1.THE WALL. 1.

Navy velvet curtains back to reveal

A brick wall. Lights on this wall. Silence.

Zu hause extreme downstage left... cardboard boxes...

2.TARGET PRACTICE. 2.

Thin, blonde, Julie Shanahan, in a loose light flower-print dress emerges from upstage left, and walks over the rubble to centre stage. With white chalk she draws an X on the stage, which she stands on, flings the chalk down to stage right. With fury she draws a black X on her face When she reaches centre stage, music starts

and Julie does her hand dance to it. Bends forward. The movements are very close to the body, rubbing her stomach, from shoulder to shoulder across her chest... free flowing on her loose cotton insipid flower print dress (and high heels).

Two men come out, to either side of her. They lie her now stiff body down (tilt her backwards, her head facing upstage). Her hands are raised and behind her head.

From here she orders:

Pick me up.

They do this. Standing, she commands:

Thomas, take my hand.

He does this. She dictates:

Hug me.

He does this, quickly, from the side, and returns to his stance beside her. She says:

Harder. Hug me harder.

He does this. She orders:

Let me go.

He does this. Her commands are spoken as cold and emotionless harsh orders.

They disappear offstage, facing the audience unblinkingly, vehemently, she pulls her loose dress tight tight tight on her body, holding it behind her back.

From stage left suited Bernd brings on a piece of white paper covered with brown brown dirt. He hands this to her. She, falling backwards, throws the dirt over herself.

She is lying again, head upstage, covered in a sprinkling of dirt this time. Stiff and prostrate she orders:

Pick me up

They tilt up her rigid body, her hands still rigidly stuck behind her head, She decrees, coldly, surely:

Bring me a chair and some tomatoes

Bernd runs off to stage left, and re-emerges with a chair. He puts it centre stage, beside her. She sits on it. She commands:

Take my hand!

Bernd does this, and she shoves it away. She dictates:

Bernd hug me

He attempts to hug her, and she struggles to get free, pushing him away. She shouts now:

Hug me harder!

She fights the embrace. She is screaming now:

Harder!

Sobbing, she says:

Let - me - go...

The air is a sad space.

The two men come back on, ‘armed’ with newspaper parcels. They unwrap them open. We see they are full of tomatoes. She, sitting, orders:

Throw tomatoes in my face Thomas

They throw tomatoes in her face, from the newspapers held in their arms. They are expressionless, just mindlessly carrying out orders. (Seemingly). Her face covered in (peeled) tomatoes, could be blood, could be gunshot wounds, but it is instead tomatoes. She cries:

More! Throw tomatoes in my belly!

They oblige, and do this. She is sobbing. It is disturbing. Very disturbing. She cries:

Stop!

They do. She continues, softly under her tears:

Hug me

They do... still looking at neither of them, but straight into the audience:

Hug me...

Take my hands...

She shoves away their outstretched hands, sobbing, blurts out:

Take - me - off

She stands, slowly, shaking, the tomatoes peeling off of her stained dress, her hands still rigid and shaking, raised behind her head. The two men carry her off left.

Here are all of the themes for the night. Pathological power constructs.

3.CHURCH BELLS CLEANING UP. 3.

The stage is inundated with stage hands, who roll back the mess from the previous scene by unsticking the lino, and carrying it off.

4.JANUSZ. 4.

Plastic pastel blue sweeping:

Janusz comes on from stage left with a sweeping brush and pastel blue dustpan (useless against the enormity of this mess and dust).

5.URCHIN. 5.

Cement urchin: Jan enters carrying a crouched-up urchin with long black hanging hair (Beatrice). He places her on the blocks, stage right. She somnabulistically walks off.

6.CYCLE OF LIFE TOSS ACROSS THE STAGE. 6.

On upstage right comes a whirlwind of five suited men, between them tossing another man (Dominique?), head over heels, surreal, faster than the eye can register too, it is so unusual and unexpected. Horizontally across downstage right to downstage left: tossed over around and around up, ricocheted against the walls. The second time across the man incongruously, again faster than the eye can see, like Philippe Genty, turns into something smaller.

7.BREAD SHOE. 7.

Thin, bedraggled Julie Shanahan, in her insipid baggy bedraggled dress is on. Shoulder-fallen pale flower tomato-stained dress streals on from stage left to the cement blocks (remains of the wall) centre stage, where Beatrice was deposited earlier by Jan. There, facing stage left, she takes off one black high heeled shoe, scoops out the centre of a loaf of white bread, and puts her foot into it. It is a shoe now, and with her black high heeled shoe under her arm, she limps off the stage, left.

8.SHORT SHARP NEW SCENE A PIETA. 8.

Gunshot. Opfern. Sacrifices.

All shot women on black dresses à pieta carried forward like offering by men, swaying from side to side. Carried by black suited men, menacingly swaying downstage. And they dissolve disappear just as quickly, into thin air.

9.TRYING TO ESCAPE. 9.

Black haired Japanese Mariko in a short white slip climbs the left downstage wall frantically.

All off.

Mariko is left lying downstage right, splatt, prostrate, dead or exhausted. (parallel to stage right wall)

Big Jan comes on with what looks like a cold compress in hand, and puts it on her temple (soothing, cooling), her feet...

10.FELIX. 10.

Meanwhile Felix is in the background, extreme upstage, balancing a white bird at the end of a very long wooden pole/beam. It is precariously balanced on top.

9.(cont’d).TRYING TO ESCAPE. 9.

Mariko gets up, Lazarus rises, and begins running like crazy, for her life, to escape, again. A man catches her and puts her back.

10.(cont’d).FELIX. 10.

Felix walks on with two stones again (one in each hand).

9.(cont’d).TRYING TO ESCAPE. 9.

Centre Stage, Mariko, to left wall

11.PROTRUDING GENITALIA: GRAND TABLEAU. 11.

Suddenly the stage is overflown with men strewn over the downstage space, their hands down their trousers, it looks like on their genitals, which therefore become exagerated protuberances. Women are strewn upstage over cement blocks, their hands under their flowery dresses on their breasts. A stage strewn with enlarged sex organs, focus on these protuberances, like some kind of anomalies.

12.CHAMPAGNE TRICKLE. 12.

In red red satin tails, white shirt, and black dress pants, Francis walks onto the stage carrying a table, a bottle of champagne, and champagne glasses. He sets down the table, downstage right, and at a masterly pace he opens the bottle, and pours the champagne into the thirsty impatient glasses.

Sound of metal clinking champagne glasses... With a spoon, he taps the glasses.

11.(cont’d).PROTRUDING GENITALIA. 11.

This sound seems to sweep all of the sexual-organ-protuberanced somnabules off. As if they are therewith spirited off of the stage, again sleepwalking...

12.(cont’d).CHAMPAGNE TRICKLE. 12.

Francis, left on the wide expanse of rubble stage, goes as if to offer front row audience members a glass of champagne. They reach out their hands to accept the expected glasses, by now almost a cliché in the Tanztheater vocabulary. Instead of fulfilling their expectation however he flings the champagne backwards onto the stage, with undisguised fervour/vengeance. Sharply, he calls:

Julie!

She comes on from stage left. He fills one glass, and pours it into her outstretched hands. First of all a suited man (Urs) dashes out from the wings to catch the liquid which trickles through her fingers. Suddenly from both sides the stage is inondated with women who in turn try to catch this same water which trickles out of the one before’s grasp. Finally, one woman is left alone on the stage, pale red-haired Finola Cronin. She looks to her sad hands, there was no more water left for her to catch. She lets her empty hands fall.

13.THIRST. 13.

This dejected sad character, deprived of water, probably thirsty, sits straight-backed on a solitary chair, solitary on this big unpeopled stage. Quincella, pen and notepad in hand walks on and turns this character into a customer. Poising her pen, she asks:

Loud and brash:

Have you decided what you want yet?

The reply is soft, almost whispered:

Water please

The hardnosed waitress rattles off a variety of waters available to choose from:

Will that be mineral water,

perrier, without gas,

tap water, or...

(we laugh)

Confused, the customer looks at the threatening figure of the waitress who does not look her in the eye once during this exchange, and eventually settles on:

- please

While making note she rattles off:

Would you like to pay

by credit card or cash?

Credit card please

Will that be visa, mastercard,

diners card, American Express,

Gold card, or Platinum card?

She says this again in one breath, like an unfelt learned by rote poem and we laugh a lot at this, what we recognise as familiar.

Visa

What’s your limit?

hesitate, think:

400,000

in disgust:

Sorry

The waitress walks off indignantly, left.

The sad wan character is left alone, thirst unquenched on the big lonely stage.

A man in a suit, self-absorbed crosses the stage, the traffic, from left to right, carrying a paper bag. As he passes her he interrupts his journey momentarily and offers her something from this bag, a chocolate. She accepts it, gladly, eats it, and he walks on, over the scattered cement blocks. He reaches into the bag again and then eats the chocolate that he pulls out. His gait and walk brings him off, right.

The shrivelled dry thirsty wanting woman walks off slowly with her chair, right.

14.DRIED UP TWIGS. 14.

On left comes a crisp white-shirted sleek black-haired black-suited young man (Geraldo). Dashing, his right arm bears the bounty of a bunch of dried up twigs/branches, ( a ‘faggot’). He extends his left hand, so formally, so gracefully, and he bows. The tableau is so crackling dry, so black and white, so waterless, so parched, like a cracking road, a desert, a hanging tongue, a skin stretched over bone bone body, a skinless fleshless body, a bundle of bones a skeleton. Bowing Thanatos. Can’t you see the bones under the skin? X-ray eyes looking at the bones under your skin. He moves backwards bowing bowing.

15.DRAINING THE BOTTLE. 15.

Black-dressed, black-haired Beatrice, surrounded by five dark suited men seep onto the stage, right. Mr. Thanatos puts down his shrivelled bundle of twigs. Beatrice approaches him on this not untypical dark and deadly tableau. The five men stand behind her, looming, watching on. She places a bottle of mineral water between her knees, unscrews the lid, and lets it tilt down, emptying itself of its water, pouring out like of an envied penis (or what?). Her face is blank and emotionless. So is his, as he stands there, watching. She looks drained. When the bottle is drained of its last dop, she squeezes her knees together tighter, squeezes harder, and shakes back and forward, in an effort to empty (herself) of any hidden reserves. Slowly, energy-less, she turns around, over the blocks, and exits right. Geraldo exits left.

16.SMOKE - CLOUD THREAD. 16.

From stage left emerges oh so softly minstrel black face painted Dominique under his spencer (?) hat. Murky. Lurky in his white shirt, black trousers, brown/beige hat. He smokes a cigarette. Chimney puffing. Comically, he hides behind the smoke. Ducking. Puffing. Hiding. Darting peeking out from behind. Catching smoke like clouds in his hat, trapping it there as he puts it on his head again. We smile. Niedrig. A silent movie clown.

17.DINNER. 17.

Upstage right big Jan enters where he sets a place on a white tablecloth on one of the fallen cement blocks like a picnic or a table. Knife, fork, plate, food. Ceremonious. Task accomplished, he exits right.

16.(cont’d).SMOKE - CLOUD THREAD. 16.

The minstrel man softly gently like music downstage puffing away, darting hiding ducking peeking... Off stage left doffs hat (smoke in hat)... on upstage right... doffs hat. Really playing old style to the audience. He re-exits after his err about the stage...

17.(cont’d).DINNER. 17.

Upstage right a dog runs onto the stage. Without looking right or left he heads straight to the dinner, which he gobbles. Taking the bone a little further upstage to finish it off.

18.JUMP. 18.

Thin bedraggled bony blonde-haired Julie Shanahan slinks slowly on left. She lies her weary woebegone self down, stageright hugging the edge of the fallen cement block wall.

Francis comes on left and wraps her hand in a red woollen (?) jumper, the inside one in a black jumper, and her feet together in a brownie fleckie jumper.

17.(cont’d).DINNER. 17.

Upstage, the dog is still licking his lips and chomping away.

18.(cont’d).JUMP . 18.

While Francis ties a slow slow knot, backgrounded by the slow low music. His task accomplished, he exits left.

Slowly, limb-wrapped Julie Shanahan arises, and drags her handicapped self to centre stage.

17.(cont’d).DINNER. 17.

Upstage the dog is still eating.

18.(cont’d).JUMP. 18.

She lifts her grounded body with her arms, looks world weary exhausted into the audience. Around her neck hang a string of pearls. A long hanging string of pearls. She says, in her weary dreary voice:

and continues:

There was a young man

on the top of a high rise building

and he wanted to jump

Instead of trying to help him,

the crowd that

had gathered around below

began to shout

‘Jump jump jump

jump jump jump jump’

she is frantic now, pounding her arms:

‘Jump jump jump

jump jump!’

she is sobbing now, and looking into the audience as if they were that Roman arena throw-you-to-the-lions, entertainment-at-all-costs hungry devouring voracious ravenous crowd. She pauses for a moment, breaks the silence with:

and he did

Slowly, her head down, she drags her legless or behindered body off right. Almost off, she turns around, looking back accusingly at us. She makes it slugly to the cement blocks, creepycrawls off left... on to stones and off...

19.MOUTH-TO-MOUTH RESUSCITATION. 19.

Big Jan and little Beatrice come on stage left. He stands behind her, and she, bedraggled-looking, faces the audience. She is wearing a loose long tired-looking pale green dress. From behind, he holds her arms out. Carries out a breathing exercise. How people can help each other... Reaching around from behind her (i.e. still facing, playing to, the audience) he gives her mouth to mouth resuscitation. The sound of this breathing is very loud. Invading our senses and the stage space, filling it out with their breath. He pumps her little chest with his powerful arms. Pumping out her breath, pumping up her life, the life in her, the motion of the air in her lungs, in her dead-looking body. He pumps her stomach. She exhales sharply. He abandons her to her fate on the stage, and exits off left.

20.RESUSCITATED. 20.

Beatrice unleashes her resuscitated dance onto the stage.

Across her breast. Around, catching something. Carrying something. Down on ground. Stage right. Left right blowing. Over head. Follow arm. Stage left. Around. Arm hands face. Race upstage... quite long... Turns. Stageright in a heap, like earlier, on cement blocks. Crouched. Jump spring. There in her urchin-heap crouch.

21.THIS THING OF DARKNESS. 21.

Thin blonde Julie Shanahan, exageratedly tall in high high black heels, a fur fur coat over her shoulder, a ‘to the gallery’ smile plastered on her perfectly made-up face sophisticatedly slinks on from stage left. Elegant. Showing smiling performing to the audience. She lounges regally to the urchin heap, gathers ‘it’ up ... gathers it up under her arm, her wing, the misfortune, the ownschuck, the gatherumup. Takes ‘it’ downstage left. always smiling smiling at the audience. She paces slowly regally elegantly to stage right, with this heap that is Beatrice, her dark hanging hair and head and bare feet dragging under her arm. To stage right, and off. Into the land of the wings.

22.SUGAR KISS (NEGER KÜSSCHEN). 22.

In a black evening dress with a black table, a glass of water comes Quincella onto the stage. Downstage right. She wets her lips. She says:

Sugar.

She puts "sugar" onto her lips. She says:

Geraldo

"Geraldo" comes on to her from downstage left. She decrees:

Kiss me

He kisses her. And exits, downstage right.

To the left of the table, she lets something drop (a penny?), her arm long, outstretched.

A man in a suit (Jean), walks on, hurried gait, from stage left, carrying a tan leather bag. From it, he pours a mountain of pfennigs at the foot of her table. Bronze brass coloured pennies. What could this mean? He makes his way off with his now empty brown leather shoulderbag. Quincella exits. Money for kisses. Freudian exchange.

23.NAZARETH IRONING. 23.

On Nazareth, looking busy and with purpose, carrying an iron. Downstage, she spreads out her semi see-through dress and proceeds to iron it. A tall gaunt man (Thomas) enters stage left, with a white cast on one arm.

Jean of the money bag off.

This bizarre man with his cast looks at Nazareth ironing. Out of his pocket he takes out a gaudy plastic bag. He takes off the cast and puts it into the plastic bag. He says:

Ow

as if looking for attention. More broken limbs mutilations.

24.CHALK FLOWERS ON THE TABLEAU. 24.

On Beatrice, right, in black dress, to centre stage. She is barefoot. On the littered stage floor she begins to draw slowly, measuredly, with white chalk, a flower.

25.DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN - RING EATING. 25.

Nazareth exits, Mariko enters, en-trances, with a chair. On this chair, she sits at the table, extreme stage right.

24.(cont’d).CHALK FLOWERS. 24.

Beatrice is still drawing behind.

25.(cont’d). DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN - RING EATING. 25.

Black haired solemn Mariko sits there, poised, drinks from the cup. She barely looks into the cup, as if reading something in there (unexagerated).

24.(cont’d).CHALK FLOWERS. 24.

Beatrice is drawing another big flower behind her.

25.(cont’d).DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN. 25.

Now Mariko, in her tiny miniature movements, is taking off her rings and eating them, swallowing them with her tea/coffee. Slowly. Right hand, then left. Tales of the unexpected.

The stage: a cement block strewn jungle with rubbish, FLOWERS drawn on with white chalk by little long dark haired Beatrice.

26.GRASSHOPPER SPRING:tense/limp. 26.

On Julie upstage left in a long cream evening dress, followed by suited Thomas. Dress skirt held out.

24/25.CHALK FLOWERS/DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN. 24/25.

Off Beatrice and Mariko right.

26.GRASSHOPPER SPRING. 26.

Centrestage on blocks is Julie, her blonde hair hanging. Thomas stands behind her, and she does a limp grasshopper spring, bedraggled, facing the audience, like a jellyfish.

Hugging the stage-right wall have appeared tall dark-haired suited Urs, and long blonde pony-tailed Barbara in a pale pink long (night)dress. From behind, he lifts her, she facing the audience. Her body is tense, taut, rigid, into a grasshopper pose. Ganz gespannt. He turns her horizontally, and places her feet against the wall. Her angular rigidness is really funny. With the ‘boing’ of the grasshopper elastic band music. Mathias Burkert is standing in the shadows, facing the down down stage right wall, playing a hillbilly-looking mouth instrument...

She bounces off the wall, the impetus of that jump taking her, carried by Urs, like a rocket to centre stage, where he revolves her back to vertical, she stands, and suddenly transformed into a somnabule, she like a sleepwalker makes her way back to her stage right starting point. Urs lifts her tensed body again. She springs off the wall with the music again. He lifts her impetus to centre stage again. Puts her down again. He follows her sleepwalk back again.

Meanwhile, behind, to offer a big movement contrast there is the limp lifeless hanging Julie in her long cream dress, supported by Thomas. His facial expression is blank rigormortis. First of all he lifts her in a repetition of hanging grashopper bended knee lands. Then he lifts her leg in an extension from her collapsed hanging body, head falling forward, as if she were an invertebrate, without any muscles in her body either.

27.SOMNAMBULE/COUNT. 27.

Urs disappears off left for a moment, and reappears with a blanket. He puts the blanket on the ground, and lies Barbara on it, in the splits. He wraps her in it.

26.(cont’d).GRASSHOPPER SPRING. 26.

Meanwhile limp Julie’s leg is being extended behind, centre stage, on the line of fallen blocks. Up and down, like scissors.

27.(cont’d).SOMNAMBULE/COUNT. 27.

Urs lifts the blanket-wrapped in splits Barbara against the wall, stage right. Her extended foot makes contact with the wall. Facing the audience, he behind her. He lifts her off, rotates her, and sticks her foot again to the wall, in the start position. Approximately four times they revolve.

Then she somnabulistically, as if in some kind of trance or other world, walks as if predestined to centrestage. Urs is behind her. She is counting, (like a dancer counting...):

26 27 28 29

to stage left, the noctambule sleepwalker, where he puts his hands down the front of her dress and holds her breasts. Like quantities or eggs.

31 32 33 34 35

sleepwalking back to stage right and off.

26.(cont’d).GRASSHOPPER SPRING. 26.

Julie and Thomas exit upstage.

28.ESCAPE 2. 28.

Beatrice on right, dragging man (Jean?)

She running into walls. Man helping her run up the walls: stage right, she climbs onto a big man’s shoulders (Jan’s). The man changes, is replaced, by another. She runs away. Six men come on. They line up diagonally, centre stage, to in-turn toss her into the air, holding her around stomach, and tossing her feet up into the air. All scatter to centre stage... Beatrice and mendance... She carried by them in air cycle to down stage right... the men form a line downstage from left to right, put their hands, palms down, on the ground. Little barefoot Beatrice, in her loose black dress begins to walk across these outstretched hands. Left to right. Right to left. Back and forth. Forth and back. Now running. Running. Dash dash dashing... across the row of hands. She is grabbed by Jan, and placed lying on their now outstretched flexed feet. She is put lying across them on their insteps... A truly astonishing image and idea. Like this she is carried across to stage right. Then they scatter/disperse again. Take her, toss her up in the air again. They watch on, catch her, scatter off right.

29.DAS IST EIN CIGOGNE LIED. 29.

On Nazareth centre stage. she faces the audience, left of centre stage, in front of the blocks. She says, in her powerful voice:

Off right.

30.POETRY. 30.

Julie Shanahan takes up Nazareth’s position, coming on from stage right to centre stage. She stands, faces the audience, and in a monotone expressionless, ‘enunciated’ well elocuted and very projected voice she recites a poem. Her body does not move:

Oh I learned from Achillikus

about the Nightingale

Oh I long to hold the nightingale

nesting in my hand...

And I love to spend the

Catskill spring with you...(?)

And you know

that there is a hunger there

to touch the nightingale

Oh they... so elegantly...

about eternity...

O O O O O O O O O O

Feel the fluttering wings

upon my begging lips

O O O O O O O O O O ...

Tall dark Thomas comes on stage, stands behind her. She falls backwards into his awaiting arms which cushion her fall. Her arms are crossed over her chest like those of a mummy.

Thomas is catching her. She is dancing. Words poetry break the damn into dance and you feel her feeling her expression so much more precisely. ‘See’ what she means... released into movement, we can imagine it better. Without words. What is in between the words.

31.HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

Big Jan enters downstage left to his Zuhause.

30.(cont’d).POETRY. 30.

Julie is still centre stage, dancing in little circles, little movements, around Thomas.

32.A JOKE: CAMOUFLAGING INSTEAD OF MENDING. 32.

The big man Jan sits on his chair. Takes off his shoes. He has a hole in his sock. He reaches for a white cardboard box from under the locker. He reaches into it, takes something out, we cannot discern what exactly. What will he do? We snigger. Instead of sewing it, he paints his ankle black, thus camouflaging the hole, pulls up his sock. Puts on his shoe. Shoves the white cardboard box back under the locker. Moves his chair. This is funny.

30.(cont’d).POETRY. 30.

Meanwhile, Julie is still dancing, centre stage.

31.(cont’d).HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

Jan turns his chair around to face the t.v. which he switches on, his back to us.

and on the little screen, we see the deep sea,

30.(cont’d).POETRY. 30.

Poem dancing Julie and Thomas, exit.

33.APPLAUSE. 33.

Quietly softly almost tiptoeing, Dominique comes on and sits on the collapsed line of concrete blocks, looking at the audience, gently clapping clapping. I suppose he is our reflection. Gemein. A death image

31.(cont’d).HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

Meanwhile we see spear fishers shooting underwater on the television, and hear about Menschenfressers...

33.(cont’d).APPLAUSE. 33.

Dominique clapping, looking ahead on collapsed blocks, stage right

Bagpipe music from Sicily, Christmas music without voice.

31.(cont’d).HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

On Beatrice, black high-heeled, stage left, with tray... to Jan’s corner of the stage ‘home’.

Jan has shut himself into the locker/closet.

Small dark haired woman (Beatrice/Ruth) - yells at something we cannot see, hitting out with some kind of stick, out of eyeshot (the perameters of our view), behind the t.v.

Tray, brown paper, meat, to stage right.

She falls down centre stage with/beside meat on cardboard box

33.(cont’d).APPLAUSE. 33.

Dominique clapping.

31.(cont’d).HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

Jan comes out of the closet again.

Bernd comes on stage. With a bunch of water bottles. He places them under Beatrice’s arms. She gets up, sleepwalking. Bernd exits, taking off the meat tray.

34.A FIGHT. 34.

On Jean stage right to centre stage, from where he watches the more-burly-than-he Jan Minarik. Jan walks towards him (menacingly?). Suddenly, he knocks the weaker man to the ground, and then sits on him. Trapped under his considerable weight, Jean kicks his legs, futilely in protest. Jan lights a cigarette, and calmly smokes, pondering life..(it looks like) on pfennigs(?) Jean shouts at him:

Arschelock!

runs off the stage, turning off the t.v.

35.MEINE. 35.

Nazareth comes on from stage right, and walks into the spotlight centre stage. She is caarying a handful of raw spaghetti. She poises herself to face the audience, holds out the spaghetti and says:

MEINE spaghetti

Dominique exits imperceptibly right.

She says gruffly, harshly.

Ich schenke dir auch nicht,

weil sie sind MEINE.

She takes out individual spaghettis, holds them out from the

bunch and says:
PANadero

then returns it to the bunch, picks out another one, shows that one - one after another, with increasing acceleration:

PANadero

PANadero

PANadero

PANadero...

It becomes really hilarious and we are all roaring laughing.

Jan enters the stage space, this time clad in a bright eyesore red satin robe..

Nazareth scatters, scatter-placing individual pieces of spaghetti all around the stage, saying:

PANadero

PANadero

PANadero

this time though it is drowned out in the other stage noise...

she scuttles around and off the stage, furtively. She places her spaghetti in his Zuhause too. Her furtive scuttling takes her off the stage, right.

31.HOME SWEET HOME/MENSCHENFRESSER. 31.

In his ‘home’ space, a corner cut off at the extreme left of this otherwise ‘public’ house, public space for showing, the stage, Jan the big and burly man plugs in an iron. He sits down on his solitary chair and appears to slice off a piece of his thumb.

He holds the iron, hotplate upturned in one hand, and with the knife puts his meat, his slice of flesh on the iron, cooks it, spears it with the knife, and devours it with great relish. The spotlight is on him now, and his devouring. Menschenfressen. Self-consumption. Cannibalism.

36.GANGSTER/MAFIA. 36.

Upstage, looming, lurking in the background, the thin figure of Julie Shanahan emerges again, this time her high heels and loose dress topped off with a stockinged face: a gangster, carrying a black revolver. She lurks in the upstage shadows, pointing the gun alternatively at the other characters, Jan in his public house, Beatrice as she pours water. Julie sits, legs spread, a ‘tough guy’ on the cement blocks... moving about the stage..

37.TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Beatrice (stumbles) onto the centre stage space with a bottle of mineral water, which she begins to pour on the ground.

Suddenly, dramatically, big Jan makes a giant LEAP, sweeping off the red satin robe to reveal black swimming trunks underneath, and (comically) dives under the tiny fount of water, from Beatrice’s bottle. He swims, simulated breaststroke, frantically under this pathetically tiny amount of water.

The image is of Beatrice helping someone to try the impossible: Jan swims swims on the dry dry stage, trickled with water under Beatrice’s bottle to centre stage. It is hilarious and pathetic. Swimming under bottled water,almost INTO the audience.

The bottle empty, he LEAPS up and away. Forlorn sombrely (morbidly) black-dressed Beatrice is left there, frozen like a statue, motionless, holding out the empty bottle over the wet patch on the stage.

Jan has re-robed himself and is safely, comfortably, sitting back in his corner of ‘home’, reading a newspaper. He lights a cigarette behind it. It goes on fire. Comical, funny, he douses it out.

36.(cont’d).GANGSTER/MAFIA. 36.

Meanwhile the looming stocking faced gun carrying figure, high heeled Julie, looms in the background, unnoticed by these self-absorbed characters, leaning against the stage right wall... threateningly. A spooky and threatening presence.

37. (cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Big bumbling Jan exits.

38.EMPTY YOUR POCKETS. 38.

Beatrice is still standing there, frozen in her pose, centre stage. Horror.

Francis enters, walks to her, puts one hand over Beatrice’s heart, and with the other pounds it. Hard.

He spits on her hands, looks like preparation for a fight. She rubs the spit-on hands together, her expression now gleaming with vengeance.

She calls:

Jean

He comes on, right. She a statue. He stands to stage left, his behind presented to her, in front of her. Almost incongruously, she gathers her energy up and kicks him with all her might in the behind. Her hands are clenched tightly into little fists, ready for a fight.

Jean looks not only resigned to the kick but like a browbeaten character in general. Resignedly, without protest, he puts his hands in his pocket, takes out some papers, and lets them fall to the floor. She kicks him again. He reaches into his pocket again, this time producing a wallet, which he lets fall, adding to the papers already there. He does not turn around to look at this woman who is kicking him. She kicks him, furiously with her high heels again. This time he takes out, incongruously, meat: a package of salami. She kicks him again. More meat. Again. More. Now at his feet there lies a big and growing pile. The audience are laughing at this ‘most unusual’ sight and display... Everything is out on the floor.

Drum beat. Kick. Church bells. Kick. Salami. Wurst. that’s all. He simply walks off now.

39.PLANTING LITTER, PUTTING OUT THE SEEDS, INVERTED. 39.

TIDAL WAVE SCENE: their deceptive bounty.

All on, upstage

lights up.

38.(cont’d).EMPTY YOUR POCKETS. 38.

Beatrice off right.

39.(cont’d).PLANTING LITTER. 39.

Moving forward from upstage they move forward, synchronised, menacing, moving downstage, distributing mechanically litter from their enfolded arm. Three dirt-distributing rows.

Movement like people in the fields scattering seeds...

Their look is direct, unblinking, ahead. This is a chaos group scene.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Red-robed burly Jan re-emerges, and Thomas, to the public house corner (like reality t.v.?).

Jan powders himself, preparing, black fingerless gloves.

40.WITCH. 40.

Barbara like a witch on a broomstick, on the fallen wall, grins to the audience, falls backwards in the midst of all the stage chaos.

39.(cont’d).PLANTING LITTER. 39.

Just as suddenly and unheralded as they inondated/appeared, they are swept out of our view, disappearing somewhere offstage into the wings...

Julie, upstage left to down stage right.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Burly Jan stretched out comfortably, self indulgently on garden chair. We laugh as he pours a jug of water over himself, right over his head. Soaking himself.

41.STORIES: SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT. 41.

Little suited blonde-haired Janusz appears with a brown leather suitcase beside the public house, left corner, from stage right. He places the case down in front of him, and as he slowly opens it and empties out its contents he says, to the audience (in German)

Do you know, that Moslems,

when they travel

carry stones with them?

Yes! its true!

He tells his story in a sweet little voice, generous to the audience, as if he really wants to GIVE them this story... (without any of the usual sinister undertones). He opens the case to reveal that it is full of heavy stones. As he takes the stones out of the little suitcase, he says:

and when the time comes to pray,

they need a temple.

Well then, they

take the stones out,

and lay them,

something like this -

he outstretches his arm to indicate the stones he has encircled himself with. He pauses, and in the little pause looks into the audience, filling it out with unspoken meaning, and then adds, smiling:

And that is already a temple.

They can pray!

He jumps up, runs, skips across the littered foul rag and bone shop stage to stage right, where he enchants us with more stories:

We have a neighbour, and she has a dog.

He was very old,

and we knew that he would die soon.

One morning, we

children were playing in the backyard,

and we saw our neighbour.

She pulled the dog out of

the garbage can,

he opens the lid of a garbage can on the stage, looks amazed, adds:

and he was dead!

40.(cont’d).WITCH. 40.

Meanwhile, Barbara frozen like a witch on her broom is stiff and lying on concret blocks behind.

41.(cont’d).STORIES. SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT. 41.

The dog knew that he would die soon,

and, the dog, by himself,

hid himself in the garbage can!

He lies down for a moment on the stage. Raising his head, he says:

When a cow or a horse lies down to sleep,

it means probably he

is sick

He gets up, and downstage right illustrates another little story fragment:

We have a tradition (in Poland)

He runs off stage right and comes back with a leaf crown, which he places in front of him:

that at Springtime we have

a day when the girls

make crowns and decorate them with

flowers and then put candles in them...

he demonstrates, with a little leaf crown and candles, crouched over it on the stage..

in the night,

when it gets dark,

they light them...

he lights the candles, and moving his arms as if lanching them on that river, he says:

and they push them in

the river with a wish...

Crouched on his knees, he smiles to the audience, his eyes filled with wonder at the prospect of what those wishes could possibly be...

Another skip, to stage left. As he tells this story he is wrapping a wooden stick, like a lollypop stick, in gauze:

In the hospital,

after an operation with anasthetic,

you shouldn’t drink anything.

he looks directly at the audience’s disbelief, and adds:

No water, nothing!

He waves his arms in an effort to transmit the idea of this thirst:

And you have such a thirst!...

A little pause, he continues:

Then, come the nurses with a little stick

he shows this stick

and with gauze, or kleenex,

I don’t know.. They make it wet,

and then you can just...

He, with great relief and QUENCH, puts it in his mouth, and sighs a big big sigh.

He runs off stage right, re-emerging in a flurry of pebbles, like an excited child he jumps, throws them, exclaims, full of joy and life:

Stones!

He runs off again, to jump back on and with a square of wood in one hand, and confetti in the other. He throws the confetti up into the air, and underneath waves the piece of wood furiously to make a confetti billow storm scatter....shouting:

Wind!

Off again, jumping back again shaking a bottle of mineral water about the stage:

Rain!

and he adds

It’s from abroad!

Probably Scandinavia!

We laugh at this. Now he has a big brown cardboard box which he brings to upstage right on the ruins and rubble

42.DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM THINKING? 42.

A man brings a table covered in variously brightly coloured shoes on to centre stage. He places it on the fallen rubble cement blocks. Nazareth, looking like a Victorian cameo sits behind it, facing directly and blankly downstage.

40.(cont’d).WITCH. 40.

Barbara the prostrate witch and her broomstick exit.

41.(cont’d).STORIES/SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT. 41.

Meanwhile, Janusz’s story goes on, speaking to our disbellief. From way back there (upstage right) behind the big brown cardboard box, he projects his little voice to us, as he opens the box, unpacking its fruits:

You know, at new year,

when you eat for the first time

seasoned fruits,

you must pinch your ear

He does this, leaves a generous moment, we smile, he continues:

It brings luck!

He launches into another animated story:

About two weeks before Christmas,

me and my brother

we always wait for this t.v.

programme where they

show a ship in the port -

And it was a Santa Claus ship,

because it brought us all of

these exotic fruits, which we

would have afterwards on

Christmas day!

And he unpacks these from the big brown cardboard box, accompanying each fruit with its delicious name, with relish:

lemons

placing lovely lemon yellow yellow lemons on the grey grey concrete block rubble

bananas

More yellow.

Pineapples

an exotic lush-leaved pineapple onto this tableau,

Grapes!

Oranges!

vibrant oranges added to the pile

nuts

coconuts!

It seems endless, or a magic box like a magic hat perhaps...

42.(cont’d).DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM THINKING? 42.

A Victorian cameo, a statuesque frozen statue, legs crossed immobile in black high heels. Trying on shoes. Nazareth Panadero says, looking neither left nor right, in her deep strong voice:

Geraldo

41.(cont’d).STORIES/SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT. 41.

Janusz leaves the stage.

42.(cont’d).DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM THINKING? 42.

Geraldo comes to her from left. Nazareth says to him:

He walks off right. Taking a pair of high heels from the selection in front of her on the table, she changes her shoes, under the table. We can see. To the audience she suddenly breaks out of her impenetrable silence. She says:

Do you know what I am thinking?

Totally out of ‘character’ unexpectedly and without warning, she begins screaming fiercely at the top of her voice:

She continues her soul destroying scream of anguish all over the upstage space, running over the concrete block rubble in her awkward high heels, stomping, in her outburst of ‘ugly’ emotions. She stops. Adds in her CUTTING harsh loud deafening tone screaching tearing our eardrums grating on our eyeballs (aaaagh goes our turmoil inside):

back facing audience:

This is certainly Hieronymous Bosch. From the array of high heels in front of her, she selects the bright green ones, spitting out, harshly:

Spat so aggressively out. She puts them on, furiously.

Upstage left, blonde thin Julie Shanahan appears in a tissue transparent red dress.

Green high-heeled Nazareth spots her. She duck walks (feet out-turned) to downstage. Very funny we all laugh. From downstage left she has a great view of Julie, at whom she waves and says exuberantly:

Oh Julie you

look lovely on the stage!

and adds, herself:

Oh thank-you!

A man (Hans) clears the table off left.

Julie walks forward, and we see that she is also wearing gaudy bright green shoes which burst out, even of this chaotic stage tableau at us. She and Nazareth walk together to stage right. Chatting.

43.ORANGUTANG. 43.

Dominique enters to centre stage, dances - hesitates.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan and Thomas enter to public house corner (?)

43.(cont’d).ORANGUTANG. 43.

Dominique looks around, seeing that the two women are watching him, he stops his dance... embarassed he tries to disguise his desired/attempted dance...

42.(cont’d).DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM THINKING? 42.

The two green shoed women exit.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan is at home in his corner

43.ORANGUTANG. 43.

Dominique is dancing a long arm dance. He looks like an orangutang.

44.BIKINI HANDSTANDS. 44.

Extreme upstage, all women line across the backstage wall in colourful dressing gowns/house coats, which they take off. They all do handstands across the upstage wall. It is a funnycolourful brilliant picture. One on the extreme left keeps falling.

All exit except black bikini’d Julie Anne Stanzak, who comes downstage. She pins money onto her robe/dressing gown...

Thomas, beside her, bows, lies down, kisses money. Runs back...

43.(cont’d).ORANGUTANG. 43.

Long armed Dominique exits.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Thomas (falls) beside Jan.

He exits.

43.(cont’d).ORANGUTANG. 43.

Orangutang Dominique back on. Exagerating his long arm dance. He lies down stage right. Kicks himself. Same stage left. Tall long brown haired Julie Anne Stanzack is standing there immobile as a statue

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Meanwhile in his public private space Jan is putting on lipstick, looking at himself in the mirror of his locker.

43.(cont’d).ORANGUTANG. 43.

Dominique ‘dances’ on. He does ‘half’ handstands, kicking himself in the behind...

Looks quite funny and pathetic...

43/44.(cont’d).ORANGUTANG/BIKINIHANDSTAND. 43/44.

Julie breaks her pose, runs to the upstage wall where she gets back into her handstand and from there launches into an upbraidal of Dominique, derogatoritavely saying:

Who do you think you are?

Stupid!

You look ridiculous!

Just look at yourself!

Look you’re kicking yourself!

Your face is red like a tomato!

Ah? Domie

Ah? Feel a little stooopid?

Ah? Domie Domie ah?

Her voice is niggling...

45.APPLE BREASTS. 45.

Jakob (?)

Two apples

Urs and Barbara enter stage left

Barbara holds the two apples in front of her breasts. Urs bends over and bites into them. Grinning knowingly, suggestively at the audience. Could be referring to the Apple of knowledge fruit. Standing behind her, Tall Felix holds them, drops them, another(?)

GAGS: they pull apples out of their pockets, tricks....

Thomas and Felix spearing apples - tossing them and impaling them on knives...

46.BOMBING THE WALL WITH FRUIT. 46.

All on.

Throwing oranges and lemons at the upstage wall.

Francis on right - dance.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan already en travestie in his zu hause

46.(cont’d).BOMBING THE WALL WITH FRUIT. 46.

Oranges, lemons, being thrown.

Julie dance

Francis

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 7.

Meanwhile zu hause, Jan is lounging and smoking. Laying colourful fans out on his table in front of him. Farbelhaft.

47.CHARGE. 47.

The bull spells begin...

They are like bulls saying come and charge. Who is holding the red scarf?

Quincella dance

Geraldo

Mariko

48.(concurrent).SWEEPING. 48.

Beatrice/Ruth sweeping, wearing a green slip with black lace

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Hans dance

Quincella

Nazareth see-through.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan spreading out colourful fans.

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Bernd dance - white white shirt

Thomas on chair?

Finola centre stage

Beatrice

Urs

Jan

Aida

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Meanwhile in his living room Jan is putting on a crown (of thorns?) with candles on it (remember Polish girls’ wishes sent down the river, and the lustful(?) look in Janusz’s face as he told it...)

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Julie dance

Dominique

Mariko

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Crown of thorns49.CLEARING THE TEMPLE. 49.

Mariko clears stones back into their case, beside the transvestite’s public house, the transportable temple and she dances there.

Janusz dances.

Kyomi - to centre(?)

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Spotlight on Jan: transvestite statue of liberty with lit candle crown.

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

The individual dances now become two person dance

3/2 time dance; arms 3 time, legs 2 time, Übungen. Very agressive.

Agressive in the extreme.

Julie Francis

Replace dance

Quincella Geraldo

Nazareth Jean

punching scratching clap

Mariko vicious scratch

Bernd

Barbara

Thomas

Beatrice

Urs

Hitting scratching aggressive

Stagehands on clearing lots

Mariko chest

Head cut

Opening

Felix

Francis

Alone

Geraldo

Bauschie head hands.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Crowned Jan carrying apple and snake smiling a sleezie smile at the audience walks across stage apron and back (like the sots and thralls of lust). Behind him dance:

47.(cont´d).CHARGE. 47.

Mariko

Julie

Jean

Looks like poking your eyes out

Quincella dervishie

Nazareth take off clothes, scream

Bernd powerless

Felix arms: kicking - twirl

Finola: crane twist neck - clap. Aran islands dance legs

Barbara

Urs: spin

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan smoking, smug.

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Janusz handstand: side to side clap

Aida

Julie

Sidie

Dominique

50.APPLE/SLEEP. 50.

Behind this, onto the collapsed concrete blocks, the rubble, Aida in a soft pink (night)dress, tired, walks on somnambulistically from stage left, carrying a newspaper, which she slowly lays out, and lies down on it, face down.

51.PAUSE. 51.

Francis centrestage, says to the audience:

50.(cont’d).APPLE/SLEEP. 50.

Julie walks by, gives something on the face downturned Aida

Dancers walk by, and each place something in her hand, giving her something, then walking on, unremarkably. An apple is put in her hand. Barely noticable.

Kyomi left.

37/51.TRANSVESTITE/PAUSE. 37/51.

Jan carries ‘Pause’ sign across the apron, his sleezy grin. The flip side he shows on the way back. It says: ‘Intermezzo’

The audience applaud

50.(cont’d).APPLE/SLEEP. 50.

Francis on right to Aida.

Mariko gives her an apple, left.

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Toucandance continues. Now they are directing their ire at each other instead of directly into the auditorium...

Julie Shanahan upstage.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan in his zu hause.

51.(cont’d).PAUSE. 51.

Men clearing off blocks.

White gloves on.

47.(cont’d).CHARGE. 47.

Two dance and singles now upstage.

Quincella picks up some stuff, jumpers.

Dance on, off.

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan: stuff in cardboard box.

LIGHTS DOWN

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Big burly Jan in closet.

52.SNOWBALLS IN THE FREEZER. 52.

Quincella orange dress, catching, tossing blue rubber ball

Quincella off right, puts on a tight black velvet sleeveless knee length dress underneath

37.(cont’d).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan peeking out from the locker/closet and smoking...

52.(cont’d).SNOWBALLS IN THE FREEZER. 52.

Quincella upstage right trying to get into dress, fixing covering zipping...

37.(cont’).TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE/TRANSVESTITE. 37.

Jan peeking

fixes

52.(cont’d).SNOWBALLS IN THE FREEZER. 52.

Quincella throws off orange full-skirted dress right, emerges again downstage right with perfume vaporisor, which she squirts, jumping into the spray-clouds.

From stage right she rolls on a white 1950’s fridge with a plastic bag on top. She says:

When I was little,

my brother and I used to love

playing in the snow.

We would make snowforts,

and the most perfect snowballs.

We had so much

fun in the wintertime,

that we decided we would keep

some ice and snowballs,

and put it in the fridge for

the summertime

She opens the fridge, puts in plastic bag, shuts it, and, smiling, pushes the white 1950’s fridge off right.

53.DOVES 53.

Rusty dirt shower (upstage)

Relaxed/macho: in white-tied trench coats, slicked back hair, Francis and Geraldo come to centre stage, grooming themselves. Barbara pours a sugar circle around them from a white porcelaine jug.

The two men squeeze lemons into their hair. They are smiling sleezily into the audience.

Orange rusty dirt is falling.

Julie Anne Stanzak, arms outstretched, holding two white

birds, and wearing a below the knee navy dress walks to this preening pair from stage left. She stands facing them (back to the audience), two arms oustretched with white doves. Francis and Geraldo are slicking back their greased hair slowly with small black combs. Julie leans forward, and kisses Francis on the cheek. Then she leans to the other side and kisses Geraldo. She walks off, calmly slowly with her two birds. Biting into two halves of one apple, knowingly, the two white trenchcoated men take their leave, sauntering through the auditorium.

54.FEATHER/STONE. 54.

Urs with two stones on right,

Looking around him

Bangs stones together, red dust, blowing feather across stage, catching it with tweezers...

Waves right hand, checks pockets, says:

"

Off, then on right, claps, pulls up trouser legs, says:

then to audience:

to left, takes feather from the public house corner t.v., tosses it, catches it with green tweezers. Blows it across stage, against wall and off.

55.DAS MÄDCHEN UND DIE ROSE. 55.

On Nazareth right, to centre stage (erzählpunkt) further down...

She recites:

56. O DEATHE ROCK ME TO SLEEP. 56.

On Kyomi, black, stage right, dance

55.(cont’d).DAS MÄDCHEN UND DIE ROSE. 55.

Nazareth smiling and off right.

56.(cont’d).O DEATHE ROCK ME TO SLEEP. 56.

KYOMI’S DANCE, to

Washing hair, round head dance: hearing looking, rubbing tummy, open hands.

55.(cont’d).DAS MÄDCHEN UND DIE ROSE. 55.

Nazareth walks from right to left, looking at the audience.

56.(cont’d).O DEATHE ROCK ME TO SLEEP. 56.

Kyomi, open arms, pat chest.

55.(cont’d).DAS MÄDCHEN UND DIE ROSE. 55.

Nazareth off left.

56.(cont’d).O DEATHE ROCK ME TO SLEEP. 56.

Kyomi right, takes dustpan

To left, sweeping floor with hair.

27.(cont’d).SOMNAMBULE/COUNT. 27.

On Barbara, left, with chair: sleepwalking somnambule. Carrying a plastic bag, and a bottle of water, she says, slowly, putting us to sleep too:

25, 26,

27, 28, 29,

She places her chair in the sugar circle, continues:

32, 33,

puts on black underwear:

34, 35, 36, 37

out of bag she takes white underwear:

38, 39,

she puts these on over the black ones:

40, 41, 42,

lifts up bag:

43, 44,

sits on the chair, looking at the audience, she shakes the water:

45, 46

She opens the lid, it makes a carbohydrate hiss fizz sound. She lifts one cheek of her bum off of the chair, as if it was a fart, smiles (we laugh):

47, 48,

she opens the bottle again.

2.(cont’d).TARGET PRACTICE/THE NEUROTIC WOMAN AGAIN. 2.

Just bells.

On Julie upstage in her red transparent dress, takes chair (hands, screams), furious rage.

Beatrice off right

Carrying a newspaper hides behind cement blocks

Thomas and (Bernd?), left.

She orders:

Take my hand!

They come on and do this. She commands:

Hug me! Hug me harder!

Kiss me!

Hide me!

No-one should see!

Bernd, take my hand!

he does, she pushes him away:

Find something to hide me!

one runs off left to find something...:

Touch my hair!

One comes back with mattress, held in both hands, with which he ‘hides’ her as he kisses her behind it:

Hide me!

screaming, almost sobbing:

Find something!

The two men seem distracted, not knowing how to satisfy this demented woman, but doing their best to comply with her demands: it seems like she does not really know what she wants at all...:

Kiss me Bernd!

he does and she pushes him away, like she struggles free from, and strikes out at all of their attempts to comply with her wishes. Obviously her words are not saying what she means. But her gestures betray a ‘her’ of which she herself is not consciously aware, it seems...:

Hide me!

Kiss me Thomas!

now lower voiced:

Take my head in your hands

She lets her head fall forward, and one man catches it gently in his hands:

Throw it

He throws/tosses it up in the air, it falls again, he cushions its fall in his hands...:

Throw it higher!

He does this, unsatisfied with this she begins screaming again:

Higher! Throw it higher!

Bernd comes on with a towel (?)

She lies down on her back in a space between the rubble blocks. Begins screaming orders to the two men, who no matter how hard they try, cannot satisfy this woman:

Throw my leg!

They do, not violently, but gently:

Go away!

One of them is throwing one of her legs up in the air. She screams her demands, more and more demented, and it is very disturbing to watch:

Throw it higher!

Higher!

Throw my leg higher...

This is all going on upstage right, we peer (we must peer, I suppose the strain making us more subliminally uncomfortable about and aware of our position as voyeurs to this, therefore somehow complicit..).

35.(cont’d).MEINE. 35.

In the meanwhile Dominique has appeared, torso nu, at the centre stage. He is wearing a pair of black baggy trousers, and expressionlessly facing stage right (we see his profile only). In his hands he holds a bunch of spaghetti, like Nazareth did, so hilariously earlier on. But this time it is not funny, it is tragic. In counterpoint to what is going on upstageright, he stands there, as if mesmerised, or not there at all, just some kind of kinetic energy in the air ("the immaterial space is also registered, the space between the objects and the people, between people and things resembling people, a space that is full of tangible tension and electricity" - Rebecca Horn). Harking subliminally back to PANadero mentality, he slowly, morbidly, like a funeral march, his unfocussed gaze offstage in itself a funeral march, takes the spaghettis, individually, one by one, with his right arm, to his chest, where it snaps, breaks , falls. These minute and absurd gestures become HUGE, sneak under the skin of the onlooker like the horse into troy, and the internal havoc they cause there can be comparable to a battle of Troy. An internal one.

2.(cont’d).TARGET PRACTICE. 2.

Behind this we hear Julie’s exasperated, desperate:

Pick me up Thomas

Slowly, this happens too, and their heads hanging in deep resignation, they move off the stage.

Power construct.

35.(cont’d).MEINE. 35.

Dominique is the dark shadow or veil through which this is to be seen now. Single spaghettis to the naked chest. Snap. Fall. Next one. Snap. Fall. Next. Snap. Fall. Next. The broken pile at his feet grows.

The stage is dark, deadly.

37.(cont’d).TRANSVESTITE/TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE. 37.

Big burly Jan, en pimp, purple suit, greased slicked back hair, carrying a newspaper wrapped parcel under his arm, makes his happy-go-lucky way, insensitive to all of these goings on, to centre stage. There, he unwraps his parcel, to reveal its bounty of red red tomatoes, bread and cheese.

37/35.TRANSVESTITE/MEINE. 37/35.

Leaving them there, he picks up the dour piece-of-spaghetti-to -chest-snapping Dominique, and deposits him, like any other object, upstageright. Leaving him standing there, he proceeds to throw his wallet down, skips cheerily off right, takes mirror downstage left, shaves with microphone. This is funny.

Monitoring himself in the mirror, he sits at table and chair, stage left, eats spaghetti, and like the brute that he is, instead of simply lifting his glass to toast, he lifts the table by its stem as if it were a glass, and toasts to us, the audience. We all laugh (downstage apron).

37/57.TRANSVESTITE/DALI UTERUS TRAFFIC. 37/57.

In a pastel green light flouncy dress comes red haired white- skinned Finola Cronin, stage left. Big brute Jan Minarik leaps up from his meal, stands behind her, and lifts her swiftly above his head. Dramatically, arms up. She slips out of her dress, which remains in his hands, as she falls out of it onto the floor, just in her underwear. The brute does not seem to notice this, leaves her lying there, and goes to his closet in his Zuhause. He puts on a blue vinyl apron. The woman walks off.

She cracks the eggs onto Jan’s sizzling iron. He cooks them, while the woman goes upstage, onto the cement block rubble. He fries the eggs on his iron. When she turns her back towards us, we see the woman’s large white underwear, and what looked like a dress is revealed to be no more than an apron. With her arms outstretched, holding lighters where the eggs were earlier, she begins guiding imaginary traffic by (it looks like), like a traffic warden.

The brute sits downstage musing.

Meanwhile upstage the woman allows all the traffic through, asks some to wait for a moment to allow another through...

Yes, you can come through... You, no... Wait please...

Uterus traffic...

37/58.TRANSVESTITE/SHOOTING THREE TOMATOES. 37/58.

Meanwhile, downstage, big Jan has drawn a black pistol, which he menacingly aims at the tomatoes, and then fires. Blowing their brains out I suppose, blood flying everywhere, splattering all over, the shots surprising terrorising and deafening us. Just a tomato. Those beautiful three. Three shots.

57.DALI UTERUS TRAFFIC. 57.

Meanwhile Finola directs her traffic upstage unperturbed...

Blood and eggs and fried and traffic. Horrid.

What a Weltanschauung.

37/59.TRANSVESTITE/READ ME A STORY. 37/59.

Jan lets his face fall in the cake in front of him. A gag. We laugh.

He calls Finola to him. He turns around and opens a book.

She is still directing traffic with her lighters.

Read me something

he orders.

She leaves her post, sits straight-backed on the chair beside him, and proceeds to read him a story:

der verlassene Man...

...(missing story)...

...

he is leaning back in his chair, hanging, in a poise of extreme comfort, as if being sung a lullaby...she continues to read another story:

drei Steine, nicht gesehen...

...(?)...

deswegen weint er...

He throws water(?),skips.

she off downstage, arms(?)

out men kiss hands?

60.6 OPEN PIANOS, CLOUDS, GRAND TABLEAU IN B MINOR. 60.

A screen descends with clouds.

Finola drags table (off?).

A tall indistinct figure in black high heels, black skirt/dress, with a glass of beer in hand, the face

enshrouded in an opaque black piece of material, (which could be construed to mean death) sits down at the table with her beer.

This morbid mantilla’d woman/creature is the one counterpoint to the otherwise overwhelmingly beautiful image (it is really overwhelming and UNbelievable). She eventually goes off left and the music continues without her ominous and puncturing/deflating presence.

This Tchaikovsky concert goes on for quite a while, like a real resting point, an (almost) empty image, to absorb the vortex of emotions stirred, unearthed, by the violence of the rest of the piece. But then there is that niggling dead(?) beer drinking woman...

Then all off.

61. WOMAN GROUP DANCE 61.

Barefoot women come on in flowery and colour dresses and do their close group (three rows of four five three) formation dance. Great. Their expressions: serious/hard.

Especially noticeable is Mariko, the only one dressed all in black.

62/25.PHOTOGRAPH/DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN. 62/25.

Mariko breaks away from the group, comes down down stage, with pocket camera, and asks audience members to take her photograph.

61.(cont’d).WOMAN GROUP DANCE. 61.

The group off right.

63.MESMERIC CHILDHOOD SONG. 63.

On left comes the man in the white trenchcoat, Geraldo, all buttoned up, with slicked back hair and sunglasses. He sits in front of the piano like a blind man on the chair, extreme stage left.

62.(cont’d).PHOTOGRAPH. 62.

Mariko, left, posing for a photograph - an audience member in the front row taking it.

63.MESMERIC CHILDHOOD SONG. 63.

To this:

64/25.VENOM CHAMPAGNE/DIE KLAGE DER KAISERIN. 64/25.

Mariko goes to Dominique, who is now standing there, passively, stage left. She plants a kiss on his face. She says:

She slaps him across the face, shouting:

She walks agressively off right, re-emerging accompanied by two (suited?) men. They pour her a glass of champagne. She holds this in her hand as they flip her, cartwheels, with an agressive energy, which flips the champagne at the impassive pathetic helpless looking static Dominique. Bernd flips her in these cartwheels three times. The men (her helpers) vanish, and she unleashes (right word) her ire energy into a dance.

Agressive, amer/bitter, venom.

Dominique,the object of this, stands there passive, unreactive, doing nothing, as if an unfeeling piece of wood.

Meanwhile, Mariko, churning mixed-up feeling, falls... grotesque face movements, grimacing, like something residual from the Noh theatre vocabulary, she moves to stage left as if ragged dragged across in the vortex of this energy/emotion. Getting there with this impetus, she pushes Dominique. Dashes off right to re-emerge shouting at static unreactive him.

Clouds.

He moves slowly to her.

She hands him her camera.

He unquestioningly takes the camera, and her photograph.

She hurls abuse at him (like we saw concretised in her hurling champagne at him with the impetus/momentum of her flung cartwheels):

She assumes a pose, defiant, hands by her side, before the camera.

He takes the photograph (we see flash).

She suddenly snatches/grabs the camera from him, hissing:

She shouts, Bernd flips her.

hurling more abuse. Urs fills her glass with champagne, Cartwheels her, flung, again.

They go off, recede off of the stage, out of our sight, but not out of mind.

65.A MANICURE 65.

Geraldo is left on the stage, alone on his stool in front of the piano. He slowly takes his glasses off. He moves downstage, looking at the audience. He lies on his back centre stage, head downstage, legs upstage (we see the crown of his head). He stretches his arms up above his head, still in his tied-up white mac. He examines his fingernails, then, taking out imperceptibly a bottle of red nail polish, and placing it on the ground to the right of him, he proceeds to paint his nails. To his left still lie the newspaper-unwrapped red tomatoes, bread and cheese, which Jan deposited there earlier at the edge of the apron.

Clouds are coming down.

He stands up slowly, and, showing his left hand to the audience, he walks off the stage, recedes from the stage...

66.PREENING. A WASH. 66.

On Francis carrying a metal bucket. (other white mac’d man) to centre stage. Takes off shirt, washes it in the bucket’s water.

Red red and white (the lining).

Lights down. Dunkel.

67.CANDLE/SAX. 67.

Francis on white shirt.

66.(cont’d).PREENING.A WASH. 66.

Geraldo in the meantime is taking his clothes off far upstage right, sitting with his back to us (the audience must peer,

voyeuristically) and washing himself.

Off white mac cups(?)

left Geraldo: hand left.

67.(cont’d).CANDLE/SAX. 67.

Francis: back table chair, off coat (red lining)

36.(cont’d) GANGSTER/MAFIA. 36.

Julie gun left

67.(cont’d).CANDLE/SAX. 67. Lighter: white candles on table Julie lurking in shadow, Francis holding flame to arm...

22.(cont’d).SUGAR KISS. 22.

On Quincella right, black sophisticated evening dress. She puts sugar on her lips (again).

36.(cont’d).GANGSTER/MAFIA. 36.

Julie sitting centrestage with gun.

67.(cont’d).CANDLE/SAX. 67.

Francis lighting candles.

22.(cont’d).SUGAR KISS. 22.

Thomas emerges onto the stage.

Quincella says to him:

Kiss me

67.(cont’d).CANDLE/SAX. 67.

By now, Francis has a line of lighting candles waxed onto his arm (a saxophone in the other?)

22.(cont’d).SUGAR KISS. 22.

Thomas mechanically places his lips against Quincella’s, void of emotion, absently, and continues his walk off of the stage. As if the ‘kiss’ was just a minor interruption on his pathway...

Quincella drops a penny (coin) like before, a repeating motif... She says, emotionless, echoingly hollow, empty:

Francis,

play something for me

22/67.(cont’d).SUGAR KISS/CANDLE-SAX. 22/67.

Francis with his arm of lighting candles, gets up, walks off, right

37.(cont’d).TRANSVESTITE/TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE. 37.

Jan runs on left.

22/67.(cont’d).SUGAR KISS/CANDLE-SAX. 22/67.

Francis re-emerges carrying a saxophone.

37.(cont’d).TRANSVESTITE/TRYING THE IMPOSSIBLE. 37.

Jan is lounged again in his zu hause, smoking.

Watching (the audience?)

22/67.(contd).SUGAR KISS/CANDLES-SAX. 22/67.

The stage is now candle-lit.

36.(cont’d).GANGSTER/MAFIA. 36.

The menacing niggling presence of stocking-headed Julie (reminiscent of Urs/Jan in 1980) looms, lurks in the background. She, faceless, with a pointed threatening gun. She sits spread legged on the cement blocks, pointing it.

Janusz: piano.

Quincella, at apron.

Urs on with chair.

Quincella sits.

Julie off.

This broken foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Electricity. Sound. Wow. Deserted. Sam Shepherd’s desolate concrete junglescapes. A feeling.

Julie leaning against clouds(?) sitting.

Julie walking stage left.

Lurking in Jan’s zu hause.

Quincella says:

Francis, thank-you

emotionlessly.

All off.

And centre table.

Lights up.

Julie pointing gun, from Jan’s Zuhause

Thomas, kiss me

Thomas comes on stage and does this.

Centre stage, picks up (chair?)

Julie sitting, on block, pointing.

Off left, Dominique on left.

2/68.TARGET PRACTICE/WILLIAM TELL APPLES.SETTIMANASANTA. 2/68.

Inondation of men and women...

Two rows.

They all place apples on their heads.

Targets, Wilhelm Tell...

Quincella walks between, puts an apple on her head.

They stand there one moment...

and to the Settimanasanta processional music, they join arms at the elbow and begin to sway. Slowly.

The sway brings them forward. Left to right, moving forward, The trenches.

The front row, the men. Behind them, the women.

Black shoes.

Soft ernst im blick.

Bernd back off.

Stageright apple off.

Men back off.

Both sides some without apples.

It is slow.

They could also be seen as TARGETS for target practice.

69. TREES FALL, THE CHERRY ORCHARD UPROOTED. 69.

Empty stage, and lights up.

More red dust falls

Two rows, emerge horizontally, from right to left, like slugs they bend over, one by one, heads hanging, doubled over, swaying from side to side, to the audience, crossing their hanging arms, turning out their feet, back again, somehow progressing from right to stage left where they all, one by one, eventualy, exit. Bent over, jump. Women’s row in front this time.

Men half-way.

Heads hair hanging, and the red dust falling gently falling fading mist,

up around us

their energy casting spells bewitching.

Stage hands on, clearing off upstage.

Washing over the audience like waves.

A Hammam. More and more and more...

Trees come down, pink cherry blossoms, descend,...

It could call up to the eyes The Cherry Orchard, but hung like sheep’s corpses in a Butcher’s on ropes, LET FALL to the ground, uprooted so, dead so, stranded, helpless, cut off from their roots.

Trees come down, descend, and in front of them, downstage, Janusz the storyteller comes with a microphone to centrestage. The other dancers are gone.

41/70. GA GA GA. A PRAYER. A STORY. 41/70.

Janusz says:

The Fox and the Geese:

In a field full

of beautiful geese

a fox came and said,

‘I come here to eat

you all’

And the geese got a shock,

they jumped

cried and complained -

that they were too young

to die!

And the fox laughed and

laughed and said ‘NO EXCUSE.

You must all die’.

And then one came to him and said

but PLEASE let us

have a last prayer, so we

won’t die with our sins.

We will get in

a line so that you can

see better which one of us

is the greatest.

And the fox said, alright, O.K.,

I can wait until your last prayer.

Then the first goose came

and stood there and began to pray

which with

the geese is:

‘Ga ga ga...’

And this took so long that

the second didn’t do it.

Eventually the second

got into line:

‘Ga ga ga...’

the third, the fourth...

At a certain time all were

in the line and praying.

Now, normally such fairytales

must be told until

they have finished their prayer,

but these geese,

they are praying still.

The cherry blossom trees are let down on ropes.

The stage hands are on clearing them.

Applause.

They all come out and bow.

(Wuppertal, 23/4/94: Generalprobe, 2 performances, & 23/6/94).