Crimp - The Hamburg Plays

He founds Thebes here where Thebes is now. Girl His fingers. Jocasta What? Girl His fingers. Jocasta His fingers from the perpetual cracking open of shellfish to obtain dye says Jocasta smell of sex. Pause. He brings with him from the east bright light, the blood-red dye thats made him rich his own human material and the alphabet. Jocasta He marries. Yes. Yes.

He reproduces. Each new generation can now use his alphabet to write. Each copies out the human material of the one before copies but corrupts the human material of the one before until one day is born the unfortunate sum of all these errors: Laios. Laios marries. Girl Me. Jocasta. Say it. Jocasta Laios marries me. Jocasta. Pause. We marry but we have no children. Pause. We marry but we have no children.

Humiliated by his failure to reproduce Laios visits the oracle at Delphi where he pays the entrance fee and prays for a son but Apollo says Dont do it. Your own son will murder you plus your whole family will go sliding across the palace floor on a thin film of blood. End of interview. Laios comes home here to Thebes kicking up dust and the moment hes through the door inserts his penis into my vagina. This ones for Apollo, he says. Pause. Bright light. Time past. Time past.

Laios my husband is hunched over his work-bench threading a steel rod through two holes hes drilled in our newborn babys ankles. Help me, he says Im scared but I cant kill it. Well dont just stand there staring, he says, TAKE IT AWAY. Which is why eighteen years later where two roads converge to make the letter Y Laios rushing back to Delphi this time to be reassured the mutilated child hed forced me to abandon didnt survive encounters without knowing it the child itself Oedipus eighteen years old now and runs him off the road: HEY! The young man pulls out a butchers knife with an ash-wood grip and murders him. My husband dead