TONGUE-IN-CHEEK

start anywhere, start anywhere

a play reading for 16 voices written by John von Sturmer for 2 Ply No 4, TONGUE

115 Birchgrove Road

Birchgrove

Saturday, 7 August 2010

A: It was a dark dark night

B: A shapeless darkening night

C: A night of definition

MC: Do they believe this, any of them? Do they believe this? Some things are hard to believe. For myself I never have been, I never have, been a believer. Belief is for the inchoate self. The self that does not pursue itself becomes a believer. It offers certain comforts.

A (addressing the others): Who does he think he is? What a fake, what a pretender! The last time I saw him he was handing out samples at Harris Farm, corn chips and bits of diced banana bread.

B: Yes, pure phoney abalone.

C: We’re in the age, the age

D: What age?

C: The age of soft options, the age of concrete-rendered walls, the age of large brass door knockers, the age of help yourself and personal beauty regimes

D: Yes, you can spend a fortune on …

MC: Please please please please please, can we start again, this is going nowhere.

A: Frankly I find it reassuring that things are going nowhere. Yes, reassuring. When I’m not at my best … (A. smooths his/her hair, real or imaginary, with an exaggerated gesture) As I was saying, when I’m not at my best – admittedly a very very rare occurrence – I like to sit in my car, keys in the ignition and the doors open and going absolutely nowhere. There is nothing more comforting. Such a sense of peace and calm descends upon me. I put a little lozenge in my mouth and twirl it around. Nothing gives me more pleasure.

There is 4-8 seconds stunned silence

A: It is important that the door remain open. I admire it greatly, the blue of the door. It’s like my own personal passport to paradise.

MC (sotto voce): Some people have it easy!

MC addresses B: Now tell me, have you anything to say for yourself? Have you any secret pleasures, any derelict devices of self-enhancement, any …

B: No!

MC (aside): Well, that’s easy

MC turns to C: And you of course …

They all freeze, as in freeze frame.

COMMENTATOR: As for this little tableau it has no excuse and no meaning. It’s an avoidance, a delicate form of silencing. Yes, it avoids, that is its meaning

A: SHUT UP! SHUT UP, YOU’RE AN IDIOT. YOU HAVEN’T GOT A CLUE. YOU DON’T KNOW A THING. YOU POP YOUR HEAD INTO THINGS AT THE VERY LAST MOMENT AND YOU GO BABBLING ON ABOUT THE MEANINGFUL MEANINGLESSNESS OF IT ALL, OR THE MEANINGLESS MEANINGFULNESS, AS IF YOU HAVE THE FINAL WORD. WHAT A CHEEK!

B: SHUT UP, SHUT UP YOURSELF. WHAT ENTITLES YOU TO TAKE OVER EVENTS IN THIS FASHION? WHO AUTHORISES YOU?

C: SHUT UP THE PAIR OF YOU! I HAVE A PROPOSAL. WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING, WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, SOMETHING … (fades off)

D: R A T spells CAT, R A T spells LAWNMOWER, R A T spells WORLD TOUR, R A T spells

DD (DISTANT TRAVELLER): DA DAH! I’M BACK!

B: God, look at what the cat dragged in! Where have you been?

DD (cheerily): Here and there, elsewhere. I have been in many parts. This is just one of them. We are stranded where we are marooned, we are marooned where we are stranded.

C: I expected at least a golden carriage, or a ship with gossamer sails

DD: All these and more, my dear. My life is an endless adventure. No, now don’t stick out your tongue. A tongue is supposed to stay at home, safely indoors. It’s a secret ruminant. It tastes in silence, it tastes tastefully. You can smack your lips all you want but the tongue, the tongue, it’s a silent slippery creature.

MC: STOP, STOP, YOU’VE BROKEN THE RULE. THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT SHOULD NEVER BE SPOKEN. YOU HAVE SPOKEN THE INUTTERABLE

DD sobs exaggeratedly: BOO HOO, BOO HOO

MC (not really consolingly): Never mind, never mind, no harm done.

B (accusingly): You can say that

MC (archly): Yes, I just did

A (righteously): We’re tired of people defining our reality for us

C: Yes, people telling us how to think

A: Yes, there’s far too much of that nowadays

D: R A T spells WORD CHECK, R A T spells GREEN ACRES, R A T spells BUILDING BOOM, R A T spells HIAWATHA

COMMENTATOR: I knew him once, quite a fine musician, or was that Samuel J …

D: R A T spells DESPERATE REMEDIES, R A T spells CHEAP AUTHORITARIAN ATTITUDES, R A T spells … (D goes progressively out of control, changes spell to smell, and reversing the order, as in D O G spells RAT and other manoeuvres – e.g., C A T spells DREAM TEAM – in an increasingly virtuosic display)

General applause

MC: We’ve lost direction, we’re out of order. No matter …

A: I found someone in bed, I did. I found someone in my bed. It turned out to be a representative of the Wesleyan Mission. Nudity and the Wesleyan Mission are frequently found hand in hand. It’s an oddity of colonial history.

B: I don’t care really, I just don’t care

C: I’m supposed, I think, to reveal my final word but I have no idea what it is

D (returning to an exaggeratedly calm normalcy): R A T spells IMMINENT ELECTION, R A T spells FERRY TIMETABLE, OCTOBER EDITION, R A T spells CAMPHOR LAUREL, R A T spells TWITTERING BIRD

DD: I think it is about time I waved my magic wand and buzzed off. I think it is about time I waved my magic wand, bing bling, and flittingly departed. Why stars and magic wands I don’t know but bing bling, bing bling anyway

JW: My name is Jason Williams. I’m the interloper. The interloper should interlope and that is what I am doing. I’m performing an interlopation.

I appear on webcam regularly. I’m a nasty piece of work, that’s what they all say. Nasty. Not that I think I’m nasty, not one bit. I’m very handsome and very giving, a piece of living sculpture to those of a discriminating disposition. Yet no one wants to sign up to my webcam. It’s a mystery. My days are numbered, I know that, but it remains a mystery.

Yes, a mystery.

How you think about mysteries, that’s your affair.

(Repeat whole performance with a second cast)

(At the end of the whole performance the musical extract from Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet to be played again … and fade …)

John von Sturmer, for 2 Ply

7 August 2010