Three walls (A play)
© copyright Section press (2011)
| THREE WALLS
A Play By Zachary Scott Hamilton
TEN OF HEARTS
Act 1:
(Scene 1): Automatic FLOATING
Pieces of a house attached to long extensions move back and forth through an underwater scenery, A table, an old wooden door with golden handle, window frames, a rug, rocking chairs, a vintage couch with plush red cushions. Fish and sea weed moves on another plane behind, undulating with either a fan or hand pulleys. Our main Character floats as well behind the furniture, moving through the seaweeds and the fish dance away when he comes near them, he is clutching a fish bowl with what looks like a gold fish inside of it. He clutches this very tightly and begins his monologue.
Shrane: I want to take the doors off and swim in the ruins of our house - An arctic sweltering, a paradise sinking in fat legs, loose of swarming puss – Then take pictures of my breath and send it by mail to the
bird of impossibility from this far away
(he begins to appear as if he were floating under water, an undulation is done by slowly moving the pulleys back and forth bubbles that are made from glass balls float up from around him, creating the appearance of a movement. He comes to a still 'free floating' in the center of the stage.)
Shrane: Dirty tank, I snag foil lips on the volumes of purged and putrid Oar. Sticks jut from the boat – drinking green moss from the marina. In sense, light bulbs melt and shooting the fly down into the attic oh, doors are good off of their hinges, please break down the walls a pustule of wallpaper, now stack these doors into the attic, erase the brain from an apple, swim in this
dark water with your fins and flippers! Door brain swallows the garbage fish food drifts into the soup.
(As he does this the things he is speaking of are appearing from within the rafters, dropping before him and then smoothly moving to the stage where the 'water' built in the classic style are ingesting the things for this an apple, a door, a bowl filled with water (not soup) and flippers will be needed.)
He slips the flippers on which are connected to more pulleys, this creates less control in the actor as much as in the pulley operator, who must be careful to not stretch the actor to far, these scenes will also need to be choreographed so that there commences a strange performance art style dance, the pulley rises him higher into the rafters to create a view of him from beneath.
Red velvet curtains enter from all sides and congest the whole stage until it appears he is moving very fast through space, this can be achieved by using the seaweeds and fish moving toward the crowd, starting from back stage and moving along tracks toward the front stage swiftly, as the character stays almost completely frozen in mid air.
Shrane: Swallow dreary thick
HE PAUSES, (ADJUSTING THE FISH BOWL WHICH FLOATS AWAY ON PULLEY AND THEN HE CATCHES IT) SHOUT THIS
show ease, easy muffin! Swallow, take the pills and swallow. Corn husk talisman,
shouts, shouts a rain drifts down on the top drain too many movements inside one hallowed out breath stroke across our continents a thin line of snagged thread a clothespin, a line of sunny sunny across
tilted slow down ruin we have swam across you, a dreary hat-stand happens, hats-pool, leverage a thin dotted line of entrances of our cattle, spin on the page pedestal, pebble thin oar sting fish line
swarming through the grail on the lips, the lips of a small cow, turning around the threat of our soup and small tiles wander up on a series of feet, do they drift up, is there a purpose, an umbrella over the lassitude,(an umbrella drops to his hand and he spins it) a latch is pressed down upon, I am living fine, got my blower horn, got my fins, got my fish (he points) a horn drops from his side bag(either a small French horn or any kind of horn that you can blow through) got a fish bowl got got got it all in this fish fin and fish hand. He disappears behind a home made wave that is built in the renaissance style and then comes back up.
Shrane : Do dad? Do dad? Do dad, I can't think straight, this pulse interrupts this thought This (PAUSE)pulses
(THE POND SCENE APPEARS, REPLACING THE SEAWEED, SHRANE IS LOWERED SO THAT IT APPEARS HE IS ACTUALLY IN A FOUNTAIN. THE JOGGING TRAIL: THERE ARE TREES AND A BENCH. THE WAVES ARE TAKEN AWAY REPLACED WITH THE CEMENT LOOKING FOUNTAIN, A scuba diving mask is removed from the actors bag, the fish bowl stays in mid air, floating under water.
Shrane: Absent drill into the thinner that I swim in this lake - A runner goes by, who dares wear jogging outfits HERE ENTERS THE JOGGER. JOGGING OUTFIT VERY MODERN LOOKING.
in this dreary pond, I've got my fish pond, a pale boat, do this runner good,(He gets on stage and hands the jogger the fish bowl, who takes it with a reluctant look in her eyes, he yells at her as she runs awkwardly away with the fish bowl) here's a nice fish for you runner, jog on with a fish bowl and I got my fins do you inhale this water chalk forest passes screaming! Do I mistake her hands for a squid, the furl into the bowl and pick up the golden from the arctic water! Exploring ruins is fun but a cold is coming into the chambers.
The seaweed closes over stage instead of the curtain and music on a record player begins to play stage left.
{End of SCENE 1}
_____
TEN OF HEARTS
Act 1:
(Scene 2): Elevator bath tub
The record spinning a long strange song, the band plays it or earlier recorded, the record spins and a girl sits closest to us hunched over, the light grows darker and murkier, a fairly quick repetition of darkened back stage while the film is loaded near the back of the hall, when it comes on the girl is no longer a little girl who had been dressed in white, almost no look to what she is costumed in, now dressed in full costume her silhouette before the screen projecting this:
Rising up steps to the top floor of a long flight of straight steps, we are moving quickly through the hallway, up the stairs into a dark room. With one overhead light on, not too dark. Forks and knives stuck in the walls, a torn off sheet of wallpaper near the back of the hotel room has been left strategically, almost as if the person had some intention we will find out about later on. This is alluded too. A deer head with three antlers, two heads as if created and born this way, a window-frame low on the wall for a hotel room where all we see is the light of the moon through a haunting chapel all too clearly. The actor mutters the lines suddenly and calmly, almost to the shout, there can be other stage crew or actors chine in here and there with the lines as they see fit, audience members can be encouraged to stand by the woman actor Ashley.
Ashley: Ashley hurts the instinct to destroy my thoughts that are these walls.
Linger in that murky solitude for awhile and turn your cakes upside down!
This leering marvel does the trick every time I stick a rock in the room and run around outside.
She puts on white gloves at the front of the stage under a flickering light, as she does her lines.
This is dreaming beef patties down the road there, in front of the laundry mat theater apartment building where they do the prostitution around this hour and my hands I decide to look at my hands.
(The video shows her hands as well and she wanders off of stage.)
And program thee (her voice remains) movements Auto-erotic asphyxiation, in these hands, I am dreaming i=of, that ladder on the third floor pokes out of my room, and off the street and feathers left there on the street, and my room, thirteen floors
( This is the projection )
up, this room is the wallpaper of all room, I open my eyes letting warm water fall around. In the green water of the bathtub.
Our actor is Waking up in a tub, green water. The tub has been rolled in or has wheels, a fog should come in and lights come on slow. As the rest of a set comes into view behind and all around her?
Ashley: The mirror I took down from the wall and set on the floor so that I could see myself while bathing.
She looks into a shard of broken mirror resting on old fashioned Victorian molding.
Ashley :
The part that draws my attention most is instead the claw foot, its curling back gold leafing cracked along a fine edge.
(I breathe in and dunk my head, careful to stay above water, focused straight ahead. I pull my head up from within the deep lower sounds.) Sound changes as she ducks her hair into the water, A lowering of sound a sudden muffling of all sound.
Looking around the bathroom. I get up from the tub and dry off, stepping out of the green water rippling and I pull the plug, letting out all the green water and the theater curtains and theater curtains, red fucking plush curtains drip from the walls and sucked into the dark drain. she frustrated, goes through longer and long curtains pouring out of the bath tub, so much so she is struggling a little against the fabric.
Ashley:
I peek out of the window, a dame flushing the toilet,
A dropped down image of an elevator door is presented whether casually or abrupt, either way it is suddenly there, she is now standing in a suit jacket and suit pants hair combed back with fur along her shoulders, an umbrella and short dress possibly over the pants, and other aspects of costume, other things such as copper wire, or cardboard constructions can be used, found clothes, what have you.
Ashley: and the elevator opens up and my hands remove the person I am from my room and enter in a suit.
The two characters are standing so close to each other that when one becomes the other it is so abrupt
that it becomes very difficult to see it happening, the trick is that for a moment they are one, through effects displayed on a theater screen projecting one behind the other, the screen starts, picking up where the character left off, light is removed as she gracefully spins away, a silhouette of her is all that we may see.
She is now Shrane.
Shrane: “These deaths are deaths they
destroy friends, our animals
strawberry of dawn –
wandering red so
bright this early sound”
We are now inside of an elevator on the movie playing on the far screen.
One other actor is in the elevator with Shrane our main character. He is dressed in a way we instantly suspect this character of something we are not quiet sure of, there is something very upsetting about his appearance, yet he sudduces us with the style of dress, it is a dark suit, when you look close it is worm and brittle and begins to ( through stop motion ) fall apart and rot away in the spot you are looking, when you look away it is clean,.
Shrane (voiceover):
The elevator is going down really fast, going down into something small, that the elevator is growing smaller now.
Doctor:
“An honor it shapes
and whales in roaming sparks
the February flower night
Orchids in jungles tea, I see!”
Someone who is not shrane whispers:
That man has black hair slicked back, he is removed into the elevator of this moment going down, we are going very fast, he takes this time to explain the history of the elevator, he reminds me that this broke in nineteen sixteen at the funeral ball where Gertrude had spoken at, and I remember that night now, clutch tight onto the tie around my neck and pull down, lift up my head it pops off of my shoulders, tighten down as tight as I am scared, he laughs. Slicks his hair, going up? Time has expired.
A hand wiggles nervously over the buttons a white glove with dirt sticking to it as we notice it.
A voice says:
He talks very quiet into the words that are printed on the wall, so that he can be a dispenser and I won't notice that I am alone in the elevator going down really slow.
Shrane thinks:
It hurts my stomach that way,
The two are pulled by white strings from inside of the elevator And the actors are pulled onto stage with the white screen, there is a ball room scene, a foyer of the ballroom is where stage is. The curtain moves away and the projections stop.
Someone saying this:
we exit the theater, going outside of the elevator for a moment, to take in strong atmosphere, the dressing gowns of these large tuna fish and ask for a drink from the apparatus machine pressed onto the table as if it were stamped with an other apparatus machine.
The scene above described is developed and enacted, there are tuna headed women dresses in dresses, vintage garb wandering around with drinks in their hands.
Shrane: These ladies smell like fish and drool and fucking spray cologne, they glow iron a delicious color, they talk a loud voice here, the echo drifts around and makes it to the ballroom and back into their mouths with the fish sticks and the wine.
A turkey is let onto the stage for a while, a string of thread that an old bird figure brings out, bledning into the costumed tuna fish group wanders out, stringing up the line from a room at the back of stage into the mouths of the tuna fish. The character is not exactly aluded to, but is seen, clearly, but other costumed members as well are sending out lines of string, theier isn't necesarrily an attention to the bird man character, but it is the only member in the costume wine party in this out fit.
The tuna wemon: I know I have seen you somewhere they say. I know you.
You are that man who stole all of the fur from the laboratory rat! You must be punished with everything we have,
A chase commencing, the stage is pulled away from the audience on a rolling aperatus. The character is running away from the mob of tuna people, the fish heads begin pulling away into the air from string and the dresses come off of the actors, they have been velcro seperated to do this, sewn this way. They are masked with white clothes over their faces so that we cannot make out who they are. There has been a curtain dropped down in front of them, The video projections begin, inside of the elevator once the stage is clear.
A rigged elevator shot.
Someone says: I turn into the elevator and spin around, trying to escape by spinning, then I remember to press the buttons and I will go up.
( Shrane acts this out in the video.)
Someone says: These are some broken old doors but I get them closed faster than fast, take an hour,
The old fashioned television is lowered into the elevator on the film and the show is a pre-made video of a later part of the play from an angle that keeps us unfamiliar of the fact that our main character is in the shot.
Someone: watch a movie in here and get back to my room.
The voice over follows Shrane dressed up in his suit he spins for awhile as the other actors come into the video and are chasing him,the doors close, he adjusts his tie, he wipes off dust from his jacket, he watches the numbers on the elevator, he has a nervous demeanor in his face.
Someone says:Welcome Back !!
(End scene 2)
TEN OF HEARTS
Act 1:
(Scene 3): Elevator bath tub
Shrane (sitting in the room already the same hotel rebuilt from earlier on stage):
Oh, my God! I cannot leave my room
or I'll get shot by a bird in two theaters!
Two pairs of trousers, two dinosaur watches,
two pairs of gray puffy shoes, two rings, two combs!
He shouts in a shuddering voice, he is quivering.
(The actor is now on stage
the lights are on him as the video rolls away into black.)
Shrane:
This room is a monster! I have shot a thirty aught six, semi automatic, a rifle made out of steam, I've destroyed the paper flowers in throwing knives forks and utensils. Sleek costumes do not hide me from the endless recklessness I have distorted here.
Shrane (Pulling up the blankets):
Hotel 32 Gran De luxe chateaus, the lesson of my urgency hovering above me outside at the window in francs.
Someone says: Two deer head hover there beneath the rafters - their show of force - great meat feelers found these two headed (The movements of the two headed deer is jolting back and forth looking at our character straight in the eyes.) wildebeests and made a pie of their maroon gizzards. Box of splat rebellious colors.
I have a personal likeness to felt, myself. If you have to have a double headed mechanism above you at all times, why not invent it out of felt, dear miserables.