Three people, dressed differently but all rather business-like, enter one by one to rather uplifting music that consists of voice “ahs.” (from William Finn’s Elegies). They are fighting as if being held back by the sea. Once they have come on one-by-one and are all in the same position as the lone man standing in our “Surrational Image” (the artwork we have chosen to use in for this project), this voice “ah”-ing stops and is replaced by the atmospheric noise of waves. The first woman (Dana Clark) turns to the middle man (Ryan Vega) and begins speaking about her troubles in getting to where she is now. She believes that even though she has progressed, she has not been listened to or heeded. She speaks in verse from T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves.
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back.
When the wind blows the water white and black
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us and we drown.”
The man rebuffs her by speaking in verse from the same poem, essentially saying that there is always time to correct the silliness of the past:
“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
(They will say, “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
(They will say, “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
Being rebuffed, she pulls away from the group as if being swept away by a wave. Now the third man (Fred Uebele) comes to action talking to the middle man in poem from Fred Uebele's I Met A Man. He speaks of how he met someone who showed him how clean and void of meaning his life had been.
“I met a man today,
A man I had not met in years.
He looked me up,
I looked him down
All things were in arrears.
I stared at him
This hypocrite
That I had thought I knew
But he had changed
And so had I,
But I was something new
I would conquer,
I would win.
But I would be well-known.
Not some gutter chump
A well-worn bump
With nothing left to own.
And as I thought ,
Pontificated,
The old man that was me,
Laughed at myself,
For being clean
Had left no trace to see.
For the sea I used
Had swept away
All manner of progress.”
The middle man responds with verse from the same poem saying that the third man did not meet anyone, but met himself.
“This life I lived was not for you.
You never would have cared;
‘Bout matters deep, matters wide,
And matters anywhere.
I may be tired,
I may be used,
But I am still alive.
And will make good
For if I should
Then I shall cross the line
I met a man today;
A man I had not met in years.
I walked away,
I shook my head
You could not stand the mirror.”
The third man is sufficiently rebuffed and becomes a wave like the first woman they go off. They come back on, bringing a set of stairs and go off together as the first man says:
“And on romantic evenings of self, we go salsa dancing with our confusions.”
The wave noises end as the middle man now faces the escalator (represented by ascending stairs) and speaks in W.H. Auden’s The Unknown Citizen in a celebration of the everyman.
“He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
He had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”
This being said, he ascends the escalator and when at the top looks up and says:
I see it!
End Scene
