![Contents Its the 1950s the decade I was born and Roland Barthes pictures the - photo 1](/uploads/posts/book/196838/faber-branding-logo.png)
Contents
Its the 1950s the decade I was born and Roland Barthes pictures the Writer on Holiday with the maximum affection and contempt. The Writer is in his blue pyjamas travelling forgive me I dont have the book in front of me but travelling, I believe, along the Nile or is it the Congo river dressed in his blue pyjamas but still writing since the Writer, says Barthes, is unable not to write every moment, says Barthes, for the Writer is a moment of writing writing cant stop even on holiday, says Barthes, the Writer, dressed in his blue pyjamas, or wearing his holiday hat, will write and write, will correct proofs, will imagine new forms for fiction and invent new kinds of theatre that the theatre world is so evidently agog for. How slyly claims Barthes has the Writer with the collusion of the bourgeois press adopted this relatively new-made proletarian institution,
the holiday, and turned it to his advantage. Watch him toss his tanning lotion and ridiculous shorts into his holiday holdall just like the rest of us! See how even the author of
The Phenomenology of the Ego staggers out of the freezing Atlantic like an ordinary human being and offers to the camera the same brave human grin and emerging from the kind of trunks the French call
cock-squeezers his slightly disappointing thighs. But this claims Roland Barthes back in the 1950s is the trick of it. Since the Writer allows himself and yes its always a man allows himself to appear ordinary to like pretty girls and if Im remembering Barthes correctly certain kinds of cheese only to prove to the world how
extra-ordinary he is, given he combines his taste for cheese et cetera, girls and so on, with non-stop literary production.
Barthes invokes at least I think this is true I need to check but I think he goes on to invoke the lives of saints, whose banal human origins serve to set off their amazing deaths and miracles like jewels. The Writer concludes Barthes is in fact saying: The fact that I rent for some weeks of the summer a small cottage by the sea and can be glimpsed through the hibiscus sitting outside at the breakfast table barefoot wearing blue pyjamas and drinking perfectly ordinary coffee out of a cracked rented cup EVEN AS I GO ON WRITING is none other than proof of my divinity. And yes its true I do feel pretty divine this morning yes I do feel a bit like god a little ashamed, as I look back over them, of some of the things Ive made but often proud less interested than I used to be in girls and cheese but still looking forward to my holidays. MC, June 2015
after Sophocles
TrachiniaeCruel and Tender was commissioned by the Wiener Festwochen, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Young Vic Theatre Company. It was first presented, in a co-production with the Thtre des Bouffes du Nord and Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, at the Young Vic, London, on 5 May 2004. The cast was as follows:
Laela Georgina Ackerman
Nicola Jessica Claire
The General Joe Dixon
Cathy Lourdes Faberes
James Toby Fisher
Amelia Kerry Fox
Jonathan Michael Gould
Iolaos Aleksandar Mikic
Rachel Nicola Redmond
Richard David Sibley
A Boy Stuart Brown / Mario Vieira
Direction Luc Bondy
Set Richard Peduzzi
Costumes Rudy Sabounghi
Lighting Dominique Bruguire
Sound Paul Arditti
Wigs and make-up Ccile Kretschmar
Dramaturg Geoffrey Layton
Executive Producer Nicky Pallot
Casting Director Sam Jones
Assistant Director Lucy Jameson
Luc Bondy, fascinated by Sophocles rarely performed tragedy, encouraged Martin Crimp to produce a new piece taking the original subject in a new direction for his first English-language production. My Man
Original words by Jacques Charles and Albert Willemetz
English words by Channing Pollock
Music by Maurice Yvain
1921 Editions Salabert, France
Ascherberg Hopwood & Crew Ltd, London W6 8BS
Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd
All Rights Reserved.
I Cant Give You Anything But Love
Words by Dorothy Fields and music by Jimmy McHugh
1928, EMI Mills Music Inc/ Cotton Club Publishing, USA
Reproduced by permission of Lawrence Wright Music Co Ltd/
EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC 2H 0QY
Amelia, forties
The General, forties, her husband
James, late teens, their son
Richard, fifties, a journalist
Jonathan, thirties, a government minister
Amelias three helpersHousekeeper (Rachel)
Physiotherapist (Cathy)
Beautician (Nicola)
Two children from sub-Saharan AfricaLaela, eighteen
Edu, a boy, about six
Iolaos, a friend of the General
Note on the Text A slash like this / indicates the point of interruption
in overlapping dialogue.
The time is the present.The place is the General and Amelias
temporary home close to an international airport.Amelia holds a white pillow. Her Housekeeper tidies the room. Amelia There are women who believe
all men are rapists.
I dont believe that
because if I did believe that
howas a womancould I go on living
with the label victim?
Because I am not a victimoh no
thats not a part Im willing to playbelieve me.
She smiles. I was just fifteen
living with my father
living very very quietly with my father
when the first man came to my father
wanting me. He described to him
the various ways he wanted me
while I listened outside the door in the very short skirt
and the very high-heeled agonising shoes
I had begged and begged to be allowed to wear.
I ran up to my room. Locked the door.
Stopped eating. She smiles. Three years later and Im married
incrediblyto a soldier
to the only man
who has ever remembered the colour of my eyes
after a single conversation under a tree.
I am eighteen years old and I have a house
a husband and a bed
a bed with white pillows
and a child.
I abandon my course at university
to become the mother of a child
even if hethe father
the soldier who is by now of course the great general
only sees this child at distant intervals
like a farmer inspecting a crop
in a remote field.
Because my husband is sent out
on one operation after another
with the aimthe apparent aim
of eradicating terror: not understanding
that the more he fights terror
the more he creates terror
and even invites terrorwho has no eyelids
into his own bed.
And now those operations are over
instead of being respected for having risked his life
time and time and time again
he is accused of war crimesmurdering a civilian.
They say he dragged this boy off a bus
and cut his heart out in front of the crowd.
Which is why we were shipped out here
to the suburbs
close to the airport perimeter
and told Dont talk to the press blah blah blah
while my husband vanishes
is driven away in a black car
with black glass in the windows
and Im told nothing
nothing now for over a year.
Are you saying thats reasonable? Housekeeper Im not saying anything, Amelia: thats not my job. My job is to run the houseclean itmake sure the ironings done and that the fridge gets regularly defrosted. Because Im not hereIm sorry, Amelia, but Im not here to offer advice. Although if that
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