THEATRE AUDITION

NINA

Why do you say that you kissed the ground on which I walked? You should kill me. I’m so exhausted. I only I could rest… rest! I am a seagull… That’s not right. I am an actress. Yes! (Hearing Arkadina and Trigorin laugh, she listens.) And he’s here… Yes… It doesn’t matter… Yes… He didn’t believe in the theatre, he went on mocking my dreams, and little by little I too stopped believing and lost heart… And then came the trouble of love, jealousy, the constant fear for my child… I became petty, worthless, I acted mindlessly… I didn’t know what to do with my hands, didn’t know how to stand on the stage, wasn’t in control of my voice. You can’t understand what it’s like to feel you’re acting terribly. I am a seagull. No, that’s not right… Do you remember, you shot a seagull? A man just came along, saw it and killed it from having nothing to do…A plot for a short story. That’s not right… What was I…? I was talking about the stage. Now I am not so… I am now a real actress, I act with enjoyment, with ecstasy, I get intoxicated on the stage and feel that I’m beautiful. And now, while I’ve been staying here, I’ve walked everywhere, I walk and walk, and think, think and feel how every day my spiritual powers grow… Kostya, I know now, I understand. In what we do—whether we act on the stage or write—the most important thing isn’t fame or glory or anything I used to dream about—but the ability to endure. To know how to bear your cross and have faith. I have faith, and my pain is less, and when I think about my vocation I’m not afraid of life.

JOAN

I like remembering the beginning: at home, in the fields, when I was still a little girl looking after the sheep, the first time I heard the Voices, that is what I like to remember—It is after the evening Angelus. I am very small and my hair is still in pigtails. I am sitting in the field, thinking of nothing at all. God is good and keeps me
safe and happy, close to my mother and father and my brother, in the quiet countryside of Domremy, while the English soldiers are looting and burning villages up and down the land. My big sheep-dog is lying with his head in my lap; and suddenly I feel his body ripple and tremble, and a hand seems to have touched my shoulder.

I turned to look. A great light was filling the shadows behind me. The voice was gentle and grave. I had never heard it before, and all it said to me was: “Be a good and sensible child and go often to church.” But I was good, and I did go to church often, and I showed I was sensible by running away to safety. That was all that happened the first time. And I didn’t say anything about it when I got home; but after supper I went back. The moon was rising; it shone on the white sheep; and that was all the light there was. And then came the second time; the bells were ringing for the noonday Angelus. The light came again, in bright sunlight, but brighter that the sun, and that time I saw him.

A man in a white robe, with two white wings reaching from the sky to the ground. He didn’t tell me his name that day, but later on I found out that he was the blessed St. Michael.

LIZZIE

What did I do in Sweetriver. Well, the first three or four days I was there — I stayed in my room most of the time. Because I was embarrassed!

I knew what I was there for — and the whole family knew it too. And I couldn’t stand the way they were looking me over. So I’d go downstairs for my meals — and rush right back to my room. I packed — I unpacked — I washed my hair a dozen times — I read the Sears, Roebuck catalog from cover to cover. And finally I said to myself: “Lizzie Curry, snap out of this!” Well, it was a Saturday night — and they were all going to a rodeo dance. So I got myself all dolled out in my highest heels and my lowest cut dress. And I walked down to that supper table and those boys looked at me as if I was stark naked. And then for the longest while there wasn’t a sound at the table except for Uncle Ned slurping his soup. And then suddenly — like a gunshot — I heard Ned Junior say: “Lizzie, how much do you weigh?”

I said, “I weigh a hundred and nineteen pounds, my teeth are all my own and I stand seventeen hands high.”

He was just trying to open the conversation. Well, I guess I closed …then, about ten minutes later little Peter came hurrying in to the supper table. He was carrying a geography book and he said:  “Hey, Pop — where’s Madagascar?” Well, everybody ventured an opinion and they were all dead wrong. And suddenly I felt I had to make a good impression and I heard my own voice talking as if it didn’t belong to me. I said: “It’s an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa right opposite Mozambique.” Can I help it if I was good in geography?

Everything was so quiet it sounded like the end of the world. Then I heard Ned Junior’s voice: “Lizzie, you fixin’ to be a schoolmarm?” And suddenly I felt like I was way back at the high school dance — and nobody dancing with me. And I had a sick feeling that I was wearing eyeglasses again the way I used to. And I knew from that minute on that it was no go. So I didn’t go to the rodeo dance with them — I stayed home and made up poems about what was on sale at Sears, Roebuck. And the day I left Sweetriver little Peter was bawling. And he said: “You’re the most beautifulest girl that ever was!”

CLAIRE

How strange it is, Anton! How clearly it comes back to me! The day we saw one another for the first time, do you remember—I was on a balcony then. It was a day like today, a day in autumn without a breath of wind, warm as it is now—only lately I am always cold. You stood down there and stared at me without moving. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go back in the darkness of the room where it was sage, but I couldn’t. You stared up at me darkly almost angrily, as if you wish to hurt me, but your eyes were full of passion. Then I don’t know why, I left the balcony and i came down and stood in the street beside you. You didn’t greet me, you didn’t say a word, but you took my hand and we walked together out of the town into the fields, and behind us came Kobby and Lobby, like two dogs, snivelling and giggling and snarling. Suddenly you picked up a stone and hurled it at them and they ran yelping back in the town, and we were alone. That was the beginning and everything else had to follow. There is no escape.

LISE

What else can I do? It’s the only way out. I don’t want the thing to be born. Look what happened to Manon Belair. She was in the same boat and now her life’s all screwed up because she’s got that kid on her hands.

And what about the father?

I don’t even know where he is. He just took off somewhere. Sure, he promised me the moon. We were gonna be happy. He was raking it in, I thought everything was roses. One present after another. No end to it. It was great while it lasted… but Goddamn it, this had to happen. It just had to, Why is it always me who ends up in the shit? All I ever wanted was a proper life for myself. I’m sick of working at Kresges. I want to make something of myself, you know, I want to be somebody. I want a car, a decent place to live, nice clothes. My uniforms for the restaurant are all I own, for Chrissake. I scrounge, but I want that to change. I don’t want to be cheap anymore. I came into this world by the back door, but by Christ I’ll go out by the front! Nothing’s gonna stop me. Nothing. You watch, Linda, you’ll see I was right. Give me two or three years and you’ll see that Lise Paquette is a somebody. And money, she’s gonna have it, okay?

CHARLOTTE

He’s threatening to cut my head off with a butter knife. Can you imagine?!

Well, at least it’s something. I suppose there’s a certain affection in it.  It keeps the relationship alive anyway. It used to be one of those dreary, mindless little affairs that start with a bang and end with a whimper. We weren’t even lovers anymore. Just zombies. You can’t imagine. He started reading the paper at dinner. I started having another affair. You can’t believe how complicated that is. Cheating on the man you’re cheating with. Anyway—it had all the trappings of a marriage. Which is precisely what both of us were trying to escape. We began to dread seeing one another. Finally, I suppose out of sheer exasperation, dear Rodney, the boring lawyer, tried to run me down with his car. It’s hard to explain, but as I lay on the curb, half-conscious, I felt – revitalized. We both did. And we’ve been trying to kill each other ever since.

It’s not entirely an act. We really do hate each other. But there’s something to be said for that, isn’t there? There’s a certain zeal to it.

JOANNE

Yah know, I have to go to the bathroom, like, real bad but I’m not gonna go, ya know why? ‘Cause every time… I sit down to pee I feel my whole life drainin out of me, just draining out with the pee, goin…outa me, into the water down in the pipes, and under the… friggin… GROUND. That’s where I’ll be, Rho, that’s where I’m gonna… (fights to regain her composure) I’ll come home with the groceries? Like after dark? and I’ll see Frank and the kids through the window, in the livin-room, right? Watchin TV, or I’ll stand on the porch and watch em, just… playing… on the floor, and I think… that’s life, that’s life goin on without me, it’ll be just like that, only I won’t be here with the groceries, I’ll be under the ground under the ground with y flesh fallin off a my face and I just can’t take it. You know in that picture? That picture I had in my bedroom growing up?

My aunt and uncle sent me that from England, the poster it’s OPHELIA, from this play by Shakespeare, right? And she she—got all these flowers, tropical flowers, wild flowers, white roses, violets and buttercups, everything she loved and she kinda weaved them all together. The she go the heaviest dress she could find… you know how dresses in the olden days were so long and heavy, with petticoats and that? And she got this heavy heavy blue dress, real…blue and then she wrapped all these pretty pretty flowers round and round her body, round her head, and her hair, she had this golden, wavy hair, long and then she steps down the bank, and she lies, on her back, in the stream. She lies there but the stream runs so fast she’s on her back and she goes. It pulls her along so fast and she’s lookin at the sky and the clouds, and she’s singing little songs—”I’m looking over a four-leaf clover”—and being pulled so fast by a clear cold water pulled along and she’s not scared, she’s not scared at all, she’s calm, so happy! And just ever so slowly her dress, gets heavier, right? Then, then, she gets caught on a stick, like a branch, or a willow tree, and her dress pulls her down, soft, she’s still singin down deep deep deep to the bottom of the stream and with all these “fantastic garlands,” these beautiful flowers all around her—”one’s for the roses that blew down the lane”—she dies, Rhon, she dies… good. She dies good.

MARGARET

I took his lungs. It wasn’t so much the lungs themselves, though I think they were a good thing to take, though they don’t keep too well, especially the condition he was in, as just something to remind me of the doctor who told him he couldn’t get compensation because he was fit to work. Then I took Neil’s lungs because I thought of them connected to his pipes and they show, compared to Grandfather’s, what lungs should look like. And I took his tongue since he always said he was the only one around still had one. I took his fingers, too, because he played the pipes with them. I didn’t know what to take from Ian so I took his dick, since Neil always said that was Ian’s substitute for religion to keep him from being a pit pony when he wasn’t drinking rum or playing Forty-Five. I had each thing in its own pickle jar. I put them all in the tin suitcase with the scribblers and the deck of cards and the half-empty quart of Black Death they left after last Sunday’s drinking and arguing, got Neil’s bagpipes, and took it all over to my friend Marie’s next door for safekeeping. They came in a police car and I didn’t give them a chance to even get out of the car. I jumped right into the back seat like it was a taxi I was waiting for. I just sat right in and said, “Sydney River, please.” Sydney River, if you’re not from around here, is the cookie jar where they put rotten tomatoes so they won’t spoil the barrel. So they put me in ‘til they forgot about me; then when they remembered me, they forgot what they put me in for. So they let me go.

HELEN

(brushing) It’s important to be polite… Politeness is a cornerstone of civilized behaviour. I guess no one ever taught you that… That’s just one of the things you weren’t taught… Politeness.  Moderation… Reasonable behaviour. I don’t think people know these things intuitively. They have to be taught. So as I was lying in that mud under that pile of leaves and debris under that billboard out back afraid to move, not knowing if I were paralyzed, how seriously injured I was—I thought about your lack of education. Why didn’t Denise call for help. Why has she taken the criminal route in this. Why hasn’t she taken the reasonable moderate—yes, even polite approach and called an ambulance. And then of course I remembered all my training and everything I’ve been taught about people like you and I decided you just don’t know any better.

I was buried alive! I had to claw my way up through garbage and leafy smelly muddy things because I was buried alive in a deep hole.

NAWAL
(Dawn. A forest. A rock. White trees. Nawal (age 14) & Wahab.)

Wahab! Listen to me. Don’t say a word. No. Don’t speak. If you say a word, a single word, you could kill me. You don’t yet know the happiness that will be our downfall. Wahab, I feel like the minute I release the words about to come out of my mouth, you will die, too. I’ll stop talking, Wahab, so promise me you won’t say anything, please, I’m tired, please, accept silence. Shhhh! Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything.

(She falls silent.)

I called for you all night. I ran all night. I knew I’d find you at the rock where the white trees stand. I’m going to tell you. I wanted to shout it so the whole village would hear, so the trees would hear, so the night and the moon and the stars would hear. But I couldn’t. I have to whisper it in your ear, Wahab, and afterwards I won’t dare hold you in my arms, even if that’s what I want most in the world, even if I’m sure I’ll never feel complete if you remain outside of me, and even if I was just a girl when I found you, and with you I finally fell into the arms of my real life, I’ll never be able to ask anything of you again.

(He kisses her.)

I have a baby in my belly, Wahab! My belly is full of you. Isn’t it amazing? It’s magnificent and horrible, isn’t it? It’s an abyss, and it’s like freedom to wild birds, isn’t it? And there are no more words. Just the wind! I have a child in my belly. When I hold old Elhame tell me, an ocean exploded in my head. Seared. She promised she wouldn’t tell anyone. “It’s none of my business,” she said, “but in two weeks at the most, you won’t be able to hide it anymore.”

TREPLYOV

We need new forms. We need new forms, but if there aren’t any, it’s better to have nothing. I love my mother, I love her very much; but she leads a pointless life, she’s always carrying on with this novelist, her name is perpetually coming up in the papers—and it exhausts me. Sometimes it’s just the egoism of an ordinary mortal that comes out in me; I’m sorry that my mother is a famous actress and I think I would be happier if she were an ordinary woman. Uncle, what can be sadder and sillier than my situation; she usually entertains no one but celebrities, actors and writers, and there am I, the only nobody among them and am only tolerated because I’m her son. What am I? What am I? I left the third year of university in circumstances, as they say, which are outside the editor’s control. I have no talents, not a kopeck to my name, and on my passport I’m a petty bourgeois from Kiev. My father was a Kiev petty bourgeois even though he was also a famous actor. So when all those actors and writers in her drawing-room used to give me their gracious attention, it seemed to me their eyes were measuring my nothingness—I read their thoughts and had agonies of humiliation.

TOM

I didn’t go to the moon. I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places—Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe box. I left Saint Louis. I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space—I traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass—Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turned around and look into her eyes… Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger—anything that can blow your candles out!
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura—and so good-bye …

SAMMY

I always worry that maybe people aren’t going to like me, when I go to a party. Isn’t that crazy? Do you ever get kind of a sick feeling when you dread things? Gee, I wouldn’t want to miss a party for anything. But every time I go to one, I have to reason with myself to keep from feeling that the whole world’s against me. See, I’ve spent almost my whole life in military academies. My mother doesn’t have a place for me, where she lives She… she just doesn’t know what else to do with me. But you mustn’t misunderstand about my mother. She’s really a very lovely person. I guess every boy thinks his mother is very beautiful, but my mother really is. She tells me in every letter she writes how sorry she is that we can’t be together more, but she has to think of her work. One time we were together, though. She met me in San Francisco once, and we were together for two whole days. She let me take her to dinner and to a show and to dance. Just like we were sweethearts. It was the most wonderful time I ever had. And then I had to go back to the old military academy. Every time I walk into the barracks, I get kind of a depressed feeling. It’s got hard stone walls. Pictures of generals hanging all over… oh, they’re very fine gentlemen, but they all look so kind of hard-boiled and stern, you know what I mean. Well, gee! I guess I’ve bored you enough, telling you about myself.

FICK

I mean, I was just walking down the street and they came up on me like they was important, and they start pushing me around, you know. And they pushed me into this alley, not an alley, but this hallway and back down the end of that to this dark place at the end of the hallway and they start punching at me, and I just fell into this ball on the floor so they couldn’t hurt me or nothing. But if I came down there with a couple of fighters, a couple of guys, like my friends, it wouldn’t have to be you or anything, but just a couple or three guys, big guys, like walking down the street, you know. Just so they could see I got these buddies here. See I’m on H, I mean, I’m flying and I gotta talk man, but I’m serious now; just a few guys and they’d leave me be, maybe, because they’d think I had these buddies that looked after me, you know; cause I—you know – they kicked me up, if I wasn’t on H, man, they’d be pains all through me—you know—walking down the street by myself—I start looking around and wondering who’s out there gonna mess me up, you know. I get scared as hell, man, walking down around here, I mean, I can’t protect myself or nothing, man. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know? I mean if I had these couple—of big buddies—fighters—you—you know – if I had a couple of guys—like—big guys—that—you know, there’s like nothing—I could—like, if you walked around with these buddies, I mean you could do, man — you could do anything.

BISHOP

The good ship Caledonia soon changed its name to the good ship Vomit. It was never meant to hold people. Even the horses didn’t like it. Up, down, up, down. And they’re siphoning brandy down our throats to keep us from puking our guts on deck. It was a big joke. Whenever anyone would puke, which was every minute or so, everyone would point to him and laugh like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. I mean, puke swishing around on the deck, two inches deep, har, har, har! You couldn’t sleep, even if it was calm, because every time you closed your eyes, you had a nightmare about being torpedoed.
(He demonstrates a torpedo hitting the ship.)
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see this torpedo coming up through the water, through the hull of the ship and… BOOM! And we were attacked, too, just off the coast of Ireland. I was scared shitless. All you could do was stand at the rail and watch the other ships get hit and go down. Bodies floating around like driftwood. But we make it through. The Good Ship Caledonia, latrine of the Atlantic, finally made it through to Portsmouth, full of dead horses and sick Canadians. When we got off, they thought we were a boat load of Balkan refugees.

DANNY

I think I killed a guy last night.
I was at this party. A guy named Skull. Everybody was getting fucked up. Somebody said there was some guys outside. I went out. There were these two guys from another neighborhood out there. I asked ’em what they were doing there. They knew somebody. One of ’em was a big guy. Real drunk. He said they wanted to go, but something about twenty dollars. I told him to give me the twenty dollars, but he didn’t have it. I started hitting him. But when I hit him, it never seemed to have hard, you know? I hit him a lot in the chest and face but it didn’t seem to do nothing. I had him over a car hood. His friend wanted to take him away. I said okay. They started to go down the block. And they started to fight. So I ran after them. I hit on the little guy a minute, and then started working on the big guy again. Everybody just watched. I hit him as hard as I could for about ten minutes. It never seemed like enough. Then I looked at his face… His teeth were all broken. He fell down. I stomped on his fuckin chest and I heard something break. I grabbed him under the arms and pushed him over a little fence. Into somebody’s driveway. Somebody pointed to some guy and said he had the twenty dollars. I kicked him in the nuts. He went right off the ground. Then I left.

LEONARD

A psychiatrist? Why did you mention a psychiatrist?
Do you find psychiatry amusing? Well, let me tell you—it’s no joke.
Oh, I realize it’s an easy target for satire. One might even say an obvious one. But it’s serious work, involving a lot of time and dedication. And we don’t get paid nearly as much as you’d like to think.
Why aren’t you looking at me? Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid I’ll find something out about you? Some dark, terrible secret? You can tell me—I’m a psychiatrist. Here—why don’t you take my card. You can set up an appointment with my secretary. I work nights at the loony bin. But I have a private practice in the mornings. I’ve got to run now. It’s time to get up and go to work. I haven’t slept in three years, but what difference does that make to them? They’re all on drugs. They sleep all the time. I hate insane people. They drive me crazy. I don’t mean literally crazy. You didn’t take that literally, did you?

FRANK

Seen Phil lately? Phil’s a good guy, eh? The best. The kind of guy a guy admires. A guy who’s got it all together. A guy who picks his friends carefully because he understands a friend is a mirror and a mirror is a reflection of the thing before it.
I mean… look, I’m not going to pull any punches and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but Phil mentioned it and Phil knows we’re tight and I’m sure he wouldn’t have mentioned it to me if he didn’t think I would mention it to you. I mean he likes you. I’m almost sure he does. He thinks you’re a fine guy, a good guy, he does, but he mentioned that maybe lately you… and I don,t… I’m only saying this out of concern, as I’m sure Phil was as well… but he mentioned that, maybe lately, you’ve been a little on the… well… a bit… how did he put it? A bit too “palpably desperate” I think was his phrase. And Bill you can’t hold yourself responsible for the fact that business is bad, it’s not your fault, and tomorrow is another day no matter how bad things seem right now. And Phil is worried, he wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise, and hey, I’m worried, too. And I think you should be complimented… You should take it as a compliment to your character that a good guy like Phil is concerned about you.

R.J.

(R.J. is on the phone and he is very upset.)

No, I won’t calm down. No… No. I’ve had it. It’s gross, man. It’s fucking pathetic and gross. Are you watching this shit? Are you watching that big prick scream at his mother. You let some big piece of garbage come on national television and humiliate a helpless pensioner. Are you nuts. Are you people insane. No! Bullshit… No! Fuck you. It’s gotta be… stopped… Oh really… Oh right… No! No! Mothers Who Never Visited Their Sons in Prison is a fucking stupid idea for a show. Ah look at that. What’s he gonna do? Hit her? Do you just let him hit her? Well it looks like he’s gonna hit her… I want the producer. Get me the producer! Get me the producer. I need to tell him something… Get him. Get him! Get him!

(He hangs up.)
Come here. (points to TV) Look at that. Piece of shit! Piece of shit won’t stop!! It’s not her fucking fault he was doing eight to ten. (to TV) I mean a fucking reality check might be in order here, son. I didn’t blame MY mother when I was inside. I mean I didn’t even know anyone who blamed their mother. (to Denise) I mean where did they dig this guy up… Look at her face. Look at the poor woman’s hurt and confused face. It’s a crime. I can’t believe they syndicate this shit.

SATAN

I don’t compete with God. God competes with himself.
Look, I didn’t make you people, God did okay? But there was a design flaw in the creation: He gave you Free Will—and to balance that out, you were designed to Self-Correct. But, unlike the “Free-Will” muscle, the “Self-Correct” muscle is not a particular favorite of the Homo sapiens. I’d say, “Self-Correct” falls somewhere between “Colonoscopy” and “Firing Squad” on most people’s holiday “wish” lists. At any rate, the truth is: I don’t have to lull or flatter or tempt or deceive—because with God at the helm and you people running around wreaking havoc: I’ll be honest, I spend most of my time on a sofa watching one-hour dramas on HBO.
There’s a concept, Cunningham, called Playing the Cards You Are Dealt—One can either accept that concept or one can slowly lose one’s mind, heart, and soul. I’d like to be more helpful to you here, but really, that’s what it all comes down to.
I’m just a fallen angel tryin’ to keep my dick hard in a monotheistic society—anything else you wanna ask?