown, soared on the wings of angels, but just as often it's been an albatross around your neck, and you've crashed and burned on the rocks below. The pleasure of memory and the pain of expectation. Remembrance and anticipation driving you forward and drawing you back in equal measure. The urge to action rendered impotent by fear and indecision. The absence of courage. I'm so ashamed. What am I afraid of? Failure? Failure never killed anyone. S.M. No, but it hurts you so much I often wish that you could die. It would be a lot less painful all round. It's all very well for you to suffer the slings and arrows but I'm beginning to feel a bit like a pin-cushion myself. VOICE: What would you have me do? S.M. Choose another profession. VOICE: I do, regularly, with help from the CES. Cook, bottle- washer, glass collector, telemarketer, "Hi, Mr. Smith? My name is Rory, and I'm representing the Greasy Palm Diplomatic Corporation. We're prepared to offer you at absolutely no cost three minutes of inane chatter followed by an offer of extreme stupidity and an demand for an outrageous amount of money. No? Well thank you for your time. Don't mention it, and you're a big fat one too." S.M. What set you off? VOICE: I saw John in the Fezzi Centre. He crept up on me from behind - as you do - there's me with my arse in the air packing up the props from the kids gig Saturday, and he swans past. " Rooory! Maaaaaate! How are you dooooooing! Working?" S.M: You're doing Berkoff again. Sorry. You did ask me to tell you. VOICE: S'O.k., thanks. [back into it] Just off to an early call. [smarmy intimacy] "Peter wants to run through some of the bits that turned out to be just good ideas." I used to be able to deal with other peoples' success. Console myself with the notion that my time would come, that every dog shall have his day, but I reckon I'm past the use by date now. S.M. "Success is a journey, not a destination." VOICE: Well, by that definition, I'm well and truly fucked, aren't I, I've never gone anywhere. S.M. There it is. Go somewhere. VOICE: Yeah, right. Just take of into the wild blue yonder, no prospects, no money, not even a place to stay. No. I have to plan it. It's not the right time. Things are slow in Melbourne. All over actually. No. Later, when things pick up. It's too risky now. It's a big step you see. If I commit and fall flat on my arse there'd be no coming back. Not now, not yet.......... [He drifts off into a reverie. The S.M. comes in and out, and finally] S.M: [P.A.] Ladies and gentlemen of the cast and chorus of "Decline and Fall", this is your 10 minute call. [The AGONISED shriek.] VOICE: How long have I been out? Did you get more crimson lake like I asked? Where's my boots, have I got a clean hanky, where's the laundry, did they do my boots, why are you laughing? [she is] Why? Why are you laughing? You could kill someone with a fright like that. S.M: Oh, fair go Voice, it was a good one, you have to admit. VOICE: [Deadpan] Good one. All right. Well done. Touche. One to you. Have we got time for a quick game then? [He gets the board, already set up and gets a white and black pawn, hiding them in his fists.] S.M: It's your ten minute call. [He holds out his fists] All right, but don't think you're going to get your own back this way. This is a totally separate thing you realise. [SHE chooses white and they begin, making moves at light speed, banging the pieces down with furious intensity. After a blur of about twenty moves, she emerges victorious] S.M: Checkmate! Suck an egg! VOICE: Again! S.M: [As they reset the pieces] What are you afraid of? The show is good, you know that. [he nods] Then what? [He shrugs, she changes the subject.] No wonder your relationships fall apart. Watching the hanged man volunteering to stand on the trap, time after time. To watch you suffer like that by choice would be pretty hard to take. I'd always be thinking, "He wouldn't suffer like that for me. Never has, never will." I reckon I'd eventually want to be better than second best. VOICE: That's why no-one else but you has ever seen it. S.M. I don't know whether to feel privileged or insulted. Maybe there are those who might've understood more if you had. VOICE: They all insisted on solutions. I don't want a solution, just sympathy. I have to be wide open and vulnerable to perform well. The emotional side-effects are painful, but harmless. All I need is sympathy. You're the only one who ever gave me unconditional sympathy. S.M: Don't drag me into it. VOICE: "I'm not my brother's keeper." Right. S.M: You're not my brother. Is it worth it? The pain, I mean. VOICE: I only suffer while I'm suffering. S.M: All right, I understand what you get out of it. I've watched their faces while you work, I wouldn't mind just one person looking at me adoringly let alone a whole room full, but the price you pay ... I don't know ......[CNN] Are you martyr or masochist? Are you in it for the pain or the product? VOICE: [the serious method actor responds] You don't give, in order to receive, that would be self-indulgence. It's not sacrifice, but an act of devotion. You give all or you've given nothing at all. Half-heartedness results in pale, tawdry imitations of art. Hollow, empty vessels, making the most noise. S.M. But this is serious stuff, Voice. This process causes you actual bodily harm, aside from all the other shit you put in yourself........... VOICE: I don't imagine I'll die of boredom, no...... S.M: You said yourself it doesn't last. You change the world, and it lasts just as long as it takes them to get to the front door. VOICE: It does though, y'know. The evidence is all about us. Despite the fact that they banned us, burned us and tortured us for 900 years, we're still here. They may still be treating us like whores, thieves and pariahs, but they can't live without us. This culture produces wonderful Art, but imagine what would happen if we were encouraged rather than driven. It's only happened twice - unless you count Berlin 1928 - 33. Once with the Greeks and once with the Elizabethans, and we're still hearing the echoes two thousand years later. Everything else was just flurries in a continuing guerilla war. S.M: [back to normal] Off your soap box and into your costume. You're preaching to the converted. VOICE: No-one else will listen. S.M: They'll listen harder and hear more if you don't speak at all. VOICE: [Method actor] I'm not complaining. I could stop struggling I know. It's just that I get so tired you know? I get stretched thin, transparent and fragile. I'll be all right tomorrow. S.M: Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace VOICE: from day to day until the last syllable of recorded time. S.M: I always got depressed by that until I worked out what it meant. Indomitable will and determination to endure. VOICE: You know too many words to be a stage manager. S.M: You think too much to be an actor. VOICE: [Pointing at her] Plagiarist. Michael Chekov said that! S.M: Don't just do something stand there. Billy Wilder. VOICE: Bring on the empty horses. I can't remember who. S.M: Put on your costume. Me. You're on in five. BLACKOUT [In the BLACKOUT, the CRITICAL shriek.] [Single spot centre] VOICE: Standing there - in the light - I'm real. Them - all there, looking at ME, listening to ME. Even the ones that don't want to - want to get out - All caught, all staring, all - AFFECTED. Snake and mouse, cat and bird, helpless, hypnotised. [pause] The worst feeling I ever get, chokes me, I can't breathe, feels like death creeping slow. You have them, you're holding them, the attentive stillness is breathtaking, It's church, it's sex, it's opening presents, and then all at once, you look at them. Not look. SEE. THEM. Punters. Paying public. bums in seats. sheep in pens. .............cattle. And you realise all in a flash, bulb flash coke flash news flash that you're giving your heart and soul to a group of .......... random selection ........... statistically normal .......... life-sized .............. cardboard ............ [whispers] CUT-OUTS! [pause] And you die. That's why. That's why. That's why. [pause] I live. I breathe. I listen. I react. That's all. That's all there's ever been. That's all there'll ever be. Mothers? Are you listening? [screaming] ARE YOU LISTENING? [BLACKOUT] S.M. [V/O] Ladies and gentlemen of the cast and chorus of "Decline & Fall", beginners please. [LIGHTS UP] S.M: Voice? VOICE: Yes? SM: You'll be all right? To go on. VOICE: Yes. SM: It's opening night. VOICE: I know. SM: The Piranha and all his slimy mates'll be here. VOICE: I know SM: If you fuck up they'll crucify you. [pause] Who am I kidding, they'll crucify you anyway. VOICE: Small comfort. SM: But you won't ...... Fuck up. VOICE: Go......... Bid the soldiers shoot. BLACKOUT [Lights up. Circus music. Voice is on the REAL stage dressed in traditional clown regalia, making his opening bows, whirling like a dervish. He does a pratfall, gets up, does it again and during the words the SM speaks his pratfalls get more and more urgent, hysterical and desperate until he is scrambling up and flinging himself down in hysterical abandon. The final ugly humiliation comes when it begins to appear that he is being picked up and flung down by some outside force, like a puppet. He is being used, like a giant child's plaything, totally without volition. He is being hurt, but the mask he wears grins grotesquely on. The SM is in the cone light speaking STANZA FIVE VOICE: [sung] Here we go round the prickly pear prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear S.M: Between the idea And the reality Between the motion Falls the shadow VOICE: [spoken] For Thine is the Kingdom S.M: Between the conception and the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow VOICE: [spoken] Life is very long S.M: Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the shadow VOICE: [spoken] For Thine is the Kingdom S.M: For Thine is Life is For Thine is the VOICE: [sung] This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper [BLACKOUT] END