Martin McDonagh - A Very Very Very Dark Matter

There is a circular hole near the top of the front of the box, and a thin slot at the bottom of the same side, just enough for a few sheets of paper to be slid into or out of. We do not see the back side of the box as yet, nor properly through the hole or the slot, but from the shifts of the shadows and light, we know that there is something alive and moving inside. The gravel-voiced narrator coughs to clear his throat, then speaksNarrator You could call it a puzzle, or you could call it a poem. I wouldnt call it either, really, but you could. I mean, a person could, yknow ? The fingers of a small black female hand appear in the circular hole, gently holding on to its edges for acouple of pendulum swings, then the eye of a very small black woman appears behind it. If you were a Congolese pygmy, imprisoned for sixteen years in a three-foot by three-foot mahogany box, with just some paper and a pencil for company how would you go about hanging yourself? Some sheaves of parchment, written on in a beautiful hand, are slid out through the slot and gently flutter down to the attic floor. Youve got no rope. Youve got no shoelaces.

Youve only got one foot left in fact. So how would you go about hanging yourself? Its been on your mind for a while now. As the Narrator continues, the box gently turns and the swinging slows, to reveal that its back wall is made of glass, with a hole and a slot in identical positions to the other side, and, inside the box, striking a match to throw a little light on the subject, is, as we have described, a tiny black woman, elegantly dressed, a small black muslin bag covering her missing left foot. Youre smart. Youre one of the most iconic writers of your generation, in fact, aside from your sister. But youre a pygmy, and youre a woman, and you were born in the Congo in 1869, the worst time for anybody to be born anywhere ever, let alone a black dwarf. So no one may know that you even existed, let alone astonished the fifteen generations that are left to come after you.

So what are you going to do? She sits down, and behind her we can make out that the entire interior of the box is covered in the writings and notes and formulae of a tiny hand. Your husbands dead so he cant help you, and your children are dead so they cant help you. Your sisters got her own troubles, in her own shoelaceless box in nineteenth-century fucking England. So what are you going to do? She lights a small cigar and sits there, gazing out as she quietly smokes, the match still lit. But maybe you arent going to hang yourself at all. Maybe thats being a little too defeatist. Maybe youre going to write your way out of it? (Pause.) Yeah, thats it. She looks at us a moment, then blows the match out, and the lights fade on the box, then on the attic, till only the blue in the dark skies outside the window remain. She looks at us a moment, then blows the match out, and the lights fade on the box, then on the attic, till only the blue in the dark skies outside the window remain.

Fireworks begin to pop in those same distant skies.