Cast
Zissou: The hillariously soft spoken owner of the LetMeInn hostel; swarthy and stout.
Hans: The Flamboyantly bawdy, gay Swiss Texan cowboy; his texas moustache has grown into a scraggled beard on his travels
Josh: The introverted yet adventurous midwestern-transplanted Seattlite, on a six-month travel in Africa; miscellaneously ethnic he looks a bit to have stepped out of an REI catalog, into a pile of dust
Richard: The sometimes melancholy, eternally optimistic Sufi Brit; whispy grey hair sits untamed above his head as though it is too anxious to lie down and rest.
Jean: The tight-lipped, internet-addicted, Algerian-born Frenchman;
John: The understated yet sage British nomadic traveler.
Dewey and Landon: The intentionally shocking American college girls attending Smith
Gideon: The Jewish-American on holiday;
Hassan: The night-time clerk at the LetMeInn; diminuitive and quick; Hardy to Zissou's Laural
And a supporting cast of Canadians, Koreans, and Germans
Scene I: The central common room at the LetMeInn - a non-descript hostel on the sixth floor of a dilapidated post-colonial building in central Cairo. A round wooden table is littered with Egyptian pastries, a few well worn guidebooks, two and a half packs of Pyramid cigarettes, a non-working lighter, two overflowing ashtrays.
There are five chairs around the table, four of them occupied. Jean and John are sitting at the table engrossed in their laptops, Josh is leaning back tapping on his handheld computer, Zissou sits at the front desk talking in Arabic on his mobile phone, Richard is looking slightly perturbed at the incessant technology. Hans walks in and all except Jean look up.
Hans: "Does anyone have some cheesecake for me?"
Josh: "If I had some cheesecake, it's yours"
Richard: "That should be 'it would be yours'. Sorry, I'm a teacher."
Josh: [the remainder of the scene is an aside to the audience, Josh starts seated, rises to pace around getting more and more animated while the other characters remain nearly motionless as time slows to a standstill]
"Allow me a short rant against the subjunctive - the least artful tense in the English language. Of course 'would' is correct but it has no poetry. My 'incorrect' use of the present had a purpose: namely to show that in a situation wherein I had cheesecake to share, I would already have offered it forth. Hence, by that time it already is yours.
I think that language is extremely powerful and it is important to use it wisely. This does not always mean correctly however. I am on a personal quest against the boring and obvious use of the subjuctive. I say Rise Up! Unshackle yourselves from this linguistic bond! Who's with me?!?"
[Blackout]
Scene II: Later that evening. Again in the common room, the pastries have been further ravaged, and now a half-full (half-empty?) bottle of Egyptian vodka sits amidst the other debris.
Josh, Richard, and John are in poses identical to the beginning of Scene I. Zissou has been replaced by Hassan, and Gideon has taken Jean's place. The final chair manages to hold both Dewey and Landon though it is never apparent which is sitting on the other's lap.
The stage direction in this scene very slowly, but directly, should move each of the characters closer and closer together; from surrounding the table, to scooting their chairs closer, to abandoning their chairs completely, to one by one climbing up with Dewey and Landon until they form a human pyramid/sculpture perched or clinging to this chair. All the while keeping their drinks. The girls remain seated, John lies playfully across them, Gideon and Josh stand on the armrests, Richard perches on the back of the chair, and finally Hassan comes in, takes a flying leap to land atop them all as the stage goes dark. Throughout all of this, the dialogue progresses as though nothing is occuring at all. It is as though they are merely having tea in a cafe.
Gideon: [to Landon] ...but you can't skip it. You sortof have to go.
Landon: It only seems right, doesn't it?
Gideon [to Dewey]: i had a terrible time but i still think you have to go!
Richard: What's this?
Landon: Dewey doesn't want to go to the Pyramids
Gideon: And I say you can't come all the way to Cairo and skip it.
John: [without looking up] I didn't go the first time I was here.
Dewey: [to John] Thank you. [to Gideon] See.
[John & Gideon move their chairs noisily, yet unnoted by all, closer to the girls]
Gideon: I'm not saying it's not possible, just that they are amazing and you really must go.
John: [still not looking up and to no one in particular] Look here, apparently a group of Palestinians blew up a section of the border and hundreds of women poured into Egypt to buy food.
Josh: [leaning forward] Really? Was this today?
John: mmm-hmmm
[Josh stands and starts to circle the table]
Richard: "Ugh, i cant believe that I'm drinking this stuff again. It gave me such an awful hangover last time. [Stands up, steps up on chair, onto table, John rises, steps up to table] And you [to John] said that it wouldn't!"
[Richard takes John's seat]
Dewey: [to Landon] "Well, ok I'll go"
John: "No, i said it doesn't give ME a hangover" [steps down and lies across the laps of Dewey and Landon]
Josh: [to Richard]"A subtle but important distinction"[stops circling and steps up onto armrest, Gideon stands up on other armrest. Richard steps from his (John's) chair to the back of the girl's chair.]
[All drink]
Richard: "Hassan, could we have some more tea?"
[Hassan enters, steps onto the table and leaps into the arms of Josh and Gideon]
[Blackout]
Ok, I'm here again .... I was bored on the train today, so this is what you get. I'm in Alexandria; the old capitol of Egypt. It's on the sea coast; very pretty and a bit more laid back than Cairo. I can see the water from my balcony. :)
Not much else as I'm off to bed for an early night. I did watch Cote d'Ivore crush Benin tonight with, coincidentally, Ahmad, who runs the Hotel Gamlin, where I'm staying. He is hoping one day very much to immagrate to Europe or the US sometime as he finds life in Egypt too difficult. After seeing a picture of Julie, Ahmad's brother wants to marry her sister. Too bad, she's taken.
Alexandria Library:
4 comments:
That's the Josh i know. I'm glad you're in Alexandria.
nice play, baby! I especially liked the existential absurdism!
I'm a U.S. citizen and someday I'll be a rich lawyer...Can I marry Julie's sister?
OK, so I think we might have to go into some kind of mediated conflict resolution sessions, as the subjunctive is my *favorite* tense. Also, in this instance, you are confusing the subjunctive with the conditional. "If I had" is the subjunctive clause in the sentence, and "it would be" is conditional. That's right, eat it, you subjunctive-hater boy.
I think if we can come to the agreement that the subjunctive is untouchably fantastic, and that the conditional is meh, then I think we will be OK.
;)
I enjoyed this very much. A travel-motivated performance piece is a neat idea, especially since you are focused much more on the human interaction and less on the travel itself. The setting is only a backdrop for the people. I especially like everyone piling onto the one chair.
Yay!
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