Theatre Muet
Reading edition
John Rodker
I Interior
Black Curtain.
In one corner the picture of a door.
A man in black tights (so that only his face is seen and the outlines of his body divined) crosses the stage.
He passes through the door.
We follow him because the curtain is raised.
Black room.
Again he crosses the stage and striking a match, lights a gas jet at his own height with great deliberation.
Man goes off unseen.
Three chairs become apparent.
They are in a line—two kitchen chairs—
once white—dirty.
One—old—beautiful—
highly polished.
In the flickering light the three chairs grow
unutterably mournful.
II Hunger
The Celestial Quire.
The lambent sea-green flames that are the celestial quire burn shrilly, striving....
They describe the circle which is Kosmos, swirling shrilly.
When they writhe it is outside three-dimensioned space.
Forever they return in their orbits.
Forever they return in their orbits.
If they writhe at all, it is outside the three-dimensioned spaces.
They do not touch each other. They do not clash with each other.
Nor is there light in Space.
III
A room. Sombre faces of 1, 2, and 4 (women) in profile.
Man (3) with back to audience.
They are seated round a gas fire.
Glow seen through legs and chair legs.
A silent duel in progress between 1 and 3 seated diagonally.
2 and 4, more or less neutral, obscure issue.
Conversation clockwise (need not be materialised).
1. “What shall it be then, Cerise?”
2. “It was a lovely party.”
3. “Pouf” (lights a cigarette).
4. Sighs (blow out smoke).
Silence.
Conversation resumed. Same things more or less. The man’s back becomes inimical, hating 1. His back muscles prepare to spring and so ripple to crouch.
1 trembles, fearful. Tries to talk to show her nonchalance, fails. Her heart beats thud, thud, thud.
2 and 4 neutral, disturb inimic waves.
The man loses his tenseness. Obscurely he collects all his forces for a final overwhelming, but they dissipate among 2 and 4 (neutral). 4 now becomes sympathetic to him and so drains more vitality. 1 stiffens, gathers that 2 is her ally.
Also 4 unconsciously.
Man rises to his feet. For a moment tries to gather vitality through firm feet and twitching fingers.
His shoulders fall, he stumbles out.
Three sighs of relief.
Conversation:
1. What shall it be?
2. Such a lot of men!
Hours later:
1 in bed. Mass of shadow on white sheets.
Cannot sleep, tosses about.
Attack of nerves.
One feels it has gone on for hours.
She seeks relief.
IV To S. E. R.
Man and Woman, face to face. Same height. Woman facing audience.
Woman mad, breathing heavily, whites of eyes showing, striking man in face, once ... twice.
His back is to audience. No muscle of it moves. (Inert—a crumbling block of salt).
Her madness drops. His passivity makes her doubt his reality—then her own.
In the uncertain pause, she is again assured of her reality.
More blows, same effects.
Tears blind her, she dashes them away.
More blows, face distorted.
Still same effects.
The ubiquitous man, appearing and reappearing (real and phantom) before her strained eyes makes them water.
She feels it a weakness—swallows. Another weakness.
Stares dully at the figure before her.
Impotence realised—weeps.
Weeps loudly and slobberingly and hopelessly like a whipped child.
Weeps more loudly yet, more hopelessly: with distorted muscles, copious tears and lengthening and coarsening of upper lip.
Such lack of control is intolerable.
Members of the audience want to strike each other.
Audience Intellectual and otherwise.
A few women weep too, in identical pitch.
It becomes a panic spreading suddenly.
The men leave quickly, swallowing hard.
One man throws a brickbat at the inert back, then another.
Others do the same.
When he sinks stoned, expiring—a yell of exultation rises from the men—long sighs of relief from the women.
“ANTICHRIST”
Outside the Theatre—weeping: fitful, intolerable—mounts from street to street and star to star in festoons of distinguished and unutterable melancholy.
V
1.
Thick twilight. A long row of houses, several storeys high.
All have area railings and steps leading up to the front door.
One light in a top window a third of the way down the block.
A drab yellow light also works through glass of street door.
A woman walks (bent) on the pavement in front of these houses hovering undecidedly, evidently fearful.
Then she draws herself together and climbs the steps leading to the lit door.
She waits shuffling from foot to foot, seeming undecided—(she has rung the bell).
The door opens a little, a wedge of light moves out and a dark figure appears for a moment breaking it. They talk for a few seconds, and both enter. The door shuts. A wedge of darkness passes across the lit panes.
The light works out tranquilly again.
2.
Stairs dimly lit, narrow, carpeted. The figure climbs, climbs, climbs—foreboding, distrust and fear at every point.
3.
A room—walls dark red; small, stuffy, unbearable.
The woman stands uneasily just inside the door—waiting.
The room is full of impending tragedy.
Influences are in the room and in the next room.
Tragedy becomes apparent in the woman’s pose.
She waits.
Nothing happens.
With dramatic suddenness, her body droops—she cringes.
(Nothing, nothing, NOTHING happens).
Curtain—very quietly, like a sigh, so that it is some seconds before audience realises that play is over.