Margaret Edson - Wit: A Play

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Contents

This text is based on the production of Wit that opened at the Union Square Theatre, New York City, on January 7, 1999. It was produced by MCC Theater, Long Wharf Theatre, and Daryl Roth, with Stanley Shopkorn, Robert G. Bartner, and Stanley Kaufelt; associate producer, Lorie Cowen Levy. General management by Roy Gabay. The production was directed by Derek Anson Jones. The set was designed by Myung Hee Cho; the costume design was by Ilona Somogyi; the lighting design was by Michael Chybowski; the music and sound design were by David Van Tieghem; the wigs were by Paul Huntley. The production manager was Kai Brothers. The production stage manager was Katherine Lee Boyer. The casting was by Bernard Telsey Casting.

The cast was as follows:

VIVIAN BEARING, PH.D .

Kathleen Chalfant

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D./MR. BEARING

Walter Charles

JASON POSNER, M.D .

Alec Phoenix

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N .

Paula Pizzi

E. M. ASHFORD, D.PHIL .

Helen Stenborg

LAB TECHNICIANS/STUDENTS/RESIDENTS

Brian J. Carter, Daniel Sarnelli, Alli Steinberg, Lisa Tharps

The production opened originally at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, on October 31, 1997. Doug Hughes, artistic director; Michael Ross, managing director.

It opened in New York at MCC Theater, September 17, 1998. Robert LuPone and Bernard Telsey, executive directors; William Cantler, associate director.

Wit was first performed at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, California, on January 24, 1995. It was produced by South Coast Repertory, David Emmes, producing artistic director, and Martin Benson, artistic director. The production was directed by Martin Benson. The set was designed by Cliff Faulkner; the costume design was by Kay Peebles; the lighting design was by Paulie Jenkins; the music and sound design were by Michael Roth. The production manager was Michael Mora. The stage manager was Randall K. Lum.

The cast was as follows:

VIVIAN BEARING, PH.D .

Megan Cole

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D./MR. BEARING

Richard Doyle

JASON POSNER, M.D .

Brian Drillinger

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N .

Mary Kay Wulf

E. M. ASHFORD, D.PHIL .

Patricia Fraser

LAB TECHNICIANS/STUDENTS/RESIDENTS

Christopher DuVal, Kyle Jones, Stacy L. Porter

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the cast that read the first draft of Wit in July 1991: Joyce Edson, Derek Anson Jones, Michael Edson, Leslie Spitz-Edson, and Calvin Gidney. Thanks to Mary and Steve Ales and the late Ruth Mortimer for reading the next draft. Thanks to Jerry Patch, Martin Benson, and my friends at South Coast Repertory. Thanks to Doug Hughes and my friends at Long Wharf Theatre, and Bernard Telsey and my friends at MCC. Thanks to Carolyn French and my friends at the Fifi Oscard Agency. Thanks to Linda Merrill for hearing every word.

CHARACTERS

VIVIAN BEARING, P H .D.

50; professor of seventeenth-century poetry at the university

HARVEY KELEKIAN, M.D.

50; chief of medical oncology, University Hospital

JASON POSNER, M.D.

28; clinical fellow, Medical Oncology Branch

SUSIE MONAHAN, R.N., B.S.N.

28; primary nurse, Cancer Inpatient Unit

E. M. ASHFORD, D.P HIL .

80; professor emerita of English literature

MR. BEARING

Vivians father

LAB TECHNICIANS

CLINICAL FELLOWS

STUDENTS

CODE TEAM

The play may be performed with a cast of nine: the four TECHNICIANS, FELLOWS, STUDENTS, and CODE TEAM MEMBERS should double; DR. KELEKIAN and MR. BEARING should double.

NOTES

Most of the action, but not all, takes place in a room of the University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center. The stage is empty, and furniture is rolled on and off by the technicians.

Jason and Kelekian wear lab coats, but each has a different shirt and tie every time he enters. Susie wears white jeans, white sneakers, and a different blouse each entrance.

Scenes are indicated by a line rule in the script; there is no break in the action between scenes, but there might be a change in lighting. There is no intermission.

Vivian has a central-venous-access catheter over her left breast, so the IV tubing goes there, not into her arm. The IV pole, with a Port-a-Pump attached, rolls easily on wheels. Every time the IV pole reappears, it has a different configuration of bottles.

( VIVIAN BEARING walks on the empty stage pushing her IV pole. She is fifty, tall and very thin, barefoot, and completely bald. She wears two hospital gownsone tied in the front and one tied in the backa baseball cap, and a hospital ID bracelet. The house lights are at half strength. VIVIAN looks out at the audience, sizing them up.)

VIVIAN : (In false familiarity, waving and nodding to the audience) Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. Thats just great. (In her own professorial tone) This is not my standard greeting, I assure you.

I tend toward something a little more formal, a little less inquisitive, such as, say, Hello.

But it is the standard greeting here.

There is some debate as to the correct response to this salutation. Should one reply I feel good, using feel as a copulative to link the subject, I, to its subjective complement, good; or I feel well, modifying with an adverb the subjects state of being?

I dont know. I am a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.

So I just say, Fine.

Of course it is not very often that I do feel fine.

I have been asked How are you feeling today? while I was throwing up into a plastic washbasin. I have been asked as I was emerging from a four-hour operation with a tube in every orifice, How are you feeling today?

I am waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I am dead.

Im a little sorry Ill miss that.

It is unfortunate that this remarkable line of inquiry has come to me so late in my career. I could have exploited its feigned solicitude to great advantage: as I was distributing the final examination to the graduate course in seventeenth-century textual criticismHi. How are you feeling today?

Of course I would not be wearing this costume at the time, so the questions ironic significance would not be fully apparent.

As I trust it is now.

Irony is a literary device that will necessarily be deployed to great effect.

I ardently wish this were not so. I would prefer that a play about me be cast in the mythic-heroic-pastoral mode; but the facts, most notably stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer, conspire against that. The Faerie Queene this is not.

And I was dismayed to discover that the play would contain elements of humor.

I have been, at best, an unwitting accomplice. (She pauses.) It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end.

Theyve given me less than two hours.

If I were poetically inclined, I might employ a threadbare metaphorthe sands of time slipping through the hourglass, the two-hour glass.

Now our sands are almost run;

More a little, and then dumb.

Shakespeare. I trust the name is familiar.