Barcode 30!!7 307

ACT 1 SCENE 1: PRELUDE IN FRONT BAR

(There is a large screen, projecting animal images referred to and in between the close-up images of bruises. Mother and father in front bar of National Hotel]

Mother: [Holding program] Is this it?

Father: No, This is the front bar. She’s in the back-bar.

Mother: I wonder what it’s about.

Father: [Dual reference to play and the real] I just want to know how it begins.

Mother: Have you got the drinks?

Father: Yes.

Mother: Have you got the money?

Father: Yes. [As he says this he checks out woman in audience]

Mother: Who’s that?

Father: No-one.

Mother: Well, it’s not no-one. I mean you can see her with your own eyes. [Sort of a pause to be sarcastic or personal or something] That much is obvious.

Father: Yeah. But she doesn’t really exist.

Mother: So I’m seeing things?

Father: Look, I don’t know what you’re seeing but I’m telling you she’s out there and I am here.

Mother: But you don’t want to be here.

Father: You must think you’re God!

Mother: What?

Father: You must have some sort of superpower. You must be some sort of grand, evolved being, to always know what I’m thinking.

Mother: If you’d just tell me who she is, I wouldn’t havetobe thinking what you’re thinking.

Father: Why should I when you treat me like shit?

Mother: So you know who she is, you just won’t tell me because you’re a cruel bastard [Pause]It’s all just a big game with you, isn’t it? Is it because you’re a sadist because you’re cruel and you want to see us all suffer because you enjoy it? Because you don’t give a shit about anyone. Because all you think about is yourself……..

Father: For Christ’s sake!

Mother: What?

Father: I came here to see my daughter’s play.

Mother: Alright!

Father: What?

Mother “I came here to see my daughter’s play.”

Father: Bitch!

Mother: What? [Pause] What did you say?

Father: Nothing.

Mother: (Not) oh (but between oh and ah) no. You did this to me last time and I swore, “Never again. I’ll never let you do that to me.”

[Father stands and yells very loud]

Father: I am not doing anything to you! [Points his finger to his head] You got that, thicko? You got that [Pause]…..? Bully-boy

[Father knocks mother’s drink aggressively]

Mother: What?

Father: Bully-boy.

Mother: Stop it!

Father: Bully-boy.

[Mother turns away. Father grabs her chin aggressively-maybe this can be almost mechanical? Like a dance with the hand and the chin. Spits on her] Don’t ever look away from me again! [but even this turns out to be a lie in the end, a sort of a play. It’s just to make her think that he’s jealous?!!??]

Mother: [Staring into his eyes where he put her]: You’re a monster!

Prelude: My Brother’s Prison

ACT 1 SCENE 3

Audience is filed into play. Mother and father file into play with everyone. Father actually plays the role of father.

W1: The rabbit said

I’m not terrified at all. I’m just as shy as the Mona Lisa. That’s only because of what I’ve witnessed. I feel like a prophet, but it’s not God’s word I have known. In the end, you can only do what you know best. I chew on the grass and green leaves because there’s no cut carrots in the wild.

I hear voices through the reeds. By the water I am listening. I am listening to voices in the reeds. The reeds have been raped by history certainly. But here, here in the still waters it is my story that moves the reeds with its tidal flow.

My brother is a frog. He leaps on lilies. He leaps and he falls deliberately, very deliberately but he’s clumsy so he quite often looks foolish. He seems to leap when the lilies wilt…..but as I said he’s very clumsy. You can’t tell if he’s falling or falling deliberately. I don’t know the difference because my father’s a dog and his fierce authority makes meat of me… and bones for him to worry the skeleton.

Everybody’s dead, Dad! You killed them already with your domestic violence! [Something about this actual term being used] You knew blood would be shed!

You know, it didn’t surprise me at all when the Gulf War crept into our kitchen. Everybody’s outraged that a war should be broadcast like a football match or a rock concert. I just started seeing double, mostly evil dictators.

[Father stands alongside picture]

The images echoed back into an endless mirror and finally all the world was united in the sickening image of brutality that stretched from one end of the universe to the other.

The endless collapse imploded in the lounge room with the words of lunatics broadcast via satellite, inside out.

[Shadow of mother sitting in chair. Father brings a steaming potato cake hanging from sort of a stick with a fishing line on it. Mother screams. Maybe we can film these shadowy lines.]

It feels like a tick on your skin. One day it will gnaw through your palm while you’re shaking hands with an important person. You can’t escape the cloud eclipsing the sun today.

It really is sparkling silver,
round the edges.
They call it silver lining.
The light may pierce your eyes but
its substance is black.

The thin chalky rib cracks in the light and reflects one hundred colours for a moment as it snaps and is grinded into dust to be shared by the cubs who curl up in mother’s warmth.

Father assures me that the bloodshed was necessary for our survival and I wonder if he is real and…….what if he’s not?

Seeing you’re staring at him, Mother
I’ll remind you he’s a monster

I see you admire his sharp
Poisonous teeth and look,
How sweet you’ve bought
All us children
Some circular bandaids

To hug the serpent spots
Red to tempt the fury of the bull…….

[Sound of running water] What? What? The sound of running water. The sound of blood pouring from the moment but blood never flows. Flowing blood is a symbol of life…….

The wound pours furiously and drips drops of blood. Red tear drops dot the kitchen floor, they fall lightly drop by drop on the cutting board where she peeled the onions.

Drops of blood dot the cutting board too.

If only they did but they don’t. The blood appears in the frenzy, in the madness of pain.

Blood. Blood relatives. Blood is thicker than water.

Father: Turn it off!

W1: What?

Father: The shower.

W1: Why?

Father: Because it’s driving me mad!

W1: How so?

Father: It’s dripping. It’s the sound of it. It’s disconcerting.

W1: But it’s not.

Father: Have you no respect?

W1: I thought he said neglect. [Pause] And then it’s gone anyway. The tornado?, that is.

[Pause] The clerical staff at the post office just stand there, dumb, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths. I’m the subject of gossip. It’s their interest, their hobby to talk about the screams.

[Pause] I am sent into the other room. I am sent into my room. It’s supposed to be my refuge. I think they put it here deliberately. We’re disguised as a ‘normal’ family. Normality is a sort of a form of speech, something we deviants hide inside. Normality is the camouflage for gorillas ready to take you by surprise and choke you with chicken wire.

My brother says normality is just a word used to describe the feeling of anxiety bank tellers and other such professional people experience when they have to stand in the same room as each other.

What? What?

Father: You’d do well to get a job as a bank teller [Pause]….What?

W1: They don’t have them anymore, Dad.

Father: I’m just talking about safety and security….

W1: But you know there’s no such thing. That’s what you’ve taught me.

Father: I’m just saying…..

W1: Then stop saying……

Father: I don’t know what……

W1: I’m telling you I heard you! I’m saying that your trick didn’t work.

Father: Trick? [He genuinely doesn’t understand]

W1: Your trick to hide the children in the bedroom while you tortured her with words.

Father: Words?

W1: You don’t remember? Is that what you’re saying? It was a blind rage. Intoxicating? So you don’t remember. You can’t remember because you were drunk, in a way?

(Father has been trying to light cigarette for some time)

Father: Do you have a lighter without a children’s safety lock?

W1: No.

Father: It’s just my thumb.

W1: What?

Father: It has blisters on it from trying to light the cigarette.

[Exit daughter] Well, how do you think it feels for me? It’s true we’ve come to a stalemate in our relationship. That’s for those of you who love the chess metaphor. [Stands very straight. Life size chessboard on stage]

Well, I’m the King and I stand very straight. I don’t walk very far and I only eliminate [slow down speech] those close to me. This is absolutely terrifying but I am backed into a corner and everywhere I move it’s checkmate. I’m a scorpion. My tail begins to buzz and shiver and….there you go! I’m talking like a poet. I’m talking like they talk because it’s easier to glorify it all than accept the images of torture tied to guilt and wrapped inside the weary feet of the black soled shoes that tears her skin before my eyes…….I’m being as descriptive as I can to try to re-imagine the moment that my hand tore her skin and it was wrapped around palms and stuck inside the ends of my fingernails. It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it.

I can’t explain the moment in which she disappeared. The room became very dark. I don’t know if it really was [pause] but that’s how I saw it. She was gone. It was Hell. Then there were all these familiar trains of thought rolling through the conversation. They say there’s a relationship between schizophrenia and trains. Then after a long time of hearing nothing but the rolling wheels on the steel tracks her voice came slowly through the faded moment and she talked to me in animal images……..

I remember your innocence
I try to say
I just wanted
To watch your play.

W1: What did you come here for? And both of you together? What does that mean?

ACT 1 SCENE 4

[Lights up on parents]

Mother:: We just wanted to support you.

[Pause. Very tense atmosphere. Mother is glaring. Moody. Mother is obviously angry like it’s a physical ailment. She is annoyed and uncomfortable with herself and him. She’s embarrassed and she internalises everything. It all points to her. Nothing means anything except in relation to her.]

Father: What?

Mother: Smart-arse!

Father: What?

Mother: The humiliation.

Father: I’m just trying to be supportive.

Mother: [Sarcastic] Supportive? Is that the same sort of support you offered him?

Father: What the Hell’s that supposed to mean?

Mother: It means that people don’t go to jail for no reason.

Father: My son’s in jail because he chose to live like a criminal. [Realises he’s spoken out loud]

ACT 1 SCENE 5

[Freeze scene. Lights on Brother leaping like a frog. He stands and looks at screen which reveals the word MISogyny in bold letters. Then he lights his father’s cigarette]

M1: I watched it happen. I watched it happen repetitively. I saw the rhythm of their thinking, sounds all conspiring to end it in a bloody mess.

It’s quiet. It’s over. I’ve grown. As a child I told him through the wash of the warm tide storming my face……..in middle of his torrential horror, I remember I told him,

See the man on the TV charged with so many biblical crimes he can’t remember which came first? That’s me! That’s me on the other side of the screen and I feel like they should be proud or like it provides hope.

(CONFRONTS FATHER PHYSICALLY)

‘You’re wearing a mask’ I told the man who was just always there because I knew it was the Truth, because I wanted to challenge the bastard, because I wanted to tell him you never taught me how to be a man. Because masks are made of paint and his face seems so unreal because I’ve coloured it with crayons because I knew him as a child. Then he was gone and he only ever appeared in paintings after that.

I wondered how my father came to be always made of paint, always appearing in the smoky halls of some hip art gallery. The thing is Iconfused the painted faces for layers of skin.

[LIGHTING STUFF HERE TO INDICATE CHANGE OF SCENES]

Some time later, in my life that is, I wound up in jail. The Bluestone College, they called it, I called it, with them.

Looking at his face I thought of walking through it like it was an art gallery.

I thought I was immune to it. I thought that somehow I was only seeing it, witnessing it and could remain unaffected.

Mum! Dad! Guess what?

I’m gunna be on TV and all I have to do is beat the fuck out of you, steal all your money and leave you for dead.

Then on my thirteenth birthday I did. I think I busted his jaw with my right hand and his nose was broken in three places. I could tell from the bones. I had a lot of sort of half baked medical knowledge. I eavesdropped a lot as a kid. I remember my father used to say to my mother ‘he’s like a bloody woman..’ and my mother would just say ‘get out’ which obviously meant she didn’t disapprove of the……. [reads word on screen]

But that’s nothin’ to do with anythin’ when you’re inside. I’ve been inside a few times. I been outside meetin’ mates from the inside. I’ve been in graveyards. [Begins laughing] I’ve been the fucking gravedigger. Some fucker from the inside told me there was something fucking Shakefucking spearian about being the fucking gravedigger. He’d been inside seventeen years. He never saw the graves being dug. But then you never done a CBO, did ya? A CBO’s a community based order. It’s society’s way of sayin’

you’re fucked cunt! and I’m too dumb to respond [to specific audience member] Not stupid. Deaf and dumb. So anyway, I can’t speak. I can’t say one word. I can’t even whisper because all I wanna say is ‘Where can you get me some firearms.

……not that I ever dug shit with me bare hands or nofin’. No I just had to push the green and red buttons. That smart bastard from the inside told me green was a symbol of life and red was a symbol of blood, pain. I love pain. I love the feeling of pain.

[Sits in chair]

I’m getting a tattoo. I don’t like it. I don’t like it because I love it. The pain, it gives me an erection. The woman’s face, it’s as red as a traffic light. It’s as red as blood.

aND THE PAIN MAKES ME HIDE THE ERECTION AND THE THE BLOOD FLUSHES OUT HER FACE AND IT FALLS ON THE FLOOR BECAUSE……..

PEOPLE ARE SO MEANINGLESS
i CAN’T EVEN SEE THEIR FACES
tHEY JUST LOOK LIKE TRAFFIC LIGHTS
lIKE WOUNDS………

bECAUSE, BECAUSE….WELL, THEY CAN’T STAND THE SIGHT OF YOU. AND THE TRUTH IS I CAN’T STAND THE SIGHT OF THEM. i MEAN THEY CAN’T SEE ME, NOT REALLY. fATHER, FORGIVE ME, I KNOW NOT WHAT THEY ARE! i’M SCITZOPHRENIC, YOU SEE. aND i WASN’T MADE THAT WAY BY your GOD, BY what you call BIRTH OR BY MY MOTHER’S FUCKING HARD WORK. nO, NOTHING MADE ME THAT WAY. It’s a history lesson. He’s teaching me about the holocaust. But he’s not telling me, he’s showing me. and I’m all numb and dumb at once because i can’t speak because i can’t stand the sound of the voice. because i don’t want to hear it! that’s what i told her! I don’t want to hear it, bitch! and the whole time i can hear the hot iron in the back of my mind and i can hear my mother screaming from a distance and it doesn’t seem so long ago that it was friday night and we were getting fish and chips and my mouth was watering and i was all excited because i’m a little boy and fish and chips are special treat. then darkness descends and all the images i’ve ever known of pain and blood explode in the memory………god he might just as easily have sliced her straight up the middle like he was gutting a fish…….

You see I’m five years old and i’m watching my father stuff a steaming fucking potato cake in and around my mother’s mouth blistering he chin so the flesh drips like toffee and i stand under her like she’s a dripping tap and i taste the toffee because toffee’s a special treat and he’s kicking me away with his foot because he’s inside a different world.

because, suddenly, he doesn’t know me.

he’s inside his skin. we’re in his skin. he can’t see me, i’m sure of it! dad remember it’s friday night and we’re going to build a cubby tommorrow. remember? but by the time we did, it looked like a small torture chamber. it was made of filthy tent plastic and he sort of threw it over this nailed wood in a silent rage. his breath’s frosty because it’s early and his eyes are bleeding with exhaustion because nobody slept last night and all he says is,

will that do?

My mother’s gone. he swallowed her last night like she was a boiled egg.

[holds egg up]

Anyway i’m doin’ this cbo. i’m a GRAVEDIGGER. I’m the GRAVEDIGGER. i’m turning soil from a distance when i see the dead guy’s head (Lights up on just father’s head. the rest of him is completely blackened out) sort of turning around in the dirt and orh shit! it reminds me of me son. me little tiny baby.

she was due that day. me bitch, that is. she had a beautiful face, i’m tellin’ you mate. [pause] me bitch, that is. [pause] shit, i’m just sort of remembering.
[remembering pause] how is it that everything always ends up so fucked?

[Father walks on stage. Mother sits on chair]

It’s like being inside this very dark world. It’s like what you call dreams I call nightmares. It’s like how I saw that face on that CBO. [Lights up on father’s head, it’s like a shakespearian image] That face turning in the dirt. That’s my world. That’s your world. The Looking Glass is filthy fucking dirty and I’m on stage in a theatre and this is the fucking middle class and I’m an impostor. BUT YOU ALWAYS KNEW I WAS AN ACTOR, AN ARTIFICE. What? And now your gunna tell me you find it strange that I snuck the truth in under me arm?

Do you
Won-der
Whatch ya
hearin’
from in
the dirt
Ya got hurt
In the
Hospital
the
plan
to tell
the old
man
it didn’t
hurt at all
When you
Heard him call
Her,

[Lights up on Rebecca]

Bitch!
Bitch!
Bitch!

Come on, push! Push harder! So I scream at the doctor, ‘Give us ya gloves, cunteyes!’ And he looks sort of scared so I take a few seconds out to roar at him like me bitch is doin’ right in front of me face. And when I look I see the blood pourin’ all over the fucking white as snow sheet and I say “What? What the fuck is wrong? What the fuck is goin’ on? What are you doin’ to me bitch, Cunt? What are you doin’ to me baby, cunteyes?

That’s when I seen him. That’s when I seen his little legs danglin’ down. Man, if you could imagine those little tiny feet dangling like Christmas decorations and the blood’s drippin’ off the end of his tiny toes and they called it a breach birth. A what? I say.

Father: A breach birth.

M1: Did you see it, though? His little legs, man? Did you see ’em?

Father: Yes.

M1: And what did you call it?

Father: A breach birth.

Son: But it wasn’t a birth! It wasn’t a breach birth. It wasn’t an anything birth. It was a death. Can’t you see that? What are ya, thick? What are ya, thicko? How are ya, sicko? You tried to buy my breath, choking my son between me bitch’s legs and makin’ me watch the poor little bastard hang before he even had a chance to breathe. Like the good men I met inside and I never saw a real bastard, I mean I never saw a cruel and heartless, gutless wonder ever spend a day in prison. I saw a lot of fuckwits. I saw a lot of lessons learnt. I saw people lose eyes and ears and limbs. I saw cells fill up with cripples and I saw the cripples cripple each other but it wasn’t lawless, it was never without justice.

The sickos were just sort of cleaned out. Killed, if they could be gotten to. See, when you’re on the other side of good, you learnt to hate evil even more. It sort of gives you the creeps to be sleeping with so many monsters. You wanna talk about bein’ fuckin’ terrified. But then you learn, you learn through broken bones. Then they take ’em off ya and sell em back to you in small bags, all crushed up and the only thing you think is that you got fucking ripped off because ya just can’t get stoned no matter how much of the shit you pump into your blood………[Looks off dreamily] Heroin just reminds me of her. [Stops right in front of audience member. Leans down to talk directly to HIM!!!] Me bitch, that is.

Rebecca: Gettin’ a tattoo’s like the needle. It’s like gettin’ a thousand little pin pricks, the pain that’s come to take pain. The needle, it’s like Jesus Christ or the concept of Jesus Christ. Don’t ya reckon, Babe?

M1: What’s that, Babe?

Rebecca: Don’t ya reckon the needle’s like Jesus Christ?

M1: Yeah. Only when you touch it, it takes you to Hell. Sounds more like fucking Christians if you ask me.

[Rebecca takes needle in hand and holds it like a cross]

No, babe. I learnt in jail that there’s one thing you never do and that’s fuck with people’s beliefs. You fuck with people’s beliefs and they fuck with you or, worse, their beliefs fuck with you.

Rebecca: Yeah, Jesus is gunna come out of the closet…….

M1: Stop it, Babe!

Rebecca: Why?

M1: Because no bitch of mine is goin’ to Hell.
Because when you’re in Hell, the evil! It can burn you, man! And sickness penetrates like the tattoo needle, pricking your skin and leaving your dream right there on the surface. Like we’re walking myths, like we’re in ancient Greece, like we’re all Oedipus or something……….

[Begins to sort of dream. Music?)

Father: We’re going to have a slide night.

[Begins to show very sick slides, (or) perhaps images of battered women. It ends on the word ‘misogyny?’ again]

POSSIBLE SCENE: RETHINK?

M1: Or maybe she just wanted to protect her children. Maybe she told him to ‘get out’ or maybe she told us to get out because she didn’t want to see us suffering out of the corner of her eye. She was just avoiding Hell and it was nothing to do with……

[LOOKS AT WORD]

We lived in a town built on swamp land. I grew up in that town and stayed there following the same trails all my life…….

Father: What are you talking about?

M1: Living in a swamp. Being a fucking rat. When you feel like it’s the fucking addiction dragging you down or it’s the fucking horrific poverty they don’t teach at school! Or the lies you hear from the start of every rotting day every day of rotting, the lies they don’t tell you about or remind you of…..you just know they’re there because you’ve heard them so many times……These are the only things we know for sure. Oh yeah, there is one more thing. [Pulls out a gun]

If you don’t hold a gun to their head, they’ll hold a gun to yours!

That’s how I learnt to be clinical while I was holding a gun. That’s not completely true, actually, I had crims around me or ex-crims, people who had been inside. I don’t know what you call ’em but they just sort of appeared……Neighbours and that they were……I knew em or I felt I knew em because they’d been inside

W1: The children were sort of floating. They were sort of fluttering around the telephone…………

Father: I didn’t see them. By then there were courts and solicitors and accusations of criminal behaviour in my own home. They seemed like moths, flickering under a dull light. They say a thirteen year old is like a child, that their bones are not yet fully-developed and then they ask, whoever they are, how can you punch a thirteen year old, a child, your child………

M1: And your response?

Father: Response?

M1: This is the middle-class, you know. You’ve got to explainyourself! You can’t just sit there dumb like a poor fucking helpless animal……[Slide]

Father: I’ll never read about myself in the newspaper…..

[Knocking on floor]

M1: No. They only let heroes in from the middle-class.

Father: What do you mean?

M1: It’s the evil, Dad, they don’t like it.

Father: Evil?

M1: It’s the more you know. You’re moving closer to it. Don’t you see, Dad? They don’t care if some scum from the slums hangs his woman’s half-mutilated body from a lamp-post. He’s an animal! He didn’t mean it! Poor bastard!

……but you, you do it or you do anything and everybody knows the sickness isn’t in the world, it’s in you. And you are the world or you make the world because you are where everybody else wants to be. You’re hope and hopelessness all at once. Hope that there’s a future, hopeless that you’re in it…………

[Looks at father perhaps circling]

You’re evidence!

Father: Evidence of what?

M1: That the world is a wound and we, all of us, the whole of fucking humanity, are just drops of blood.
Father: Like a pin-prick. [Pause] Don’t guilt-trip me, junkie.

M1: What happened to the slides? You said we were gunna have a slide night you lying bastard!

W1: [From another area of the stage] It was the drugs that made me think of it. When my brother and I started trading in drugs. The incest, that’s just a symbol of deviancy. But see how my voice is getting smaller. More distant! That’s because you don’t believe me, because incest is made of so many lies that it’s a patchwork quilt. Because you can’t say anything about incest in public without all your faces telling me I know something about it. Well, I don’t! It’s an image, just an image. I tell you the incest is not real and you won’t believe me but think about it, drug deals behind the backs of the folks. It sort of creates alliances and of course you walk carefully through the minefield and carry one another through the explosions. Then there’s all the private conversations. And finally the truth; that you’re just hiding out the back like you’ve always done, like they make you used do when your pathetic little head would just hand low and you’d cry ‘cause you’d for them both.

Mother: [From audience] Are you on drugs again? [Whispered to audience member] She swore to me never again! [Exit mother]

W1: Just the trips, Mum. I love trips. I love the journey of a trip. It was my brother who got me on the hammer. We talk a lot about pain for a long time. Then we talked about painlessness. And then you hear John Howard talk about the family being the cure… I love that band, The Cure. I love Bob Smith……. The family being the cire for drug addiction. Oh, sorry. I got it wrong. They never say anything about drug addicts, ‘cept you are one. I think they want to educate you about me. John Howard’s your fairy godmother, and I am his magic wand.
[Slide Diary entry 1. The room becomes very dream-like. For the entire play the whole room is pretty dark but for the light on the sister, perhaps very colourful and dream-like. This is a film-component actually I think-straight after the slides]
“Today. Today I walked one step two. I have to concentrate very carefully so as not to become too disordered or disorderly to take one step. step one. step lightly on the ground. Walk walk to school. Walk. Walk home. Avoid brotherly love……..”

Father: What the Hell do you mean “brotherly love”?

W1: “Today before I went to school, I had to avoid speaking to my brother in the fear that he’d propose……….”

Father: [so distraught he’s sweating]: Propose what?

M1: Do you wanna……?

Father: Do you wanna what?

M1: Do you wanna tell Dad to keep his emotions down to a dull roar? I heard them in my sleep the last I slept…[purposely cryptic and almost surreal? Is that the right word?]

Father: You mean thoughts.

M1: Okay. Thoughts. Keep your thoughts down to a dull roar.

Father: You mean you were just sleeping?

W1: What did you think?

Father: I thought it was a cruel joke.

W1: And what do you think you are?………………………….

ACT 1 SCENE 6

[Mother is sitting in a couch alone. Black eye. That version of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ begins to play. Pause after song]

Mother: I think that’s how I made him feel, like a rolling stone. Do you think so? I think he heard the words to the song in my silences and I suppose it was my fault. The film, that is. I should have known he’d make a fool of himself of that they’d make a fool of him. I should have stopped him earlier. I should have told someone, warned him. I don’t know. I need to learn to anticipate things. I’m so stupid. He was right when he spat at me and called me thicko. He was right when he called me thicko. He was right. [Looks at audience. Pause] You got that, thicko? You got that, Bully-boy?

[Touches eye] I should have known they’d make that vile film. I should have warned him. I should have checked.

You know what sickens me most is your filthy judgement [Touches eye] It’s like a stain, in your eyes isn’t it? Well, it’s not that simple, Thicko! It’s not that straightforward [approaches audience member] Bully boy! [Touches eye again] The thing is it hurts to touch it.

ACT 2 SCENE 2

[W1 in school uniform perhaps]

Insert Dendy’s bit (remember to change all names). This is all sort of imagined.

W1: You think it’s strange to see me like this. In an old skin. My father thought I’d shed it. I think that for a long time he thought I’d thrown it out and that all the mad images of you could be buried in the brotherhood bin to help the homeless.

Father: Is that such a bad thing? To help the homeless?

W1: No, it’s not![Pause]

Father: What the hell happened?

W1: Where is he?

Father: What?

W1: Is he in the closet, all curled up and terrified?

Father: No. [Terrified of implication but still maybe doesn’t really believe it to be possible] I don’t believe it’s possible that he’s inside the closet. [There is a box on the ground, perhaps, throughout the scene]

W1: Is he in the closet, all curled up and terrified? [Listens to box]

Father: No, he can’t be.

W1: But I heard him.

Father: What did he say?

W1: He said the cheese it drips and burns, and burns and drips.

Father: But he can’t have said it.

W1: What?

Father: Because he doesn’t exist. [Picks up bok-make him have said something from inside box. Brother or whoever is underneath it but father doesn’t see it. Turns away with empty box] All there is an empty box. [Begins to exit]

W1: What are you doing with it?

Father: I’m taking it to the tip.

W1: I’ll suppose you’ll want to take my dress.

Father: Then you’ll have nothing.

W1: [As she takes off dress] I know a man who dressed himself in his hiding place.

ACT 2: SCENE 3

[W1 puts box back over M1 and runs off stage. Colin sits on box.Colin should be played by john Pedler]

Colin: My name’s Colin, I think. That’s what they called me in jail, anyway. Colin they said. Col’ they called me. And eventually I just answered and the sound did echo. I mean to say there really was a lot of concrete. And you all wanna look at me and you all wanna ask why? Why did it happen? What did ya do?

What’d
I do?
I didn’t
I say
And
walk
away.

[Walks right up to audience member. Pause]

Boo! I said boo.

But inside. Inside nobody gives a fuck what ya done. Except to know where they stand. I mean if you know you’re standing face to face with another human being and they’re a mass murderer, that they’re looking into your eyes and you don’t know if they can see. You know they’ve got skin, but can it touch, can it be touched? And then you say to yourself ‘You’re just bein’ a fuckwit’ All that really matters if you know you can kill the cunt, if you know you can rip the sicko’s eyes out, no matter what he’s done. [Sorta laughs to himself as an afterthought]

[He begins to turn box over with his foot and is deep in concentration]

So you wanna know what I done. You wanna know why I done seventeen years?

But I told you I went [As he picks up box. To M1] Boo!

I went into a factory. It was a job. It was all timed. It was all checked out. It was all arranged. He musta been all deranged. The cunt who organised it, that is. He musta had rocks in his head. He musta had shit for brains. He doesn’t matter anyway. Someone got him inside. Could be dead, for all I know. It was a fucken long time ago. The sky somehow seems blacker now. Like the cloud was buildin’ for seventeen years and you get out and the clock’s still just ticken’ and you’re alone and you’re outside and you wake up in the morning and you’re supposed to have forgotten all the people inside, all the fuckers you wanna kill, all the bungled bashings, all the scamming and hiding, all the power you feel when you think to yourself,

I could walk anywhere in the jai I wanted. Past the others. Past the guards. Past the sickos, the fucken child killers and rapists. As you pass the cell of some famous bomber who killed 72 people or some child killer who chased a kid around a tree just to kill her, like it’s a game [Walks on chess board where father was earlier on white square] When we’re on the white square we see angels in the darkness. [moves on black square very slowly and deliberately] till the black sort of eclipses the eyes of the strangers in the dark Death sort of permeates from the darkness of this place and though Dickens is dead and on the outside it looks as mush like a hospital as anything else….. Well, guess what I never seen it from the outside til now…….. And do you know what it looks like to me, from the outside, now? A very fucking interesting place.

[Says to man in box. By now box should be turned over. It’s got to be strong enough for both of them to sit on]

how do I describe to you what it’s like to walk through all the images of empty faces, the faded shadow of the others? On the outside, they’re still on the outside. Hey! So am I! Only they know it so well.

[Father passes. Colin touches his face]

How the fuck does it feel to be you? How am I supposed to know the empty truth of your straight life? What are you?

Father: I am a bankteller.

Colin: Do you know how lonely I feel?[Pause] Do you know how distant you are?

[Father walking in a straight line]

Father: I have to catch two trains to work and it’s very frustrating. It gets to me.

Mother: [From the audience] That’s not my fault[More to the audience] Is it?

M1: ‘Member Nibsy?

Colin: ‘ho was ‘e?

M1: Met him in [some prison name] Shot some cunt for stealin’ his tobacco and got nabbed for it. He’s the one I seen old Frank with on the CBO

Colin: I never done a CBO. Who’s Frank?

M1: Frank’s the head. The head of that old codger we dug up. Nibsy was there.

Colin: I never done a CBO. But I done seventeen years. I spent seventeen years doin’ time and time began when I walked in and I seen that fuckin’ security guard that night……. It’s like a dream, like time began with that single event……

It’s dark. It was bloody dark then and it seems even darker now. But that night, it was fuckin’ black mate, I’m tellin’ ya. The blackness of that first black is indescribable and when I look behind me at what came after and how me kids sort of faded into distant shadows til they were just inside my fucking head, inside the fuckin’ nightmares of the fuckin’ terror of knowing that every cunt just wants your blood………

They don’t even want it. Nobody lusting me blood, that’s what I was tellin’ myself on the first black night. [Produces rifle] Get up against the wall, cunt! But he’s not movin’ fast enough so I put two huge fuckin’ holes in his chest and pinned ‘im there…..

Father: With nails. Like Christ.

Colin: No. [Pause] So anyway, I’m scared, I’m fucking panicked. I’ve never been so terrified. Do you understand?

Father: [Looking at watch] I understand that I am late for work.

Colin: So they called it attempted murder. Then I grab this woman, the woman, the other one, the other one that was there she was a woman see? So I grabbed her, I thought I was pretty gentle. But I did notice when I grabbed her, the way I held her….. they called it sexual assault….. But really I just wanted her out of the way and I brushed her breast. I just sort of brushed it like we all do all the time on the outside but because I was in court…

NARRATIVE INTERRUPTION

[Rebecca is on stage. M1 in audience disrupts the ‘theatre’ of the piece]

M1: You told me you were at work bitch!

Rebecca: I was.

M1: The bitch tells me she’s at work while the slut makes her filthy fucking living offering her breast like some deviant, desperate wet-nurse convicted of pedaphelia!

Rebecca: Yeah sure thing. You’re a fucking nut!

M1: You’re a fucking slut!

Rebecca: Stop it!

M1: Nipple-dealer! Nipple dealing bitch! I gave you the blackness of my soul!

Rebecca: Yeah, why was that?

M1: Because I was in love with a filthy fucking wet nurse slut who couldn’t keep her tits to herself! While I’m trying to dream up a way to tell you, tell you……

Rebecca: What? What the fuck are you talking about?

M1: Love! [Maybe repeated]

Rebecca: Don’t say that word!

M1: What?

Rebecca: Don’t say that word!

M1: Why?

Rebecca: Because there’s children in the other room.

M1: Oh, I’m sorry children! I’m so fucking sorry!

Rebecca: Bullshit you’re fucking sorry!

M1: I’m sorry they had to be exposed to a fucking wet nurse slut who couldn’t keep her tits to herself!

Rebecca: It’s was an armed robbery for fuck’s sake!

M1: Armed Robbery? Don’t bullshit me. That’s his story not yours…….

Rebecca: He brushed past me! Can’t you see that? What are you, mental? What are you, insane?

Colin: …… I might just as easily been walkin’ down he supermarket aisle, aisle askin’ ‘where’s the bread? ‘and you think stuff. Yeah, I thought things about that woman. I had all sorts of Freudian thoughts that seemed very biblical at the time! Under the circumstances…. They sort of make shit up….Then, I’m labelled….

Father: Labelled?

[Colin holds sign up ‘Sex Offender’]

You’re a sex offender?

Colin: No. That’s what the called me.

[Colin puts on hat sized condom. Father puts tu-tu on him]

Father: What are you?

Colin: I’m society’s idiot.

I’ve been convicted of attempted murder and spent a lot of time inside or some time anyhow. Lights out at four o’clock. Do you understand? And now that hollow crazy wind blows through the whole of autumn and it just feels cold on my face. I wake up every morning to the ticking clock and the blank wall doesn’t change one bit. There’s not a spot on it. I’m pretty clean, you see. I’m not derelict. I’m goin’ straight or I’ve been goin straight ‘til now. I been watching the dull walls waitin’ for Tuesday. Tuesday’s my appointment with me parole officer…….. I used to say ‘She’s a nice lady. Lets not be unkind. She’s just doin her job.’

Then a
couple of
nights ago
I stole a garden gnome
with a mate
with your son

And I just sort of got a sniff for it. Then when your son told me about you….. or by the time he told me about you…….

Father: But you don’t know me. You don’t hate me…….

Colin: I don’t have to. Don’t you understand, mate. I’m just homesick. I just wanna be back inside where the action never stops and everyone’s a rat and when you stop gnawing at the walls, you start chewin on each other.
But the other thing is, I was free. I could walk anywhere in the prison. Past the others. Past the guards. I could even walk outside the prison walls if I wanted. And goin’ legit? It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. I can’t count real money but I can split the stash we mighta grabbed in a raid. I can’t talk to you. I can’t be angry with you or hate you. You’re not real at all. You’re made of paint and you’ve just been marked out by a red cross. It’s not my choice though. I’m not the one to be talking to. And I won’t do no talkin’ neither. I’m not sayin nothin’ not a word. Are you noticing the quiet, the silence of my psychology? I studied Zen in prison. I’ll have my diploma if I get put back in. It’s good for my routine, see?

[Stage goes black]

Father: [Imagine he’s being pricked by a compass] Ah! Ow! What are you doing?

Colin: It’s a game we used to play in prison. Only we used to play it with knives and nails.

Father: [Weeping] Please. I didn’t mean it.

[Colin shoots him]

Colin: No. I didn’t mean it. I mean to say I didn’t care or I don’t. I really don’t. [Pause] Shit I hope it’s not the wrong guy. The wrong guy! The wrong fuckin’ guy….. The stories I could tell you about the wrong guy. Wrong guy syndrome we used to call it. There was this one time in jail, man….. Wrong Guy syndrome got me bad. This bloke was pointed out to me and I dunno if it was the other guy’s finger or my eyesight but I know the guy I got was in recovery for months and it was the wrong guy. So then I had to do the guy that pointed him out and the right guy while the wrong guy tried to get me. I think we all get tangle up on the inside, don’t you?

[Son over dead body. Puts dishwashing glove on his hand. Daughter approaches]

W1: What is it?

M1: It’s a monument. To you and me and mum.

W1: Why the glove?

M1: I just wanted to make him look stupid.

BARCODE 30!!7 307!
(Installation 2)

SCOTT STEWART WELSH

M1=experiential reality as expressed in ‘voice’ (this is referring both to technical (or physical, it becomes technical in the realm of theatre-making, and narrative ‘voice’)

Real Fiction? Isn’t that a brand of chocolate?

No ya dufus, they make plays.

Theory on Theatre-making.

I don’t believe the writer knows the truth but only that the writer has experienced the same truth the actors ought to if it’s a ‘good script’ or if possibilities exist for processes of realisation in the imaginary relationships formed around the nexus of the play. So the play almost creates a sense of déjà vu for all. Ultimately, the play belongs to the moments of realisation shared by all who come into contact with it. The audience makes the final human approach not to the text but to what the text represents, the experience of realisation, before it is swallowed by history and the binding truth of these initial moments is lost in the wind.

ACT 1 SCENE 2

SLIDE: ONE MAN WOUNDED: SKIN AND CRIMINAL ACTIVITY OR ‘TWO PRISONS IN CONVERSATION’

[It’s very bare. Daughter is gone. Enter Colin. The setting is M1’s flat. He’s sort of working or walking around as if M1 doesn’t exist or like he owns the joint]

M1: I sort of can’t get over it. The language of violence, the violence of language. I mean when they tell you the pen is more powerful than the sword, it sort of sounds like a revelation. [Shadow of Colin cast over him] Sometimes I wonder what the sword is. What the fuck is it? This sword? Religion’s got you by the short and curlies! Religion’s got you by the balls! I once eliminated the word religion from my vocabulary and ‘whack! whack! Whack! Whack!’
[Pause]
It’s the sound of gunshots. Can’t you hear them? Through the sounds of the memories riding on the wings of the air like angels of revelation in disguise. Listen! Listen! Softly now. Softly.

Colin: [Listening] Nofing.

M1: The emptiness. I know. It’s beautiful.

Colin: No. [Holds empty coffee jar] In the coffee-jar, ya cock-sucker.

M1: What?

Colin: Gi’ us a smoke, numb-nuts.

M1: What?

Colin: Gi’ us a smoke, Cunt. [Takes one] That’s your last one which means you’re gunna have to get more. Do you reckon you can lean on the bloke next-door for ten bucks?

M1: I don’t think he’ll be ho(me)…..

Colin: I don’t think he’d mind. Looks loaded to me. And he’s a fucking Christian. You’re his fucking neighbour. And you know what Christ said about one’s neighbour and it wasn’t that you should bugger them up the arse with a ten-foot pole.

M1: What are you on about?

Colin: Have you seen what’s under the bonnet of his car? Mate, if I could get my hands on some of those parts. He wants to get rid of it too or I think he would with some gentle persuasion. So if you can con some smokes out of the supermarket-man like you always do…..

M1: I’ve got an account!

Colin: [Going through cupboards for food] It’s a con! [Pause. M1 starts to drift off] Hey cuntface, you got any canned spaghetti?

M1: There should be some there.

Colin: Oh yeah. There is but there’s no bread. Come on! Up you get, you lazy piece of shit!

M1: I can’t be fucked.

Colin: That bastard next door’s not gunna get off his arse and come in here and ask to be conned outa ten bucks, is he?[Pause] Is he? [Pause] Are you gunna answer me or am I talking to a brick wall? Hello? Hello? You fucken ungrateful little cunt. I do everythin’ for ya and what do I get? At least you could answer my question.

M1: I thought it was rhetorical.

Colin: Sorry?

M1: I said the question. I thought it was rhetorical.

Colin: Could you just repeat that?

M1: A rhetorical question. I thought it was a rhetorical question.

Colin: Orh, I thought you said I was an arsehole.

M1: No, rhetorical. It’s the sound of the word.

Colin: [Shaking head, sort of bewildered] Isn’t it weird when that happens? Oh well, I think it might be time for you to go and see Mr. Do unto others. Say hi to him and ask him if he needs any cheap parts. Tell ‘im that I can do it and install em for about ten percent of what it’d be for him anywhere else. Let the old cunt know I’ll look after ‘im. That way, it’ll make him look pretty cheap if he says no to the ten lousy bucks you’re tryin’ to con out of him.

M1: But I like the next-door neighbour.

Colin: That’s not how
it looked the other day.
I thought you were gunna
rip the poor old cunt’s throat out.

M1: He’s very
authoritarian
about
parking spaces.

Colin: It doesn’t give you
the right to
abuse
the poor old cunt.

[Pause. Colin has been measuring with tape measure] There. Done. Your flat is exactly one square inch larger than a prison cell. That’s just this area. You never go in your room anyway. Speaking of which, I was wondering if I could use one square metre of your room and a power-point.

M1: What for?

Colin: I can’t tell you.

M1: What?

Colin: You’re better off
Not knowin’.
But it’s very
Low risk.

[I’m listening to that Tom Waites song. ‘What’s he building in there?’]

M1: You’re very resourceful, aren’t you?

Colin: When I was in jail, mate. We didn’t have access to more than one power point but I had fucking dope growing in the walls. Made the lamp out of two flash lights. Wonder how they got em in. Some loose bitch musta smuggled in the electrical parts by disguising them as meds or somethin’. I don’t actually remember who got ’em in or how. Speaking of which, I got those mops for you.

M1: Mops?

Colin: ‘Member I said I’d get you ten today and ten next week if you wanted them and you said you needed a clean floor and you were sure you could think of one or two others who could do with clean floors. Then I asked you how many you could get rid of and you said ten this week and ten next week.

M1: How much do I owe you?

Colin: Nothing.

M1: Nothing?

Colin: I already took your stereo.

M1: Oh, I see.

Colin: Hocked it for a hundred bucks.

M1: A hundred bucks? But it didn’t even work. I only kept it because it was a symbol of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend.

Colin: I fixed it.

M1: You fixed it?

Colin: Well, it’ll probably fuck up again but not for a month or so and by then it won’t be my problem anymore.

M1: You fixed it?

Colin: It was just a wiring problem. See, the cable that connects the main was shot?

M1: So what did you do?

Colin: I cut it.

M1: Cut it?

Colin: With wire cutters. It was pretty simple to eliminate it. Snap. Snap. And it was gone. Member that buzzing sound? That buzzing sound?

You thought it was her talking to you through the radio……..

M1: I thought I heard her in the crackling of the voices saying ‘It’s broken. I’m broken. My heart, it’s broken like yours.’

Colin: That’s crazy. You’re fucking crazy!

M1: What I’m saying is ‘The sound of the television’s making me paranoid!’

Colin: Mad!

M1: Simple!

Colin: Emotionally disturbed!

M1: Illiterate!

[Pause. A dramatic re-enactment of Colin biting a piece of M1’s ear off]

Ow! Why did you do that?

Colin: Because you listen to too much shit.

M1: I think it’s what I read. [Colin pretends to take M1’s nose off like you do with a little kid. While the ear thing is quite vicious, this is more playful. Then he gets a gold watch puts it in a basin of water and puts his face in it like he’s drowning him]

Colin: Now, what’s the time shithead? [Brings head up]

M1: [Out of breath] I don’t know.

Colin: [Puts head back in] What’s the time cuntface?

M1: No. No. I honestly can’t see anything.

Colin: Okay. Okay. You can’t see anything. [Very aggressive] But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me the time!

ACT 2 SCENE 1

[IMAGINARY SCENE BETWEEN COLIN AND M1]

M1: [Colin has been playing with two match-sticks] Like Billy the man who hums and walks and walks and hums through the street. Like Billy, says he has faith and believes, he just doesn’t know in who. And so he walks the streets in prayer and meditation sometimes shouting, ‘Who! Who? Who. And suddenly the zoo-keepers lock him away because we’ve just got to hide brutality behind bars.

Anyway
back to Billy
walking the streets.
He thought
I was an
extortionist.
I thought
He was a
Balloonist.
His breath
It was so hot
When he told me what he thought he saw.

Colin: What’d silly old bill see?

M1: He saw me walking
Up and back
He thought my extorting
Was of type A.

He analysed [something physical here] my movements very precisely. He knew my anger, my panic, my fury and frustration. The thing is he thought it was criminal activity. He thought I was up to something. His thoughts of such things lingered in the bars of his imagination.

Colin: Oh, you mean Billy! I know Bill. I did time with Bill.

M1: Extortion?

Colin: Yeah. You know, give me five thousand dollars or I’ll burn your shop down.

M1: And that’s what he thought I was doing?

Colin: You start makin’ phone-calls. You do it at regular intervals, every day. You’re usually panicked, terrified. She thinks you’re a terrorist. She imagines you so, you’ve said it before.

M1: Yeah, so?

Colin: Well, old Bill, he obviously thinks you’re a crim and he probably thinks you’re onto somethin’ real big the way you talk to her.

M1: So she thinks I’m a terrorist and he thinks I’m an extortionist. I can’t fucking move here without someone imagining something or dreaming up some story or other. Everthing tells stories. It’s all heard in some code or other. I mean I’m not a fucking extortionist! Every action, every phrase brings with it its familiar world. Blackmail, maybe. Emotional blackmail. [Lights get eerie] But there’s nothing illegal about that is there? Nothing criminal.

Colin: [Terrifying] If you say so.

M1: It seems so strange from this distance. I mean this is ridiculous. Do you know how meaningless it all becomes when your very nature is so grossly misunderstood.

Colin: Don’t bullshit! You’re a monster to her sometimes.

M1: That’s how she sees it.

Colin: Because that’s how it is!

Colin: [Produces match construction he’s made] It’s a drill. It’s made out of two match-sticks but it’s sharp. Feel it?

M1: No, I don’t want to.

Colin: Go on, just put it on the end of your finger.

M1: No.

[Colin drills his own finger]

Colin: You asked me what it does. I’m telling you [Holds up bleeding finger] Look here. [M1 not responding] No. Just look. Here. [Drills M1’s finger] ‘It penetrates human skin.’

M1: [Pulling away] Shit, I thought it was just a dead match.

Colin: But it wasn’t. Was it?

M1: Or it isn’t.

Colin: No, it’s not.

M1: That’s the sort of shit’ll wind you up in jail.

Colin: Or get you out.

M1: Get you out?

Colin: Well, it’s a drill. And a fire maker. It’s a sharp object and sharp objects stab. Could be very useful in jail.

M1: Jail? But I’m not in jail, am I?

Colin: Na, mate. You’re not in jail. You’re not in jail at all.

[If we begin to imagine a mop structure. Colin begins to sort of play with mop structure. Maybe moving one mop in a repetitive action. Maybe relating to mop, dancing with it, imagining it, maybe mopping M1’s headin a sort of symbolically brutal way with a suggestion of sort of ownership or something. A small movement piece perhaps]

M1: What? What is it?

Colin: It’s water dripping from your roof. It’s got a rhythm to it. Can you hear it?

M1: Yeah, it’s like music.

Colin: So you can hear it?

M1: Yeah.

Colin: And can you see it?

M1: See it?

Colin: You’ve got to have an eye for detail. You’ve got to notice the little things. You’ve got to use every sense you’ve got when you’re wandering blind through the dark.

And you can hear the rats clawing and gnawing in the walls and through the plaster and no matter how clean you keep your house there’s always room for an impostor. [Pregnant pause]

Oh yeah somethin’ else, evil knows evil. [Pause. Colin crouches down and moves M1’s head out of the way and lets the water drip on his face] See the dripping tap?

M1: I didn’t notice it.

Colin: I know you didn’t notice it then but I’m tellin’ you you’ve gotta notice it. [Grabs M1’s head under imaginary drip. Then aside to audience] Of course there is no real drip. [Back to M] Look. Can you see it? It’s dripping right on your nose, you silly cunt!

Here. [He goes to wipe it off his nose. He’s very uncomfortably physically invasive, Colin is. This is part of his character. There is a sense of sleezy imprisonment about his very existence. That is, he is a dark, dark presence, and his back twinges and he grimaces these words between his teeth] Could you just do us a favour mate and put your hand, I mean the ends of your fingers, right in there? [Points to sort of kidney area. M1 stands facing away very uncomfortably. So Colin’s maybe just imagining it] That’s it. Now, can you just sort of use the end of your finger to sort of manipulate the nerve? Yeah, that’s it.

Note for Neil Fletcher: The relationship between cell-mates is the relationship that is established in these short, emotional operas we want to have dispersed through the play. How does one explain the depth of loyalty or the sort of sick male love that is established in these physical boundaries that infect the skin so that the bars get taken with you? The weird thing is it all started because I didn’t keep my door locked and the only way to free myself from the evil power that lurked outside and beyond was to keep the door locked so it couldn’t be polluted with psychological terror in the form of half wit graffiti with engineering plans and prison layouts that were becoming so real that I wanted to pick them up and study them to see how you get out of this fragile and volatile softness with civilisation such a long way off. And Tom Waits begins to tremor the whole house with that crazy ‘What’s he building in there?’

ACT 2 SCENE 4

Alternative ending. Maybe we could have a different ending.

(after ‘I just wanted to make him look stupid’)

M1: What the fuck happened? Who killed my old man?

Colin: What are you talking about?

M1: My old man’s dead. Who killed him?

Colin: Sorry, mate. It was a situation. What’d you tell ’em?

M1: I told ’em it was me.

Colin: What?

M1: Well, it makes sense until I find out who it was. You know, I was bitter and screwed up about childhood shit.

Colin: Well the thing was there was this guy I owed, for the mops and……

M1: You said they were free. No, you hocked my stereo. No, her stereo. You hocked the stereo that she gave me. It was a symbol of love, of our love of her love for me. and now it turns out…..

Colin: It was useless. So I had to get the money elsewhere, didn’t I?

M1: I spose.

Colin: And you owed me? True?

M1: Yeah, but you said that didn’t matter.

Colin: It didn’t matter. To me.

M1: Well, there you are then.

Colin: But the bloke that I owed……

M1: What about him?

Colin: He wanted blood.

M1: Over mops? Over fucken mops?

Colin: It wasn’t the mops, alright? It wasn’t the fucking mops! I owed him and I always pay my bill. Now I knew couldn’t get the money off you because you’re a fucken’ hopeless case. And I wouldn’t spill your blood when the cunt asks me to rip your throat out so I had to find an amicable solution for all concerned. [Pause] I thought you’d be happy. Just look at it like this: I sorted some things our for you.

(Pause)

I didn’t tell him about the mops or nothin’. I let him think it was all about him. [Haha] You should have seen the cunt squirm. Anyway, you don’t have to worry anymore.

M1: Worry?

Voice of W1: The rabbit said ‘I’m not terrified. I’m not terrified at all. I’m just as shy as the Mona Lisa. Prophet? Maybe but it’s not God’s word I have witnessed……..The dog! The dog! But I told you…….

M1: His fierce authority made meat of me. I mean my fierce authority made meat of him. I mean

[Slides: Fierce authority. Meat made. Father/dark presence/ scary man/monster LIKE FATHER NOT FATHER/screaming back to father. FATHER! FATHER! FATHER!]

M1 BLUBBERS AS LIGHTS GO DOWN.

An Interview with Scott Welsh

“I was talking about librarians, but really I was engaging in a fucking weirdo sexual deviant fantasy. And that’s for the record,” so Scott Welsh describes the coded language of his latest play BARCODE 30!!7 307!. The play, originally entitled Bully Boy is, according to Scott, not so much a play; it’s an essay. “I suppose this play started when I was studying the holocaust, when I was haunted by deeply disturbing personal memories of various things” he said,”. I was halfway through writing about domestic violence when I met this bloke who’d done time in jail, and I got fascinated with him, and I started to engage with him.”

And from this Scott made an observation which he is now exploring in BARCODE. “One of the things that I really wanted to say with this play was that when I met this bloke who’d done time in jail, I thought to myself there doesn’t seem to be a difference between you and and someone else who I’d met who engages in emotional violence. The only difference really, is the weapons they use. I think about the daughter’s first speech as having a relationship to an observation I made when I was writing my honours thesis, which is that I think there is a similarity between child survivors of domestic violence and the way that they they talk about that, and political torture survivors.”

It is this process which Scott said is integral to Real Fiction. “Rather than starting from a level of ‘I want to write a play’, we start from a level of ‘I want to understand this notion that you are similar to a middle class man’,” he said. “Real Fiction, to me, is about decontextualising. We decontextualise… domestic violence by looking at it from an angle of criminal violence. And we decontextualise both those things by making them into theatre. Which in itself has a weird response from people as a general rule. Then we decontextualise theatre by making it Real Fiction, and that’s part of the reason why it’s essentially located at a place like the National Hotel. So it’s not theatre, I would say that Real Fiction is like a confrontation with the establishment, because theatre is such an establishment.”

Is Scott Welsh a madman who snuck the truth in under his arm? Or is he just a guy who wrote some play about another guy? Only time will tell. But Scott makes on point, that even in the darkness, is more frightening. “ I think the play has been touched by the real existence of this guy and these sort of people.”

Chris Muir.

About the Author

From the ruins of a philosophical truth to the horror of artistic obsession, Scott Welsh uncontrollably produced work for theatre, academia and the literary un-establishment around Victoria during the nineteen nineties. In 1993 after working as an actor in various forms of theatre, while still completing his undergraduate degree at Deakin University, he formed a Children’s theatre company ‘Cordigal Productions’ and wrote and produced a number of creations for public performance including an adaptation of ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ and a referential treatment of The Cat in the Hat titled ‘The Clown in the Gown’.

While completing a first class Honours degree in Philosophy that examined domestic violence and political torture, Welsh wrote a series of self-published books (four in total) under the auspice of ‘real fiction’, a kind of self-invented, conceptual publisher to which he could attribute his works.

While still maintaining an association with theatre and involving himself in many productions (perhaps most notably playing ‘Lucky’ in ‘Waiting for Godot’), Welsh conceived of a form of theatre that was more akin to a lifestyle. Relating the term ‘real fiction’ to his study, Welsh began to be haunted by and attracted to speech rhythms that offered realizations of what he perceived as being of serious social significance. He began writing about the ‘disturbed family’(‘The Innocence of Utterance’ 1999 Geelong Fringe), mental illness (‘There’s a Naked Man In My Loungeroom’ sponsored by the City of Greater then presented at Blackbox Theatre Southbank as part of the 2001 Melbourne Fringe) and domestic violence and criminal behaviour (Barcode 30!!7 307 La Mama 2002-2003).

After accepting a scholarship to study a Masters in Philosophy at Deakin University, Welsh continued to engage in theatre as social comment. In 2002, he spent three months living in a homeless men’s hostel to produce ‘Kicking the Wind: an exploration into homelessness, presented as a ‘Fast Action Project’ for The Geelong Arts Alliance. He recently participated in the ‘La Mama mentoring program working with acclaimed Melbourne director Lynne Ellis, aiding with the production of ‘Dirty Angels’, a play that recently enjoyed a successful three week season at La Mama theatre.