The following play Out of the Skillet – preantepenultimate palimpsest, is the second part of Con Forza, variations on music and power in four parts. (Parts I, III, IV).
CHARACTERS
THE MAID, played by a male actor playing a 1930s’ actor playing a
MAN over 40 of blue collar stock playing at being a maid.
THE PAINTER, played by a female actor playing a 1930s’ actress
playing a WOMAN over 40 from old money playing at being a male
house painter.
TIME
One late fall afternoon, 1935.
PLACE
Chicago. A Little Theatre set of a room in a Lake Shore Drive
apartment.
NOTE
The final poem is a distilled extrapolation from Alexander
Scriabin’s notes for his unrealized magnum opus Mysterium which was
to have been a week-long synaesthetic ritual in the Himalayan
foothills performed to dissolve the world in bliss.
(A largely empty room in a luxury
high rise apartment extends into the
SL wings. Interior double door ULC.
Late afternoon light shines through
windows OSL, reaching the SR wall.
Canvas drop cloths cover the floor, a
black lacquer piano and its bench.
The fourth wall, also extending OSL,
is a taut gauze.)
(The uniformed MAID sits at the piano
watching the PAINTER, in professional whites
and black tie, pour emulsion from a five
gallon pail into a smaller can.)
PAINTER
(indicates fourth wall)
’Case the rowdies get to hurling. Remember?
MAID
The late lamented Dil one l Pickle Club, hobohemian hotbed
off of Bughouse Square, Chicago, Illinois.
PAINTER
Squeeze through Tooker Alley. Look for the green light over
an orange door. Mind the garbage. Danger: Step High, Stoop
Low, Leave Your Dignity Outside.
MAID
Elevate your mind to a lower level of thinking.
(plays and sings Joe Hill’s The Tramp1 set to
George Root’s Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!)
If you all will shut your trap
I will tell you ’bout a chap
That was broke and up against it, too, for fair
He was not the kind to shirk
He was looking hard for work
But he heard the same old story everywhere
MAID & PAINTER
(play & sing)
Tramp, tramp, tramp, keep on a-tramping
Nothing doing here for you
If I catch you ’round again
You will wear the ball and chain
Keep on tramping, that's the best thing you can do.
(While the PAINTER huddles up to an
imagined hobo campfire, the MAID plays the
chords to Hill’s There Is Power In A Union2
set to L.E. Jones’ There Is Power In The
Blood, inspiring and accompanying the
following.)
PAINTER
Fellow idlers, in calling to order this convention that
shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working
class from the slave bondage of capitalism, we want to
establish a leisure organization that will open wide its
doors to every man—
MAID
And woman.
PAINTER
—that earns his, their living either by their brain or
their muscle. Nature has placed in this earth all that is
necessary to make men and women happy. There is just one
thing we lack: the intelligence to enjoy possession of that
which we have produced.
PAINTER & MAID
(play & sing)
There is pow’r, there is pow’r
In a band of working folk
When they stand hand in hand
That’s a pow’r, that’s a pow’r
That must rule in every land
One Industrial Union Grand.
(The MAID stretches out fingers one by one
then clenches them into a fist.)
MAID
Happy fightin’ days! And shall we go a-sailing?
PAINTER
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(The PAINTER continues prepping while the
MAID plays an elegiac It’s A Long Way To
Tipperary/Down To The Soupline.)3
PAINTER cont’d
“With The One Big Union Or Union With The Big One?” That
was the debatable motion, wasn’t it?
MAID
How half the Picklers howled!
PAINTER
Smacked you with an egg, was it?
MAID
A palpable hit.
PAINTER
You coped famously, as I recall, what with all that colored
light-show malarkey.
MAID
The Chromola. And those scribbly trill-ill-ills.
(ducks)
“Refrain from clodhopping Starvation Army burdens no matter
how ingeniously subverted—
PAINTER
Boo!
MAID
—and perforate your auditory organs with the veritably de
novo.”
PAINTER
“Pick your adversaries well, for willy-nilly, bellicose
necessity will transpose you into them.”
MAID
“Beware the brazen bourgeois, biggest born of earth; to
outwit it trip nimbly.”
PAINTER
Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. Jack jump over the
candlestick.
MAID
Jack be nimble. Jack be spry.
MAID & PAINTER
(sing)
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
PAINTER
The Cosmic Fessor. Gone. All gone.
(As THE MAID plays Nearer My God/Job4 To
Thee THE PAINTER climbs a stepladder.)
PAINTER cont’d
But let’s not to mourn those taken from us, eh, whether by
consumption, wreck, blanket, bullet or booze; in lieu let
us too maximize our re-returns on every flaming foot of
blood-bought soil, b-babbling ever skyward, to be
obliterating, look you, great grandfather sun whose
darkling howls we—
(a shadow plunges down the SR wall)
What was that?
MAID
Twin mattress?
(THE PAINTER exits SL to the windows. Pause.
Returns and resumes painting.)
PAINTER
Poor bastard.
MAID
A poor fella, bugged by fleas, picks one of ’em off, looks
at it and puts it back. His pal watchin’ says, “Why the
hell didn’t ya kill it?” And the fella says, “That wasn’t
the one that was bitin’ me.”
PAINTER
You’re a hard one.
MAID
I have my reasons.
(plays and sings Hill’s The White Slave5 to
L. Friedman’s Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland.)
Come with me now, my girly,
Don't sleep out in the cold
Your face and tresses curly
Will bring you fame and gold
Automobiles to ride in, diamonds and silks to wear
You'll be a star bright, down in the red light
You'll make your fortune there.
PAINTER/WOMAN
(drops role)
Oh, do dry up!
MAID/MAN
Aw shucks, toots, I was just hitting my stride.
PAINTER/WOMAN
Chickenfat!
(resumes role)
And will the proprietors be at home this season?
MAID
What do I care? Long as the bacon keeps a-coming.
PAINTER
They keep us warm and dry and fed. Alive.
MAID/MAN
Boho lapdogs mooching on a slumming old deb and her blue-
collar sponger. I feels like a kept woman. I hate my life.
Take me to the Himalyas.
PAINTER/WOMAN
Hee-mall-lie-ya.
MAID/MAN
Hee-mall-lie-yas?
PAINTER/WOMAN
Ya.
MAID/MAN
Ok. Take me there.
(THE PAINTER paints mountain peaks on the
fourth wall while THE MAID plays the first
of Scriabin’s Deux Poèmes Op. 71.)6
MAID/MAN cont’d
Show me where the temple goes.
(THE PAINTER completes the scene.)
MAID/MAN cont’d
Now the celebrants gather.
(While THE MAID plays the second of the Deux
Poèmes7 THE PAINTER dances.)
(Finished, THE MAID closes the lid, stands,
and bows to kiss the piano. THE PAINTER
stands in front of the double door.)
PAINTER/WOMAN
Once more Infinity
Plummets from light
Casting its image
In dark stone
(THE MAID takes a candle from inside the
bench, lights it, and lies curled up, thumb
in mouth. Meanwhile, THE PAINTER exits to
the back room from where we hear a
phonograph being cranked and the crackle of
a 78 rpm recording of Scriabin’s8 Vers La
Flamme. This will continue to its and the
play’s end. THE PAINTER returns, swinging a
smoking censer.)
MAID & PAINTER/MAN & WOMAN
Stifling, womb-chafed,
Towards Death’s white sun
We rush to drown
In fiery ecstasy
(THE PAINTER/WOMAN exits SL. In concert the
room disappears as the fourth wall gauze
flickers images of fire and flame, The
Russian Revolution, US labor strikes, WW1
trench warfare, swimming sperm, a suckling
infant, Scriabin’s mother, star formation
nebulae, etc., on toward the heart of the
sun. The projections fade along with the
locked groove at the recording’s end.)
1. The Tramp - listen on YouTube.
2. There is Power in a Union - listen on YouTube.
3. Down to the Soup Line - listen on YouTube.
4. Nearer My Job to Thee - listen on YouTube.
5. The White Slave - listen on YouTube.
6. Scriabin, Poème Op.71 No.1 - listen on YouTube.
7. Scriabin, Poème Op. 71 No.2 - listen on YouTube.
8. Scriabin, Verse la flamme - listen on YouTube.