IDENTITY
by Richard Toth (after Alfau’s Identity)

We find Scott Adkins, Normandy Sherwood and Richard Toth in the café,
mid-conversation.

Normandy
Richard Toth, I’m fascinated by your crisis. But I think you are barking up the wrong tree. I think you should not think about yourself as a character for the theater, but a character we could help you invent for life. That’s right, I said life. Together, we would be creating a truly Living Theater. Scott Adkins and I will devise a character that you can be proud of. We will give you passion, a quirky, but piercing perspective. We’ll give you strength and charisma, we’ll give you faults, of course, but only ones that add to your allure.

Richard
 Backbone?

Normandy
Of marble.

Richard
 Oh, Normandy Sherwood, the words you speak electrify me. How? How can we proceed? Tell me what I need to do.

Normandy
It’s simple. You will need to kill yourself.

NECROPHIL
by Normandy Sherwood (after Alfau’s Necrophil)

From Part Four, ANOTHER FUNERAL…

DOÑA MICAELA inspects the corpse.

DOÑA MICAELA
Did you stuff the cavities carefully, my child? Hmm... you had better let me adjust that serviette about her face. It is loose and her mouth is not completely closed... Hmm... She looks like a person with a toothache and not a regular corpse.

DOÑA MICAELA adjusts the serviette. SISTER is horrified, but continues to be polite about it all.

I remember the time my poor Nicholas died...I forgot to close his mouth and when they carried him away it was wide open... As if he were still yelling from the pains he had right before he died... Hmm... These things are terrible... I shall never forget those moments at the cemetery when they buried my two poor husbands...Hmm... I can still hear the sound of the first pail of dirt upon the coffin.

DOÑA MICAELA is by this time fondling the corpse. She catches herself.

Goodbye, my child, and don’t forget to call me the next time. (And then she rushes out.)

 

THE CHARACTER
by Scott Adkins (after Alfau’s Character)

The Narrator (and writer) with his character, Gaston, in mid-conversation…

GASTON
You have to ask? I am in love/

NARRATOR
But you are of two different/

GASTON
I know. But that does not change how I feel, how I want to remain, how I want her to remain. I want her to remain real, I cannot have her as a character, I would rather end then have her become as inconsequential as a character.

NARRATOR
Now this is significant. And I think I understand. You do not want her to become a character because then she will become like you, which will ruin the realness that you are so entranced by. Yes yes, the romantic regulations say that if I fall in love with a vision, lets say a vision of a beautiful woman I see on the street, and my vision is having dinner with her at the perfect restaurant, making love in the perfect bed, having a perfect evening all within the romance of the vision, I would never want her to be real, because if she became real then she would become plastic and human which defies the point of the vision.

 

IN DIALOGUE is a column written by playwrights about playwrights, with a focus on showcasing new texts. If you are a playwright and would like to write a column, please contact Emily DeVoti at editorial@brooklynrail.org