A play for a small room.
TIME: Present.
SCENE: The green room of a theatre. A small table has three coffee makers on it, various mugs and coffee necessities. A small basket of bagels sits next to the coffee makers. Leaning against the table are DALE and HARRY. DALE is tall, handsome, and overly-confident dressed in a suit circa the fifties. HARRY is smaller and dressed not-so-fittingly in a police outfit circa the same period. As the audience enters, DALE and HARRY are running lines together in preparation for tonight’s opening performance. The actors improvise a dialogue between their two respective characters, something attributable to their costumes, flat and speedy in delivery but over-the-top in subject matter. When the audience is standing at the ready (no sitting), DALE suddenly turns around and begins to make himself a cup of coffee.
DALE: Skip this part.
HARRY: (Looks at DALE, suddenly nervous.) What?
DALE: Skip this part.
HARRY: Why?
DALE: I don’t know my lines here.
HARRY: You...still? Tonight’s…
DALE: (Interrupting.) Yeah, yeah, tonight’s opening. Whatever. (Sips coffee.)
HARRY: My mom’s in the audience tonight.
DALE: Let’s skip to the bat bite scene.
HARRY: But there’s a lot of stuff between here and there. (DALE begins the unambitious rattling off of more improvised “lines.”) Wait.
DALE: (Snapping out of lines.) What?
HARRY: Where are you? Is that the bat scene?
DALE: Yeah. I added a few lines.
HARRY: You…
DALE: (Puts down the coffee. Speaks to HARRY with fake sincerity.)
HARRY: Harry.
DALE: Harry. Right. Did I say thanks for spotting me last night for the pizza?
HARRY: Um. No. I don’t think…
DALE: Harry, this is your first show, right? (Does not wait for an answer.) Let me give you the fruits of my knowledge, (With a big brother smile.) rookie. Let me ask you a question: why did you start acting?
HARRY: I auditioned.
DALE: No, no, why did you start? Why did you want to audition?
HARRY: There’s this girl…remember? Last night? I told you. The girl at the pizza shop. I like her, but she’s dating an actor. So…
DALE: Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. The…ass girl, right? Ha! How common! You started acting to get chicks, did you? I should have known.
HARRY: Well…at first. But…I dunno, it’s pretty fun. I thought it’d be difficult, but there’s something in the majesty of …(Realizes DALE is not paying attention but rather looking at him in an anticipatory smile.) what?
DALE: Well?
HARRY: Well what?
DALE: It’s customary, when asked a question, to ask the same back. How are you? I’m fine, how are YOU? (HARRY does not register this but looks at DALE in amazement.) You’re supposed to ask why I got into acting.
HARRY: Oh. Sorry. (Pause.)
DALE: Ask me how I got into the theatre.
HARRY: Oh! How did you get into the…
DALE: To change people’s lives. To delve into the psyche and darkest parts of myself and use myself to expose the humanity of man. And that’s with a capital “h” and “m,” my friend. To…to put myself in that danger of not knowing what comes next.
HARRY: If you knew your lines, you’d know what comes next.
DALE: Ha! What? A script? Please,
HARRY: Harry.
DALE: A script is only a road map, my uneducated friend. It shows you the destination, you know, how everything should turn out. But a real actor knows how to get there. How to get there through the intimate knowledge of his character, regardless of “lines.”
HARRY: What if you don’t get there?
DALE: Ah! See? That’s the majesty! The danger! The adventure of acting. Of creating! Of making something new and fresh for the audience every single night!
HARRY: So you’re going to improvise?
DALE: Improvise? Improv? What am I, an amateur? Imp…please! Don’t make me laugh. Improv is for people who can’t act. It’s not an improvisation when you are another person. Let me ask you. Do you know how to be you?
HARRY: (Pause.) What?
DALE: When you go out and do whatever it is you do, do you know how to do it?
HARRY: I…I don’t know.
DALE: When you go to the grocery store,
HARRY: (Immediately) Harry.
DALE: (Immediately but without breaking his stride.) Harry, do you know what you’re going to get? Do you know what you’re going to act like when you get to the post office? Do you know which laundry machine you’re going to step to when you get to the Laundromat?
HARRY: I suppose so.
DALE: See? So. If I’m playing you, I would do the same. Exact. Thing. I should get, as an actor, so lost in the “being you” that I can make those decisions in a way that even your mother would recognize. And that’s why I got into theatre. To experience humanity.
HARRY: But what if I go by my script?
DALE: Don’t worry. Give it a few plays, and you won’t care about lines either. It’s about danger…it’s about not knowing what the performance has in store, how your character will react from moment to moment but knowing that you’re so in control as that character that you’ll end up where the roadmap – that laudable “script” – wants you to be. If you know Hamlet, if you really, really get yourself tuned into Hamlet, then you’ll end up king just like he did. With a black wife. Or. Whatever.
HARRY: I thought he died.
DALE: (Ignoring him, DALE is looking out into space confidently.) And tonight, my little newbie fledgling actor friend, tonight I’ll take that journey of the unknown, and we’ll all – you, me, the audience – will find out just who Johnny Swanson, 1950s bookseller, is. I’ll tune in, I’ll be another person, (DALE moves into audience and grabs an audience member by the shoulders and shakes them gently.) I’ll grab the audience and show them art! How real actors can be! (DALE steps back to the table.) And how often do we get to see art, true art these days? In a time when Broadway is infested with plays based on television shows, when theatre feels the only way to attract the Nascar dads is to have Frasier or Friends star as characters in plays written by minds that have surpassed the droll drudgery of the cheap television laughs those “little actors” are accustomed to. They’ll look me in the eye and see someone else! I’ll be someone else. I’ll expose the humanity and show people that…thing Copernicus said, “Ah, that is he.” (Pause. He leans against the table and hangs his head. Grudgingly.) And that’ll show her.
HARRY: (Who had been mystified by his commanding speech but now drops his jaw.) What?
DALE: What?
HARRY: (Again nervous.) What did you just say? Who’s “her?”
DALE: (Pause.) Brandi.
HARRY: Brandi? As in…the girl in our play Brandi?
DALE: Yes. Bitch. Bitch Brandi.
HARRY: Does she know her lines?
DALE: Let me tell you something, buddy. Never – this is from Artaud, great, great theatre mind – never date your fellow cast mates.
HARRY: You’re not dating her. She’s dating…she doesn’t like you.
DALE: Ha! Yeah. Hmph. Sure. Did you see us last night? At the pizza joint?
HARRY: She was there with Donald. I know he knows his lines.
DALE: See? Her dating that Neanderthal has everything all fucked up.
HARRY: Do you mean your not knowing you lines?
DALE: (Pause. DALE gives a slow burn to HARRY.) All right, let’s run more lines. Get to the bat bite part.
HARRY: (Actor begins to improvise his “lines.”)
DALE: Wait.
HARRY: What?
DALE: Where are you? Is that the bat scene?
HARRY: Yeah. (Beaming like a proud student.) I added a few lines.
DALE: Wait. You can’t do that.
Fin.