Foreman - Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays

Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays is copyright 2007 by Richard Foreman

Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty!, Maria del Bosco (A Sound Opera: Sex and Racing Cars), Bad Behavior, Panic! (How to Be Happy!) and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe! are copyright 2007 by Richard Foreman

Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156.

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Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the authors representative: Gregor Hall, Bookport International, 2104 Albemarle Terrace, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11226.

All photographs are by Paula Court, except those taken for Bad Behavior, which are by Steven Gunther.

This publication is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 1045 Westgate Dr., St. Paul, MN 55114.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Foreman, Richard.

Bad boy Nietzsche and other plays / Richard Foreman.1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-1-55936-824-7

I. Title.

PS3556.O7225B34 2007

812.54dc22

2007015452

Cover and book design and composition by Lisa Govan

Cover photo by Paula Court

First Edition, October 2007

Contents

A s I do with all my published texts, I urge anyone who stages one of these plays in the future to ignore the elaborate stage directions printed in this book, which provide a historical record of my own productions of each play.

I suggest that each director re-conceive these texts and create a staging that elaborates on his or her own private vision of whatever world these texts seem to suggest.

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Bad Boy Nietzsche! Produced by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at the Ontological at St. Marks Theater, New York City. JanuaryApril 2000. Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman.

AUTHORS NOTE

The perspective offered by this playabout a philosopher who preached perspectivismis from within the seeds of his own madness, which we choose to hypothesize as having been present not only in later years, when he flew to embrace a horse being beaten on the streets of Turino, but also in healthier years (and may we all productively touch such hidden madness!), fueling the fire of his epoch-shattering philosophy and, in effect, turning everything provocatively upside down (as if he were walking upside down on the other side of the worldin Chinaas this play fantasizes!).

Nietzsche himself was a kind and gentle man, celibate most of his life, who turned against his friend Richard Wagners anti-Semitism and, during crucial years, worshipped a wise and powerful woman who esteemed him above all others, while refusing to add him to her long list of lovers. The following lines, included in the play, are taken from Nietzsches poems and lettersdoodles on the margins of his philosophywhich nevertheless reveal secret fears and obsessions:

My dear friend. After you discover me, you find me. The difficulty is now to lose me.

The divine art is flyingto great heights, from which one throws what is oppressive into the ocean, into the depths of the ocean.

I write on table, write on wall / with foolish heart a foolish scrawl. / You saythe hands of fools deface the table and the wall / erase it all! / I try to help the best I can / I wield a sponge, as you recall / but when the cleaning up is done / lets see this super sage emit / upon the walls, sagacious shit!

The one thing necessary / is to keep pen in motion, over the paper. / The pen scribbles? / I say to hell with that. / And I say no / to belief systems of all kinds. / Am I condemned to scrawl? / Boldly I dip it into the well / and with thick strokes / my writing flows / so full and broad / So what if its illegible / Who reads the stuff I write?

Oh why is she so clever now, and so refined? / On her account a mans now out of his mind. / His head was good before he took this whirl. / He lost his head to the aforesaid girl!

I do not love my neighbor near / but wish he / were high up and far away. / How else could he become my guiding star?

Lest your happiness oppress us / cloak yourself in devilish tresses / Devilish wit and devilish dresses, / all in vain! Her eyes express / her angelic saintliness.

Was I ill? Have I got well? But those are well who have forgotten!

The stage is a large dark room, with faded painted targets covering the walls like wallpaper. In addition, skulls and pillows are tacked up on the walls as decorative motifs. All over the painted walls runs scrawled, illegible writing, in chalkas if a deteriorating Nietzsche had allowed his scribbling to escape from his notebooks and cover the walls as his feverishly productive mind overpowered his self-control.

Half of the rear wall of the room is missing, replaced by a series of vertical planes lined up one behind the other, each succeeding plane getting higher as they recede into the distance, all painted a reflective black, as if they were the planes of a stylized black ocean. Above the ocean is a decorated arch, beneath which a red sun, framed by dark wings and festooned with skulls, rises over the oceans horizon. In the shadows stage right sits a large cabinet with a protruding cannon. Pillowed benches line the walls of the room. Angling down from above the audience are two twelve-foot-long metal probes. Their rods, padded at one end like a swab, arrive at the front edge of the stage, tilting downward, with the padded end at chest height.

The floor is coral pink, in shocking contrast to the dark walls, and at intervals on the walls and floor, large block letters spell out fragments of words.

The name Friedrich Nietzsche, in three-dimensional script, floats over the stage, as do many lamps.