Brief Play #100: Promises Promises




The play is set on the stage of the Brief Candles Theatre, and, simultaneously, in the mind and, in particular, in the scratchy, threadbare realms of memory.

Bertolt Brecht:  I thought something would happen.

Elizabeth Hauptmann:  Why would you think that?

Brecht: Theatre used to make something happen

Hauptmann:  Oh I don’t think so.
\
Hooded photographer:  Hold still.

Brecht:  Why?

Photographer:  This is to be a memorial photograph.

Wolf (shouting from offstage): Of what?  I never got to devour Little Red Riding Hood!

Red Riding Hood (from offstage):  And I am still uneaten!

Salome (offstage): I shall never get this dance to come right.  I need more time.  So far, my stepfather, Herod, is only titillated, but not ravenous….

Woman at Laptop (without looking up):  I am both titillated and ravenous.

Doctor Behind Desk:  I am everyone’s doctor.  And I can see that nobody is getting any better.  So I have begun writing a novel…

Colin (to Clifford):  Do you think there’s
any point in writing a novel anymore?

Clifford (to Colin):  Not really.

Colin: I think I’ll write one.

Clifford: What about?

Colin: About us, I expect.

Conch Shell (to nobody in particular):  I still can’t hear the sea.  

Doctor (overhearing the conch shell’s thoughts):  What can you hear?

Conch Shell:  The rustle of my own calcification.

(final curtain)