Act One

ONE HUNDREDTH SCENE
(Dialogue in an interior)

HER- Sorry love, but I just can’t seem to get over that thing … And what drives me crazy is that I can’t understand why … I really am going nuts …

HIM- But you’ve always been a bit crazy, my love … I’ve also told you that I love you for it …

HER- Come on, quit teasing me, I’m being serious!

HIM- What do you want me to tell you, love … By now we must’ve talked about it a thousand times … I tried to explain to you in every way that that thing make no sense to me. Sure, it had some in the past, but it was already essentially over when we went out with each other that first time …

HER- There you go again with that “essentially“! What the fuck does “essentially” mean? You’re always the fussy one with words ( “and be careful with the pronoun” … “and lookout : words have a meaning” …) and then you shoot this “essentially“, but to say what?

HIM- (smiling) That in its essence it was already over, it seems obvious to me …

HER- To me it seems that in essence it was not at all finished, not for you nor for her … In fact your performances “at work” (and perhaps not only …) have proven it well, I think …

HIM- So you really want to piss me off! You always go back, always go back there! I told you that it wasn’t anything, that we had not even gone to bed: that’ll mean something, right?

HER- What do I know? What do I really know about how things went? You say one thing, she says another … Maybe it was you who told her no … maybe instead it was her who did … But however it may have gone, how did I fare? That idiot on call, in love and cuckolded … Real nice!

HIM- But how can you not get it! If I was seriously interested in her I would have stayed with her, and you wouldn’t have known anything about it because she wouldn’t have told you anything. If she spoke to you it was because there was nothing at all. She just wanted to hurt you, she wanted it between us to end … It would’ve been her revenge … How can’t you not understand!

HER- That part I understand, I’m not stupid …

HIM- No love, you’re not, but sometimes it seems …

HER- (laughing) Thank you … Maybe it’s true … (resuming her sustained and serious tone) But sorry, you too have got to understand! What do I really care if you didn’t go to bed with her? That’s not my problem! My problem, the thing that really hurts me bad is that you  desired her while you had ME !!! Never mind if you wanted her when I wasn’t around, but how could you lust afterher while you were with ME ???

HIM- But I didn’t want her! … Sure, she’s a woman that I liked in the past …

HER- Oh REALLY now !?! …

HIM- And stop it !!! Like I said, I overdid it because it seemed like you were going on too much about it … You sound crazy when you start up with all those questions about “beauty” ( “and who has the most beautiful legs, and who has the best looking ass ? “…) How can you be so jealous of her, I don’t even give her that much attention …

HER- That’s not true! I’m not jelous!!! Well, yeah, maybe it’s a form of jealousy, but not that “little women’s” jealousy that you intend … not that I go haywire because someone else gets the man I’m with horny or I don’t whine because he “is not true to me” or because doesn’t “just look at me” … It’s not about jealousy as in possession … I don’t consider you something of mine and woe betide anyone who wants to take you away! It’s not this … that kind of stuff makes me sick … How can you not get that?

HIM- But I …

HER- Please, let me speak … If tomorrow you met someone who makes you fall head over heels, I’m not going to say that I ‘d be happy … just the opposite! But I’d vie for it … Don’t know how, but ?’d give it my shot … And then at the end we would both make our choices … But she is not one that came “AFTER,” she was already there “BEFORE” … That makes a difference! If she was there before and continued to be after, what could I do about it? I had no cards to play: I felt that she was there and that I didn’t even exist …

HIM- (raising his voice more and more and beating his fists on the table) But this is all crazy stuff! You’re delirious, and I will can’t take it anymore with all this melodrama, that never ends, it never ends NEVER NEVER NEVER …

HER- (with a detached tone) Now why are you so pissed off? … I don’t understand why one hasget so pissed off to say what one thinks … Evidently there is something YOU haven’t gotten over in this matter, because otherwise you’d talk quietly, and calmly say what your reasons were …

HIM- (keeps yelling and pacing around the room) You’re crazy !!! You always go backwards back, always back !!! ALWAYS BACKWARDS !!!

HER- (with a sweet tone) Come on, please, don’t do that …

HIM- (looking askance) But you’re out of your mind !!! I can’t handle it anymore!!! (grunting) Go away !!! Get out before I … Get out of here !!! Please, get out of here !!!

HER- (crying) No, please, if I go now I don’t know if this time we can fix it … please … let’s talk about it calmly … I can’t take it anymore as well …

HIM- (sitting with his head in his hands) I do not know how … it can’t continue like this … It’s now more than a year that you beat me over the head with this story …

HER- (still crying ) You’re right, I can’t do it anymore, but I don’t know how to get past it … I love you so and I would just like to feel good with you, but it’s like I can’t get over this thing …

HIM- But over what? What is there that nothing is there to get over.

HER- Look, I know that there’s nothing left between you two, but I still feel as if she’s been something for you more than I’ve been, it’s as if you could never like me as much you liked her … I know it depends on me, on my insecurities, and I feel awful about it … Maybe you’re right, I’m just crazy …

HIM- Now stop it, please I can’t take it anymore … I need you to shut up, just please shut up … then it’ll pass …

HER- But I’m feel bad … please just stay a little close …

HIM- (enounciating the words and barely holding back the anger) … Now – I told you – I NEED- THAT YOU – BE QUIET …

HER- (with a sad air) … okay … then I’ll go …

HIM- (grunts)

(at this point the curtain closes and the AUTHOR appears and addresses the audience)

AUTHOR- Perhaps it’s true that the theater represents life, but what sense can there be to a scene that repeats itself over hundreds and hundreds of acts always identical to itself, without a solution, without anything new? What point is there for the characters to rejoice and suffer a thousand times over to the same jokes, for the same dramas … and what sense can there be for me to continue to pretend to change the scripts and the parts if this comes down to tweaking a copy, cropping here and there, to copy and paste … but above all, what sense can it have for you, taht you’ll recognized in this scene (always different and always identical to itself) just a sad echo of some of your past or present misery?

No, I don’t much like this game! That’s not why I write! If this is writing then I’m not an author, because the author, the name says it well – is the one that decides the action, the one who creates, is the one that finds solutions … even tragic, terrible, perverse solutions, but solutions … It’s true, we all know that life doesn’t end … yes, it’s true! but the author must still decide, and to decide means to

FIND A SOLUTION … always partial, temporary, but a solution … Enough with the same scene that gets repeated on and on! We’re fed up! This will be fine for life, but it doesn’t work for the theater …

So, you know what? I’ll change! Yes, I’ll change! I am the author, so I can do whatever I want, and now I’ve decided to change! Do I seem crazy? Think what you will but I’ve decided that I will no longer have anything to do with a theater that represents life: I finally want something more difficult and more real … I want a life that represents the theater … Yes, a life like the theater …

And it’s useless that you all sit there very quietly pretending nothing’s happened … I know what you’re thinking:

“there he is, the Genius! It’s a wonder what he thinks he’s invented … LIFE AS THE THEATER: what great news! As if it were not for Shakespeare and Pirandello, Sophocles, Beckett, Wilde, Chekhov, etceteraetceteraetcetera … and lo and behold comes this one here – “THE AUTHOR” – with the mega-idea “let’s have life like theater” … Just what we were missing “…

Yes … just what we needed! Just what is always missing and has been missing always! Maybe what had been missing even for Shakespeare and Pirandello and Sophocles … What is missing for me, missing for you, and especially what is lacking in our two characters, trapped in a scene that is repeated identical to itself hundreds of times …
life as a theater … that’s what’s missing! … an interesting life, always different, always new … full of solutions, of inventiveness … a life that changes, that takes risks, that goes beyond the automated schemes and beyond the swamps of the trite … and especially something beautiful, yes, beautiful! I want a life that recognizes beauty at all times, that arouses astonishment at all times … and not because it is always easy, or painless, or smooth and flat … but because it is NEW!

This is life as the theater!
On the other hand – tell me – would it be worth paying the price of admission if it were not so?

Published: Sep.27, 2015

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