The Bird Skeleton (fragments)

SYNOPSIS

An adult tells himself a story from his childhood. As if to convince himself that it's him that lived it. He divides himself between two ages - the current one (58 years old) and the past one (6 years old) - and returns to a bizarre and remarkable episode in which his parents unexpectedly found a bird skeleton in the back of a cupboard. A bird skeleton to which he has inexplicably become strongly attached and that also represented his revelation of death.

CHARACTERS

DAVID – 58 and 6 years old

THE MOTHER – young, about 30 years old, changes ages a few times

THE FATHER – the same as The Mother

 

The time of the play oscillates. The past (David’s childhood) – the beginning of the 2000s. The present – when David has been an adult for a long time and begins to grow old.

 

The oath and the flash

 

The parents’ bedroom, at night. It’s summer, the windows are wide open and the wind is waving the curtains. Warm light from the lamps on the two nightstands is filling the room. The other rooms are in the dark.

The Mother and the Father, dressed in light pyjamas, are preparing to go to sleep, each on their bed side: The Father on the side next to the window, the Mother on the other one. The Mother is putting on face and hand cream, while The Father takes a book from the bookshelf and throws it on the bed. David (6 years old) enters and goes close to the Mother, who caresses his face and hair. The Father goes to sit on the Mother’s side of the bed. David is in the middle, between his parents.

The scene is a non-verbal one, until the parents (suddenly aged) start telling David (suddenly an adult) an episode that he doesn’t remember (so he stays quiet for the duration of the scene, looking at each of them). The changes in age shouldn’t be suggested through anything other than acting and, perhaps, through changes in lighting.

THE MOTHER: You were a little troubled after

We’ve convinced you

THE FATHER: With some trying!

THE MOTHER: To give Coco up.

THE FATHER: You were kind of quiet and we didn’t know what to do.

THEE MOTHER: So you came into our bedroom one night...

I think it was summer...

THE FATHER: End of summer.

Or beginning of autumn?

THE MOTHER: One or the other. Anyway, there was one more year

Until you started school.

THE FATHER: Yes, because back then it started at seven years old.

THE MOTHER: You slowly came close to us

THE FATHER: And made us swear

THE MOTHER: That we would never die.

THE FATHER: But it wasn’t that easy,

Because you made us stand

 

Suddenly, the Mother and the Father stand up at the same time. They stand up straight near the bed, next to each other, while David watches them with curiosity, amusement and a trace of a smile.

 

THE MOTHER: Yes, you wouldn’t let us sit,

Not even when we said:

 

The parents are young again.

 

THE FATHER: Come on, David, what is this, you’re keeping us standing!

THE MOTHER (gently): We’re tired, we’ve been at work...

THE FATHER: Do you think we’re in mood for jokes?

THE MOTHER (to the Father): Don’t scold him.

THE FATHER (even angrier): What’s this, you make us stand straight like we’re in the army?

 

The Mother and the Father get old again.

 

THE MOTHER: We were standing straight

THE FATHER: It was a solemn moment...

 

A short pause. The parents become young again and look at David.

 

THE FATHER AND MOTHER (at the same time): We swear, David, that we’ll never die.

 

The Mother and the Father sit back on the bed, on each side of David, who becomes a child again. The Father is holding him, while the Mother keeps caressing his hair. The Mother kisses his cheek. Then, the Father kisses his forehead.

The Mother and the Father stand up, now even younger. They turn off the lamps, they go to the closet and change in party clothes. They pull a bottle of champagne and two glasses from the closet. They go to the window, they pull the drapes and open the bottle, which makes a popping sound. The Mother and the Father fill the glasses, clink them without saying anything and drink champagne standing against the window sill. The Father lights up a cigarette from a packet in his pocket. The Mother and the Father don’t say anything to each other. They look at each other from time to time and kiss. Total harmony between them.

During all this time, David watches them carefully.

Three flashes are synchronized to three camera clicks. The parents’ faces are illuminated by the flash of an unseen camera, and they remain still for three snapshots. At the last one, they are completely frozen, becoming a snapshot from their youth, from before David was born. The intense light of the flash continues to light the stage.

David (at 58 years old) gets up from the bed and gets closer to them, he looks at them from a small distance, then walks about the stage, studying the lifeless objects in the room. From time to time, he looks at the audience.

 

DAVID: Years later, you think

About your parents’ youth.

In that world, Coco is nothing but

A small detail which, usually,

You forget.

You’ve heard stories – many of them incomplete, because

Of forgetfulness or because of

The memory’s imperfection –

And you’ve seen photographs.

You’ve filled in the blanks

As well as you could:

Through assumptions,

Through deductions,

Through imagination...

Mother and Father as young people,

Mother and Father when they didn’t know they’ll be

Mother and Father,

That in this world there will be

A voice that will look at them differently,

That from their voices there will appear a new voice,

A new being,

For whom their youth is the time before it existed.

A time of non-being different from other

Times of non-being,

Because it’s the time of Mother and Father,

-          They, who compose him –

It’s the fragile time since before he existed.

Our parents’ youth is the fascinating

Space

Of our inexistence.

The most personal inexistence.

 

The strong light is suddenly turned off. The scene is left in darkness.

 

[...]

Oh, you’ll never know

What your parents were thinking

Before they were your parents

And before they knew the other one

Existed.

 

David goes back to the living room and sits on the floor, next to the table.

The Mother and the Father continue watching TV, fully immersed. The Mother changes the channel, until she finds one she likes. She looks at the screen as if she sees and suddenly recognizes herself in the past. She pulls her hand away from the Father’s hand and she bends her back to look more closely at the screen. The screen projects on her different shapes, sounds, shadows, moving landscapes etc. connected to what she remembers.

 

The Thirst and the Mirror

THE MOTHER: And you lived with thirst – idealism and thirst. Whole years of thirst when you didn’t allow yourself any caress, any touch, no, that’s not as it should happen; you held on. You held on for an ideal.

Your naked body, in the dark, over the sheets, no matter the season, with your eyes fixed on the ceiling, while dream after dream unrolled in you.

The first orgasm – with your hands next to your body. The first orgasm – through fantasy, not action.

Idealism. You lived with an obsession. Days and nights when fulfilment went before your eyes, continuously, without anyone suspecting.

What a small town!

 

The Mother turns toward the Father and looks at him for a few moments, then she keeps watching the screen.

 

Whole years without any kiss, without as much as a hug.

What a small town and what thirst!

What are you doing with this body, with smooth skin, with beauty that won’t last forever?

 

The Mother looks at David:

 

For what?

 

The Mother turns back to the screen.

 

For what the body and the smooth skin and the beauty?

Days and nights when you perfected dreams. Continuously, without anyone suspecting.

No one, no one. Absolutely no one for you.

You take off all your clothes and look at yourself in the mirror.

 

She looks at the audience:

 

How strange and beautiful. And how much of an absence. You start accepting yourself, liking yourself. And there’s no one, absolutely no one with whom you could share. No one except the large mirror in the hall, at lunch time.

 

She looks at the screen again.

 

What a narrow place. And your thirst in a continuous expansion, that forces its limits, that almost overflows. Your thirst at the periphery now, your thirst will cross mountains and plains, your thirst is chasing deep waters, your thirst is desperate, naive, bitter, gullible, well meaning, careful, hopeful, defensive, on the edge of bursting – not even you know any more if in an ancient anger or in tears.

The idealist inside you, who waited – for how many years?! – for the thirst to come to an end.

No, you will not drink from dirty waters and you will not accept crooked mirrors.

You with your patience and with your stubbornness and with your fixed ideas. You with your despair, with your fierceness and with... the cries for help. How did you, so fragile, survive such a big thirst?!

 

The Mother stands up. She looks at the audience. She walks through the living room and looks at it as if she were about to move away or to go away from there for a long time. A few times she looks as if she wants to take an object with her, but she changes her mind every time. Toward the end of the monologue, she gets to the bedroom and she sits on the bed.

 

THE MOTHER: You with your naked body in the dark and in the mirror that each took, one by one, the face of whoever you wanted. Even if that someone didn’t really exist.

Your thirst like a tsunami. Your thirst like a too long song. Your thirst like an empty cinema.

The dark and the mirror were the eyes you hoped would watch you. And see you.

No caress, just obsessive dreaming. Silent protest against the every day.

How bitter and how strident and how pure and how beautiful. How long you screamed soundlessly. How long you screamed of pleasure soundlessly.

Floating in the dark. You don’t have a body any more. Night after night. You start fearing it will become an addiction. You start spacing it out.

You’ve lived with a fixation. Actually, an ideal. And with the obsession of patience – that you grew to despise.

You were rewarded.

The darkness filled up, the mirror reached its purpose, the town transformed, the screams started having sound.

Now, sometimes, you almost miss that thirst.

 

The Mother lies down, turns off the lamp on her nightstand and closes her eyes. She falls asleep shortly after. 

via Fabulamundi