Scene Three: A theatre.
PERFORMER: Thank you all for coming to our last show. Like I said earlier: if any one wishes to stay and help us to break down the set, we are beginning presently and any volunteers are appreciated.
HECKLER: Savages!
DRAKE: Well that was a cosmic disappointment.
JACKSON: A Divine Tragedy?
DRAKE: I can’t believe it. Four hours of it too.
JACKSON: I kind of liked it.
DRAKE: It was so BAD.
JACKSON: Actually I REALLY liked it.
DRAKE: That Aquarian dude I met at the show was right: college is just neo-Liberal brainwashing.
JACKSON: I guess I was too uneducated to get triggered.
DRAKE: The whole Magdalene character. How long can you honestly lecture our Lord and Saviour on Reproductive Rights?
JACKSON: I found it edgy.
DRAKE: Edgy like the sawblade I want to take to the director.
JACKSON: Oh? So you are helping them to break down the set then?
DRAKE: I am torn betwixt the desire to destroy all evidence that such an event even transpired…
JACKSON: [suggestively, sing-song:] “Volunteers!”.
DRAKE: And the strong urge to simply walk away before I am forced to remember it further.
JACKSON: Hey! You need a hand with that hammer?
DRAKE: What would Tolkien say? What would Chesterton say?
JACKSON: Oh you good? Yeah it’s the OTHER end. For the nails, yeah.
DRAKE: [Wide-eyed and owlish.] What would LEWIS say?
JACKSON: Cheer up. I felt like the modernization of the Biblical story helped to convert an entire generation to Christianity.
DRAKE: It made Christ look like a misogynist!
JACKSON: Well some of his views all ways have leant a bit male.
DRAKE: And the Jews! They were so… so…
JACKSON: Jewish?
DRAKE: MARXIST. Like: every thing was so rationalized. Even the execution of a political dissident.
JACKSON: Who would have figured? [chewing gum and picking up sheet.]
DRAKE: I need to detox man. I can’t. I just can’t.
JACKSON: Hold on. Check this out.
DRAKE: What is it?
JACKSON: Some psychological test.
DRAKE: Is it to gage one’s intellect before and after witnessing that?
JACKSON: May be. It’s a story.
DRAKE: Just so long as no one is named Mary or Joseph…
JACKSON: Doesn’t look like it. Though there’s a girl in it named Lilith.
DRAKE: Are you for serious?
JACKSON: No wait. Just Lily.
DRAKE: Read it to me.
[As the stage is being disassembled, actors come in and out to act out the action as Jackson narrates from the sheet.]
JACKSON: Lily is a psychology student. She has the highest grade in her class. She needs only a passing grade in order to graduate Valedictorian in her class.
DRAKE: Sounds like Ariana.
[Ariana appears, depicting Lily. Our hero watches her.]
JACKSON: Continuon: Lily has a paper due at 1:00 pm on Tuesday.
DRAKE: God.
JACKSON: She has finished writing it by Sunday.
DRAKE: That’s my girl.
JACKSON: Her husband is… oh wow.
DRAKE: What?
JACKSON: You remember Leo from Twin Peaks?
DRAKE: The wife-beater?
JACKSON: The term is tank-top.
DRAKE: Is that her husband.
JACKSON: Let’s just say he is the envious type. Her husband resents her because he never completed college.
[Clark appears to play the part of the husband.]
DRAKE: So?
JACKSON: So he refuses to drive her to her class on Tuesday.
DRAKE: Asshole.
JACKSON: So she gets a ride with her friend Janet.
DRAKE: Are you serious?
[Janet appears.]
JACKSON: It’s Monday at this point. Janet invites Lily to join her first at a party.
DRAKE: Sounds like fun. [Our hero is dazzled by the coquettishness with which his most recent crush seduces his old flame.]
JACKSON: Lily goes to the party.
DRAKE: Indeed. [Place fills with partygoers.]
JACKSON: Janet promises Lily to take Lily to class on time.
DRAKE: Naturally. [The table from the Last Supper is populated swiftly with liquors.]
JACKSON: Janet gets hammered.
DRAKE: Damn it Janet.
JACKSON: Lily has to take the bus in the rain.
DRAKE: My baby.
JACKSON: The bus driver does not let her on… Oh wow.
DRAKE: Why not?
JACKSON: “Because she is a woman.”
DRAKE: WTF?? [phonetically.]
[All on stage look at audience.]
JACKSON: College tests these days, huh?
DRAKE: What happens next?
JACKSON: Lily frantically gets home by walking. She asks her husband for the car-keys but he still says no.
DRAKE: I swear to God.
JACKSON: Woah. Slow your roll boss.
CLARK: Yeah man stay in your lane!
DRAKE: But that’s your wife!
CLARK: It’s MY car!
DRAKE: So what? The former is a responsibility. The latter is a possession.
CLARK: Fuck this. Life is without meaning. I am going to go get hammered and fuck the first girl I see.
JACKSON: Onward: Still frantic, Lily calls the office of her professor.
[Clark meanwhile catches Janet’s eye.]
DRAKE: What does he say??
JACKSON: A secretary answers. Her name is Dawn.
DRAKE: Thank God.
JACKSON: No wait. It’s actually Jasmine.
DRAKE: You’ve got to be.
JACKSON: Jasmine tells Lily that in fact it is all right and that she can turn the paper in at TWO o’clock the following day.
DRAKE: Merciful Grace!
JACKSON: Lily, anxieties assuaged, relaxes into sleep. The following day, she steals the car keys from her husband.
DRAKE: Who is CLEARLY off fucking Janet. [addresses audience.] Can we at least all agree on that?
JACKSON: And drives carefully through the still wet roads to the college.
DRAKE: My angel.
JACKSON: She arrives at 1:15 pm, only to find that she has missed the deadline.
DRAKE: Pardon.
JACKSON: Her professor informs her that the deadline WAS in FACT 1:00 pm. He refuses to accept the essay, and… oh get this.
DRAKE: No. Let’s say it together.
BOTH: HE KNOCKS IT FOR THE FORMATTING.
JACKSON: Nice teamwork. And she fails the class and does not graduate.
DRAKE: Well that felt worse than the Crucifixion. [Stage hands crucify Lily via the cross from the Jesus show.]
JACKSON: Which one? The real one or the one we just watched half an hour ago?
DRAKE: Yes. What the fuck was the point of that awful story? To motivate a student protest to kill the bourgeois professors?
JACKSON: Actually: you get to choose.
DRAKE: Come again.
JACKSON: You rank the characters based on their degree of fault.
DRAKE: No kidding?
JACKSON: Yep. One through five. The characters: Lily, the Professor, Janet, Jasmine, and the husband.
DRAKE: So the bus driver is not even included?
JACKSON: Guess not.
DRAKE: Fuck.
JACKSON: Okay I’m kidding. I’m just superstitious about the number six.
DRAKE: Well it’s OBVIOUS isn’t it?
JACKSON: Yeah?
DRAKE: It goes first the Professor, then the husband, then the driver, then Janet, then Jasmine, and finally Lily.
JACKSON: Woah. Way to blame both the woman AND the protagonist. Nailed it there. [some one beats nails into Lily’s hands.]
DRAKE: No. I mean the other way around.
JACKSON: Blaming the teacher. All so incredibly original.
[At this moment they are approached by the Director.]
DIRECTOR: How did you guys like the show?
DRAKE: It was nice.
JACKSON: I loved it. It inspired me.
DIRECTOR: Well good.
DRAKE: It “inspired” me as well.
DIRECTOR: Whatever works. I see you found the H.R. training sheet from the Stage Management class.
DRAKE: Huh?
DIRECTOR: That thing in your hand.
DRAKE: The story?
DIRECTOR: It all ways reveals a lot about the people who take it.
DRAKE: Well. Whom did YOU blame first?
DIRECTOR: Lily.
DRAKE: You mean. Lily. The protagonist. You blamed Lily.
[At this moment the cross is hoisted, with Ariana on it, under a bright light.]
DIRECTOR: Yes. The exercise teaches students how to take responsibility.
DRAKE: Well yeah. If they DON’T blame the victim.
DIRECTOR: But was she really a VICTIM?
DRAKE: Of COURSE she was. EVERY one involved was a total DOUCHE-BAG, EXCEPT for her.
DIRECTOR: Ahh but she still could have taken a different course.
DRAKE: Well yeah. She did not have to go to the party, but obviously her BEST FRIEND really WANTED her to go. And Ariana was at the top of her class.
DIRECTOR: Who?
DRAKE: And she’d all ready DONE all the WORK. So she was simply making herself AVAILABLE to her FRIEND, and she did so on the basis of TRUST. And isn’t this a Psychology class any way, not a Stage Management class?
DIRECTOR: Oh, well. [laughs dismissively and evades gaze.]
DRAKE: Well seriously. [addresses audience.] Let’s not forget that this “test” was not written by STAGE MANAGERS. It was written by SHRINKS. And Ariana is studying –
DIRECTOR: Lily.
DRAKE: LILITH is studying to be a PSYCHOLOGIST. Honestly. Therapeutically speaking she did Every Thing Right. Sure: she ENABLED her husband, but she all so read him well enough to ultimately find out where he hid the carcass.
DIRECTOR: Car keys.
DRAKE: [returns gaze to peers.] Tomato tomAto! And her treatment of her best friend was psychologically IDEAL. She didn’t just say: sorry. Fuck you. My own FUTURE is more important than YOUR present. She was available. Am I the only one here whose life was made hell by people like that who by the Will of the Satan got into medical practice? [to audience:] Am I right or what?
JACKSON: So was it Satan or Capricorn?
DIRECTOR: Same thing.
DRAKE: And the misogyny of her HUSBAND notwithstanding, what about that bus driver? And the PROFESSOR? I mean: CLEARLY the secretary was somehow misinformed. At the very LEAST we might venture to say he hired an absent-minded one.
DIRECTOR: But you see, you have to look at gender preconceptions. There is all ways in Western society – and I will go on record as saying that the college system still struggles with this – a tendency to victimize the WOMAN and to blame the MAN.
DRAKE: Well I know that!
DIRECTOR: But I overheard you talking earlier. If you’ll beg my pardon; you were on my turf, and I was curious. And it sounded like – correct me if I’m wrong – you blamed the men first and the women last.
DRAKE: But that’s how it WAS! I’m not trying to be a White Knight by pointing out that the men were all misogynistic BASTARDS. I mean, I’m not even saying that stereotypes are BASED in reality. But all of these men are TYPICAL misogynists. Like: fifteen minutes? Are you serious? Sorry Mein Fuhrer. But that’s a MASCULINIST view of time in the first place.
JACKSON: [grinning smugly at Professor.] Capricorn. Game set match.
DIRECTOR: But you missed the entire point!
DRAKE: I GOT the point. It’s just still DUMB. The men are not “wrong” for being MEN; they are WRONG for being PIGS. They are used in this story to embody every thing that is masculinist and patriarchal, so NATURALLY I blamed them first, because as loopy/manipulative/misinformed as JASMINE was and as unreliable/misleading/inebriated as JANET was…
JACKSON: I got it! It was JANET that gave Jasmine the misinformation!
DRAKE: They are still the embodiment of a FEMININE value.
DIRECTOR: Which is just as blameworthy as a masculine value.
DRAKE: But not a PATRIARCHAL value. Just like Marion Woodman said. And she was a PSYCHOLOGIST.
DIRECTOR: Yeah, yeah.
DRAKE: But seriously! I mean. We could all die right now if the building burnt down…
JACKSON: Did I hear some one yell “fire” just now? Or was that MacBeth?
DRAKE: And according to Sartre it would be our fault for showing up to your show.
DIRECTOR: I guess so.
DRAKE: But we are your volunteers! And your customers! Our safety is YOUR responsibility, not ours! And if you wanted to teach people FIRE SAFETY, you do NOT make your first rule to use the PATRONS as a HEAT-SHIELD.
[Ariana breaks free of her restraints.]
[Director fidgets nervously, evading all eyes again.]
JACKSON: So the REAL question is…
DRAKE: There IS no question!
JACKSON: If I say MacBeth in a theatre, is that unlucky?
DRAKE: I mean, I’m not even a FEMINIST! But I can still REACT to INJUSTICE!
JACKSON: What if I were acting in an other play though?
DRAKE: And that damned PROFESSOR ought to have his license to teach – and to practice psychology in general – revoked!
DIRECTOR: Woah. You’re not a feminist?
[Entire crowd stares at Our Hero.]
JACKSON: What if THIS is a play?! [comprehension dawns as Jackson breaks the fourth wall.]
CLARK SHOUTS: Heretic! Burn him!
DIRECTOR: Well my good sirs. I regret to inform you that your assistance is no longer required.
DRAKE: But come ON! Feminism just corrupts the archetype of the Damsel in Distress and neurotically denies doing so.
[The crowd begins to form a mob. Some are still wielding power tools and hammers.]
DIRECTOR: Do understand. I am neither asking you nor telling you to leave. I am WARNING you.
JACKSON, still amazed: IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
DIRECTOR: RUN!!
[They run off stage.]
Dm.A.A.
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