55 PLARGITE

11.2.06

The PLARGITE enters. There is an old typewriter atop a wooden desk with all sorts of paper strewn about. The PLARGITE is fittingly dressed. The PLARGITE sits before the typewriter, cracks knuckles and begins to type. An OFFSTAGE VOICE speaks, accompanied by a separate dumbshow.

OFFSTAGE VOICE
It was evening at the theatre that Bailey was after. A night of entertainment for his adoring fans, whose support had supplied his livelihood. Bailey walked into his apartment and began his ritual, a romantic act of stretches and turns that culminated in the lighting of a cigarette. Then, he typed.

A screen shows an old 8mm film playing out the following:

OFFSTAGE VOICE
This time the play was about the world as it was to him that very moment. His compression of the state of everything was all-encompassing; he left out no perceived detail. The first worlds spoke of the keys he struck. His next were of his thoughts and the stage directions dictated the insulated bubble within which he typed. The play became the play, which was a play about a play. How proud he could be, how new, how rich this world of text untapped. Hours passed, and the pages mounted until the first draft was born. When he looked away from his keys, he saw that a beard had grown, the days were shorter, and a full month had passed. He woke up from his dream world rudely, realizing that the fact of his writing itself had become the focus of his text. He set fire to the draft without a second glance at the work that had consumed his life for the past thirty days.

All action stops dead. The film pauses between two frames.

OFFSTAGE VOICE
So what do you think? What is your review going to say? Positive or negative?

Enter CRITIC with PLAYWRIGHT. The CRITIC wears a “press fedora.” The PLAYWRIGHT carries a short manuscript.

CRITIC
Haven’t you gotten past this phase yet?

PLAYWRIGHT
What phase?

CRITIC
The play within the play phase. The phase where you write about writers who write about writing. The “meta-theatrical” phase.

PLAYWRIGHT
I’ve only just begun to explore it…

CRITIC
You have, everybody else, meanwhile…

PLAYWRIGHT
Who is everybody else? They didn’t do it the way I did it. Did they? I did it differently, right? Because no one does things the way I do…

CRITIC
Lemme take it back to an anecdote. Last year, three different theatres produced three different plays about baseball. All three had a baseball game actually take place onstage at some point during the narrative. Months later, another theatre produced another play about baseball, only this one was all strange and modern and did everything in a way it hadn’t been done before, including excluding baseball from the actual play itself. One word was on everyone’s mind after the premier.

PLAYWRIGHT
Fascinating?

CRITIC
Derivative. Derivative derivative derivative.

PLAYWRIGHT
That’s four words.

CRITIC
Literalism is so cliché.

PLAYWRIGHT
Ok, so what should I do then?

CRITIC
Find your voice.

PLAYWIGHT
I have a voice, I’m using it right now.

CRITIC
No, you have a voice, but you don’t have a voice. You don’t have that something that makes me think you are at all worthwhile as a human being or that you have any business sharing your ideas with the rest of the class. Your point of view is well tread and over explored. Your demographic as a playwright is one that has already been heard from for far too long. Your characters are either too obvious or not well defined enough.

PLAYWRIGHT
Not well enough defined.

CRITIC
Exactly. What you need is more productions.

PLAYWRIGHT
More plays?

CRITIC
More productions. More chances for you to find your voice.

PLAYWRIGHT
But how can I get produced if you keep writing reviews about how bad my plays are?

CRITIC
That’s not what I’m doing at all.

PLAYWRIGHT
Your last review for my last production said “This playwright’s plays are really really bad.” The play before that called my work “the obvious and poorly defined ramblings of an infant writer who needs to find a voice.” You said I needed to address issues of authorship in my work, so I wrote a play about authors, and now you say I’m derivative!

CRITIC
You need to workshop your plays.

PLAYWRIGHT
This was a workshop! I’ve only ever had workshops!

CRITIC
Well, you are an emerging playwright. You haven’t had chance to outgrow your shell and break out into the scene. Give it time, you’ll find your voice.

PLAYWRIGHT
Why should I even listen to you anymore? Why I am I taking writing advice from a critic? You’re one person in a wider audience.

CRITIC
Because my reviews are run in a major metropolitan newspaper. And because no one will know who you are otherwise. And because what you do has been done a million bazillion trillion times before.

PLAYWRIGHT
What, writing a play?

CRITIC
A million trillion bazillion times before. I’m just separating the wheat from the chaff.

PLAYWRIGHT
Yeah, but I’m not chaff.

CRITIC
Says you.

PLAYWRIGHT
Says you.

CRITIC
Says you plus infinity.

PLAYWRIGHT
…

CRITIC
Don’t even say infinity plus one, seen it, been there, done that.

VOICE enters, dressed in a black leotard with the phrase “VOICE” written on it. VOICE performs a ballet of increasing intensity.

PLAYWRIGHT
So basically, I’m not worthwhile until I write a play that pleases you.

CRITIC
As a playwright.

PLAYWRIGHT
And I can’t write something worthwhile until I’ve had lots of productions.

CRITIC
Nope.

PLAYWRIGHT
And I have pointed out that I can’t get productions until I get the go ahead from theatres that read your reviews. Your reviews that tell them that I’m not worthwhile, because I haven’t had enough productions.

CRITIC
Your lesson here doesn’t escape my grasp, but I am as yet unintrigued.

The PLARGITE joins in the ballet.

PLAYWRIGHT
Do you have a shred of integrity left?

CRITIC
Now this has turned into a patent criticism of me and my profession!

The cast of the dumbshow joins in the ballet.

PLAYWRIGHT
It’s ok that you’re a shill. Because you are a shill, and eventually people will get that. And now I’ve found a purpose for my work, because I finally have an enemy.

CRITIC
Who, me? Yeah, that will be really constructive.

The old 8mm film plays again, only now it is an old ballet film.

CRITIC
What you’re doing here is a gimmick, it isn’t a voice or an ouvre. You aren’t doing anything significant or truthful here at all. Just because you’ve found yourself a cause doesn’t mean you’ve found a purpose. No, this isn’t anything more than a topic, and in the millennia length conversation that is theatre, it isn’t a topic that anyone is really going to care about or remember.

PLAYWRIGHT
You know what, you’re right.

All but the CRITIC and the PLAYWRIGHT disappear.

PLAYWRIGHT
You aren’t something I care about.

The CRITIC DISAPPEARS.

PLAYWRIGHT
Now to find something important to do.