Director Peron Directs was staged by Alumnae Theatre Company (Toronto, Canada) as part of its 2023 New Ideas Festival. Written by Kat Meads, directed by Sungwon Cho, with Johana Pina as Eva Peron, Marissa Monk as Charlotte Corday, Sandrina Nei as Fanny Kaplan, and Catherine Thorne as Violet Gibson. It’s published here for the first time.
SYNOPSIS
Theatre Director Eva Peron gathers together a temperamental trio of female assassins and would-be assassins with the aim of spreading their fame and securing their legends. Her cast isn’t cooperating.
CHARACTERS
CHARLOTTE CORDAY: French assassin of Jean-Paul Marat, rosy-cheeked, loose muslin dress with gauze fichu. Props: kitchen knife and fan.
FANNY KAPLAN: Russian wounder of Vladimir Lenin, scrawny/bony/dingy/dour/slightly hunched. Stringy dark hair, black dress shiny with wear. Props: scuffed briefcase, Browning pistol, umbrella.
VIOLET GIBSON: Irish wounder of Benito Mussolini, weathered, withered, haughty, gray hair in bun, high-collared dress. Prop: rosary.
DIRECTOR PERON: Full Evita mode: blonde, bejeweled, tailored suit, heels, a dynamo of energy. Prop: clipboard.
STAGEHAND 1: Male in blindfold with eye slits.
STAGEHAND 2: Male in blindfold with eye slits.
SETTING
Downstage center, facing the audience: three hardback chairs shoved close together and positioned perilously close to the edge of the stage.
(Semi-dark stage. Near curtain, STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 horse around. DIRECTOR PERON’s offstage voice seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.)
DIRECTOR PERON (O.S.)
Where are they? Why aren’t they onstage?
STAGEHAND 2
(to STAGEHAND 1) Think they’ll show?
STAGEHAND 1
Wouldn’t mind a night off myself.
STAGEHAND 2
Not me.
STAGEHAND 1
Why’s that? Love listening to crazy women talk crazy?
STAGEHAND 2
Love anything as long as it pays.
(STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 snort-laugh together.)
DIRECTOR PERON
(entering) I asked a question! I demand an answer! Where are they?
STAGEHAND 1
No idea.
STAGEHAND 2
They come and go as they please.
DIRECTOR PERON
They do not come and go as they please, compañeros. They come and go at my direction. As do you.
(Behind DIRECTOR PERON’s back, STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 unite in giving her the finger, exit. CHARLOTTE CORDAY, FANNY KAPLAN and VIOLET GIBSON enter with props, bickering in several languages. CORDAY and GIBSON attempt to drag the too-close-together chairs farther apart.)
DIRECTOR PERON (cont.)
(studying clipboard) Leave them as they are.
CORDAY
You have miscalculated, Madame. Our seats are too (presses palms together). The edge is… (peers nervously into the pit)
DIRECTOR PERON
Have you never heard of dramatic embellishment?
GIBSON
Have you never heard of letting a fine tale lie?
(KAPLAN succeeds in stashing her props beneath the middle chair and settles in. CORDAY sits next, spreading her skirts, at KAPLAN’s right. GIBSON resentfully takes the remaining seat at KAPLAN’s left. All are extremely hemmed in.)
GIBSON (cont.)
(muttering) Fascist whore.
DIRECTOR PERON
If you have a question, speak up! If you mumble, if you swallow your words, the audience will not understand you.
GIBSON
(exaggerated Irish brogue) No questions.
DIRECTOR PERON
Then we begin.
GIBSON
Hardly. We’ve done our duty.
DIRECTOR PERON
You shot at men. That is but step one.
CORDAY
But, Madame, as I have complained previously, I am miscast. I did not shoot, I stabbed.
DIRECTOR PERON
(ignores CORDAY) Chin up, Senorita Gibson! Shoulders back, Comrade Kaplan! On this stage, we dazzle, we seduce!
(STAGEHAND 1 enters, carrying additional blindfolds.)
KAPLAN
Blindfolds do not dazzle Russians.
CORDAY
Approach me at your peril, monsieur. Even in seduction, I wear no accoutrements.
STAGEHAND 1
Don’t talk to me, talk to her. (points at DIRECTOR PERON)
GIBSON
(majestically rising) No!
DIRECTOR PERON
Yes! We mask to un-mask!
GIBSON
No blindfold, no mask.
DIRECTOR PERON
Yes! In the theatre we hide first, reveal later.
GIBSON
Will there be a firing squad? If not, no blindfold touches this face.
(GIBSON sits. STAGEHAND 1 tosses the extraneous blindfolds, exits. Incredulous, DIRECTOR PERON soldiers on.)
KAPLAN
As for me, I did not hide in Moscow and will not hide here.
DIRECTOR PERON
We are to rely solely on your mesmerizing stage presence and magnificent delivery?
KAPLAN
Rely on the fact that I shot Vladimir Lenin.
DIRECTOR PERON
A forgotten fact is a useless fact.
KAPLAN
The people will remember.
DIRECTOR PERON
Not without assistance. A legend becomes a legend because it is told. And retold. Spotlight!
(DIRECTOR PERON retreats into the shadows. As a trio, the women momentarily freeze in the bright “interrogation” light. CORDAY recovers first, adjusts her shawl. KAPLAN cranes forward, squinting. GIBSON fingers her rosary.)
GIBSON
My mistake. Should have kept the blindfolds.
KAPLAN
Squint. It helps.
CORDAY
Mon Dieu! To share the stage with such as you!
GIBSON
You imagine we’re thrilled to sit among your flounces?
DIRECTOR PERON
(from shadows, announcer voice) Mesdames et messieurs, damas y caballeros, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Shooting Gallery, where women of humble origins…yah, yah, yah, blah, blah blah…
GIBSON
She conveniently forgets. I am the daughter of a peer.
CORDAY
And now the English have objections.
GIBSON
Irish.
DIRECTOR PERON
Tonight you will witness their fight, their courage, their selfless crusade to…blah, blah, blah, yah, yah, yah…
KAPLAN
If we show our weapons, why must we speak?
CORDAY
And now the Russian quarrels with the script.
GIBSON
Senora Peron is besotted with her own voice. Chances are she’ll never let us speak.
KAPLAN
Even so, I am tired of this…display.
GIBSON
Who isn’t?
CORDAY
Moi. I am never tired.
GIBSON
One advantage of Norman peasant stock.
KAPLAN
(to GIBSON, fiercely) You disparage the peasant?
(CORDAY ignores both, fussing with her fichu, rearranging her skirts. DIRECTOR PERON emerges from the shadows, sharply raps clipboard.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Senorita Corday! You missed your cue!
CORDAY
(flustered) Because I am…I am… (stiffens) Because you insist I appear with women who are not my peers. My acts are well recorded. Theirs are not.
DIRECTOR PERON
And oversight we will rectify.
CORDAY
You do me no justice, Madame.
GIBSON
Oh, for the love of St. Boogar, just recite your bloody lines.
CORDAY
My lines are my lines to recite when and how I choose.
(At this outrageous claim, DIRECTOR PERON flings aside useless clipboard, puts CORDAY in a headlock.)
DIRECTOR PERON
We have discussed this, Senorita Corday. Who is in charge here—you or me?
CORDAY
(muffled) I cannot speak clearly unless you release my jaw, Madame.
DIRECTOR PERON
Who is in charge? A chit of a girl from Normandy or the First Lady of Argentina?
CORDAY
(muffled) You, Madame.
(Released, CORDAY elaborately “prepares” to begin. GIBSON nods off.)
DIRECTOR PERON
We are waiting, Senorita Corday. Do not force me to again demonstrate in whose hands you reside.
CORDAY
Jean-Paul Marat’s head in exchange for two hundred thousand others—it seemed a fair exchange. The vile Jacobins had brought the Republic lower than low. They had killed my beloved Gombault, abbé extraordinaire. In my mind’s eye I see him still, bending over my dead maman, administering last rites. (manufactures sob) How could I remain in Caen? How could I not go to Paris? To Papa, I wrote begging pardon for my impertinence—to leave without permission. But I could not stay. I could not rest, for in Paris was Marat, the sewer rat.
DIRECTOR PERON
(pacing) SEWER RAT, SEWER RAT, SEWER RAT! Speak from here. (thumps chest) Project!
CORDAY
Hot. July is always hot. But my fever rose from other cause. I packed four dresses—the brown, this spotted muslin (indicates her dress), the white, a red chemise for the guillotine. I took the mail coach to Paris. I registered at the Hotel Providence. For a few sols at the Palais-Royal, I bought a kitchen knife. I composed an explanation for posterity, my Speech to the French. Obsessed with the duty to my patrie, I could not eat, I could not sleep.
GIBSON
(jerks awake) Has she stabbed him yet?
(Clenching and unclenching her fists, KAPLAN does not respond.)
CORDAY
Once, twice, I was turned away from Marat’s door on the Rue des Cordeliers—
(KAPLAN leaps for CORDAY.)
KAPLAN
The people wait on no one!
DIRECTOR PERON
(misspeaking) Guards! Guards!
(STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 enter, attempt to disentangle KAPLAN and CORDAY. GIBSON leans away from the fray, fingering her rosary. CORDAY goes “limp” in the arms of STAGEHAND 1. STAGEHAND 2 continues to grapple with the still fighting KAPLAN, who bites his arm.)
STAGEHAND 2
(to DIRECTOR PERON) The bitch bit me!
STAGEHAND 1
We’re not paid to get bit!
DIRECTOR PERON
(unconcerned) Return them to their seats.
STAGEHAND 2
Next to each other?
DIRECTOR PERON
Il Duce shooter, be so kind as to sit in between.
(GIBSON slides to the middle seat. CORDAY is “escorted” to her original seat; KAPLAN is forced into GIBSON’s former chair. STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 exit, muttering oaths. As CORDAY once again “prepares” to begin, a fast-acting DIRECTOR PERON steps in and savagely pinches CORDAY’s ear.)
CORDAY
(with a start) “A Girondist uprising in Caen!” I shouted. It was then I was admitted upstairs. It was then I was introduced to a man soaking in his tub, head wrapped in a filthy handkerchief. A vile, feverish man who stank of rotting flesh, skin as ugly as his soul. “Sit,” he bade me. “These Girondists you speak of. Tell me their names.”
GIBSON
Better yet: skip to the knife works.
(CORDAY pulls a fan from her skirts.)
GIBSON (cont.)
If I’d known this was a prop contest, I would have brought my gun and rock.
KAPLAN
(still breathing heavily) You needed a rock?
GIBSON
If Il Duce had stayed in his car at the palazzo, I would have needed it—to smash the window.
(KAPLAN nods at this wisdom.)
CORDAY
From the stench of evil, I turned and fanned my face.
(The moment CORDAY begins to languidly fan her face, DIRECTOR PERON rips away the fan, yanks a blade from her own bodice and shoves it at CORDAY.)
DIRECTOR PERON
The dripping blood of the sewer rat! Now!
CORDAY
A man who sees a fan, Madame, does not expect a knife.
GIBSON
A man in a bathtub for the duration of your speech would be dead of pneumonia.
CORDAY
(taking the knife) All right, all right! (mimes twisting the knife)
DIRECTOR PERON
(screaming) Screams! Where are my Marat screams?
(Half-hearted male screams from offstage. CORDAY drops knife, melodramatically slumps, hands across her bosom. KAPLAN and GIBSON are unmoved.)
KAPLAN
(to GIBSON) She did not endure what we endured.
GIBSON
Her time in prison? Minutes.
CORDAY
(returning upright) And were you not, Honorable Violet Gibson, freed from prison? Saved by pedigree?
KAPLAN
(shocked) You accepted intervention? The peddling of influence?
GIBSON
Il Duce did not visit prison cells. To kill required freedom.
CORDAY
And even with it you failed.
DIRECTOR PERON
Attencion! The abbé build-up? (swipes throat) The multiple Rue des Cordeliers visits? (swipes throat) Otherwise? A bored audience.
CORDAY
It is what happened, Madame. It is history.
DIRECTOR PERON
The stage is no place for history. The stage demands the knife, the rot, the dying screams—
KAPLAN
Are we done yet?
DIRECTOR PERON
Patience, Comrade Kaplan. Your turn will come.
KAPLAN
For the opportunity to shoot Vladimir Lenin, I waited months.
GIBSON
As do we here…
STAGEHAND 1 (O.S.)
Heads up! We break in ten.
DIRECTOR PERON
There will be no break.
STAGEHAND 2 (O.S.)
Union rules. We break in ten. Correction: nine minutes, 58 seconds and counting.
DIRECTOR PERON
(snaps fingers) The shooter of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!
(KAPLAN rummages beneath GIBSON’s chair for her paraphernalia, tries and succeeds in poking CORDAY with her umbrella.)
CORDAY
Such clumsiness! Assassins require style and grace.
GIBSON
Nonsense. Assassins require luck and pluck.
DIRECTOR PERON
(to STAGEHANDS) The face! Spotlight the face! The audience must see every pimple and blackhead!
KAPLAN
(Barking monotone) My name is Fanya Kaplan. I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own.
DIRECTOR PERON
And?
KAPLAN
My name is Fanya Kaplan. I shot Vladimir Lenin, who betrayed The Revolution. I did it on my own.
DIRECTOR PERON
Work with me, comrade, work with me. Just as there can be too much, there can be too little.
CORDAY
A plain little tale from a plain little fille.
GIBSON
While you worried about wrinkling your dress, Miss Charlotte, she was throwing bombs and surviving Siberia.
CORDAY
Also going blind. Even you with your bad eyes left less to chance. Did you shoot from such a distance? Did you crouch beneath a tree?
DIRECTOR PERON
Moscow! The Michelson factory!
KAPLAN
Such a long time the traitor remains inside, telling lies to the workers. It is not raining. It has not been raining.
(KAPLAN drops umbrella, extracts gun from briefcase. GIBSON leans in.)
GIBSON
A Browning, is it? I used a Lebel.
CORDAY
Too bad for Italie that you did not use a Lebel’s bullets.
GIBSON
My bullets fired. I hit my target.
CORDAY
You nicked Il Duce’s nose.
GIBSON
Twice.
CORDAY
Better a knife.
GIBSON
Put to use in Il Duce’s bathroom? Only whores entered Il Duce’s bathroom.
DIRECTOR PERON
I will thank you to remember, Senorita Gibson, that a puta is a working woman like any other. Comrade Kaplan, the audience will not care what kind of gun.
KAPLAN
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya cared what kind of gun. Comrade Trotsky cared. The surgeons of Vladimir Lenin cared. And Comrade Stalin cared most of all.
DIRECTOR PERON
(intrigued) It could, I suppose, be played as mystery…
(Mystery is not KAPLAN’s intention. She stands, briefcase slips, clatters. She points gun at the audience, her squint now applied to aiming.)
KAPLAN
Leaving the Michelson factory, the traitor to The Revolution is surrounded. I must pick out the bald head that bobs like a turd in the river.
(KAPLAN aims, pulls trigger, jolts DIRECTOR PERON from her reverie.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Gunshot!
STAGEHAND 1 (O.S.)
Bang.
(KAPLAN pulls the trigger again.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Another!
STAGEHAND 2 (O.S.)
Bang.
(KAPLAN pulls the trigger again.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Once more!
STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 (O.S.)
Bang, bang, bang!
KAPLAN
(holding her aim) The neck. The shoulder. The overcoat. In his own blood, the traitor falls.
DIRECTOR PERON
(surprised and pleased) Excelente! Excelente!
GIBSON
And now I see why no one wants to go last.
(KAPLAN sits.)
GIBSON (cont.)
Impressive.
KAPLAN
(shrugs) Once a thing is done, it is its own. Would you like to hear what happened after I shot the traitor? I don’t often get to tell that.
GIBSON
By all means.
DIRECTOR PERON
No, no. We have no time for mop up.
KAPLAN
I dropped the Browning. (drops gun) I waited beneath my tree. A swarm, like bats, like bees, circled round, shouting, “Catch the killer of Comrade Lenin! Catch the fiend!” A man of authority glanced in my direction. “What are you doing? Why are you standing here?” “Why do you want to know?” I answered. He came toward me. He kicked the umbrella. He searched my pockets and then he saw the Browning. “Why did you shoot Comrade Lenin?” “Why do you want to know?” I replied.
GIBSON
(applauding) Jolly good! First rate! (to CORDAY) Are you blind to artistry? Clap!
(CORDAY jealously complies. STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 enter, sincerely clapping, shake KAPLAN’s hand, exit. KAPLAN is touched by this act of worker solidarity. DIRECTOR PERON, also pleased, can’t resist further tweaking.)
DIRECTOR PERON
But to end with a rhetorical question? It hangs, don’t you see? Hangs fire when it should… (pounds fist into palm three times)
GIBSON
Pay her no mind. Who has she assassinated?
DIRECTOR PERON
Personally?
GIBSON
Shall we finish up? I need my rest.
CORDAY
Is there no rest to be found locked in an asylum?
GIBSON
With prayers to pray and birds to feed?
DIRECTOR PERON
(reevaluating) This will not do. The shooter of Mussolini must be on one end or the other. Return to your original chairs.
(All shift carefully to avoid falling offstage.)
STAGEHAND 1 (O.S.)
Five minutes and we’re outta here.
DIRECTOR PERON
Your rosary, Senorita? Tell me you have not lost your rosary!
GIBSON
(holds up rosary) I have not lost my rosary.
DIRECTOR PERON
Then we are spared. The masses favor God.
KAPLAN
The masses favor the masses.
DIRECTOR PERON
The Catholic masses favor God. You remain a Catholic, Senorita Gibson, yes? You have not, since the shooting, returned to the Protestant faith? That would be extremely unfortunate. In terms of inspiring the Catholic masses.
GIBSON
I converted. I have not reverted.
CORDAY
It is not so easy to escape one’s early training.
KAPLAN
Nor is it hard. I was not born a Socialist Revolutionary.
CORDAY
I did not say impossible. (aside) Is every Russian immune to subtilité?
DIRECTOR PERON
For the shooter of Mussolini, we present a little differently. Compañeros!
(STAGEHANDS 1 and 2 enter. DIRECTOR PERON randomly points to STAGEHAND 1.)
DIRECTOR PERON (cont.)
You will deliver Il Duce’s lines.
(STAGEHAND 2 mockingly bows to STAGEHAND 1, exits.)
KAPLAN
Why give the traitor lines?
GIBSON
Because she is a fascist in couture.
DIRECTOR PERON
(to Stagehand 1) And you will deliver the lines like this (faces audience, assumes a screechy, high-pitched voice) “Don’t be afraid. I’m here. This wound?” (taps nose) “A mere trifle.”
(STAGEHAND 1 steps forward, gives fascist salute.)
STAGEHAND 1
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here. This wound?” (punches nose with fist) “A mere trifle.”
DIRECTOR PERON
You must squeal like a pig. When Il Duce talked, he squealed like a pig.
STAGEHAND 1
“Never fear, I’m here…” (consults watch) “for another three minutes and 36 seconds.”
(Radiating disdain, DIRECTOR PERON waves STAGEHAND 1 offstage.)
DIRECTOR PERON
And once again I must step in for an incompetent male.
CORDAY
Mademoiselle Gibson required fifty years to gather gumption, Madame. What if her nerve fails her here?
GIBSON
I was quite capable at fifty. I am capable now.
CORDAY
And old. And gray.
GIBSON
Old, gray women go wherever they please. There is no better disguise than an old, gray woman.
DIRECTOR PERON
Even so—
GIBSON
Not to worry, Herr Director. I can also play mad.
DIRECTOR PERON
And imply only mad women shoot men? Absolutely not.
(Regardless, GIBSON ditches rosary, tiptoes upstage, strokes an invisible something in her hand.)
GIBSON
(ear to hand) What is that you say, my little feathered friend? God thanks me? If not for an Irishwoman Italy would still be ruled by a bully pimp? Again, my pet? (listens) The tyrant’s brains ooze in the mud of Milan? Strung by their heels, tyrant and mistress swing in the breeze of Piazzale Loveto?
KAPLAN
I’m confused. Is this the future?
CORDAY
The future confuses you, but not a talking bird?
DIRECTOR PERON
Enough, Senorita Gibson. We showcase no mad women here.
(As if to disprove that edict, GIBSON makes “mad” dash at DIRECTOR PERON. Initially standing firm, DIRECTOR PERON suddenly turns tail and runs. GIBSON gives chase. Round and round the stage they go.)
GIBSON
(sings) I kept my promise—don’t keep your distance.
STAGEHAND 2 (O.S.)
Two-minute warning!
(GIBSON dispenses with pursuit, laughs in normal fashion. DIRECTOR PERON “collects” herself, smoothes hair, recovers her poise and authority. Without waiting to be dismissed, CORDAY and KAPLAN gather up their props, head offstage.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Abandoning the cause so soon, senoritas? You doubt what two minutes can accomplish?
GIBSON
In two minutes Benito Mussolini could be shot. (joins exodus)
KAPLAN
In two minutes Vladimir Lenin was shot. (exits)
CORDAY
In fewer than two a sewer rat was punctured. (exits)
(Alone onstage DIRECTOR PERON smirks.)
DIRECTOR PERON
Idiotas. Kill one man, another takes his place. Marry the man and rule.
(Behind the chair line-up, as if from a balcony, DIRECTOR PERON blows kisses. To a response only she hears, she waves, then cups her heart.)
DIRECTOR PERON (cont.)
Descamisados, mi descamisados! I hold you close, so close. In body and soul, I am always with you, for you and for Peron. Such a debt I owe to the workers, to the people—a debt I repay even as I shed life. To Peron I say: nothing I have, nothing I am, nothing I think is mine: all is yours. Yours and the people’s. If the people ask for my life, I give it—joyfully! And when I am gone, descamisados, when I am gone: defend Peron! Fight for him! Let our cry reach every corner of the earth: Our lives for Peron! Our lives for Peron! For myself I ask nothing. It is glory enough to be Peron’s shield, the flag of my people. Victory will be ours, for we are as humble as the oligarchy is arrogant and God is with us. So many things I long to tell you, so many, but my doctors insist I save what strength remains. Yet this I promise, mi descamisados—
(Sudden stage black.)
STAGEHAND 1
And we’re off.
(Boisterous male laughter.)
DIRECTOR PERON
(in darkness, savagely) Another promise, compañeros. You will pay for that insolence. For that insolence you will pay.
(Curtain)