*

MAN 2 and MAN 3 enter the space
They carry a round table, red paint, chairs, a typewriter, the steel pail filled with the audience's dreams, a bottle and some glasses

- our new theatre will be
- no, our original theatre will be
- our theatre of progress
- yes, that's it
- to begin again 
- for this, this is our theatre
- to be truly innovative 
- to orchestrate the collision of bodies in space 
- I have a question
- in time
- before an audience
- to make theatre from the black
- the science of creation
- the art of science
- cellular
- we shall return
- beginning from nothing
- it starts with a black square
- that square is space
- it is time
- it is motion
- it is other
- it is the fourth dimension
- there is a woman
- embryonic
- we must empty the psyche
- then surpassing life itself
- a woman's body
- realer than the real
- truer than the true 
- evoking the grandest of narratives
- we put an actress on the stage
- she speaks
- go back
- there is a script
- it is for this
- she speaks with the intonation of the whore
- breaking with the gamut of history 
- the fulcrum of human life
- pulsating with dynamism 
- of emotion
- if she is a whore
- curbed by reason
- we propose a new theatre of absolutes
- ha
- dependent on science, on technology
- there is a woman
- there is a new text for each body
- on reason and on rationalism
- stop
- the result of this social, political and historical temper
- that we diagnose as being emphatically modern
- yes
- she is an actress
- this theatre of absolutism
- not absolutism, absolutes; there is a difference
- our theatre recognises the importance of progress 
- the analytical
- well, then
- the precise representation of the real
- so this woman
- we diagnose
- the ordering of nature
- the self-made man, the conqueror
- not sure, not sure
- the trees are burning upon the pyre
- the importance of sovereignty
- yes, informed and political man holds sovereignty within his very own body
- so this woman is already scripted
- the abandonment of 
- ha
- the eradication of 
- the theological 
- the illusory 
- mythical 
- fantastical 
- once in the halls she walked and she was war 
- angel of war, angel of agony, lighting men to death
- ha! ha! ha!
- we eschew the religious
- indeed
- we go, we go, we go
- ashes to ashes
- dust to dust
- history is a cadaver
- we announce the rise of the reasoned 
- the secular 
- scientific 
- I think
- objectively
- mechanical
- good
- I think
- soon the man will move toward obsolescence
- the mask is burning on the pyre
- I think I don't know
- he already has
- if a man has had too much whiskey
- then he must vomit
- in the theatre
- don't believe
- question
- forget the wallpaper. forget the flowers. forget the patterned crockery
- what good will this do?
- how about we deplore the theatre of soma 
- I think I don't believe
- and the audience
- answer
- widen the rupture
- the actor moves to the edge of the stage after he has been punched
- in progress
- it cannot be undone
- we deplore the theatre of sleep 
- a woman in the audience gasps as she sees the man's blood, her glasses crack
- the audience must smell the vomit
- they must feel the glass underfoot
- we deplore the theatre of illusion
- I'm not sure about
- for things cannot be unbroken
- from the very beginning 
- something made from nothing
- from blackness, we will make this 
- abyss. this abyss
- this black square through which we move
- the play, the stage, the body, the word, the world
- this
- this is the seed of rebellion
- this history
- this violence
- this is the true beauty

*

MAN 4 is lowered down into the space in a harness
It begins to rain white feathers
The MEN cannot see MAN 4
MAN 1 falls asleep

- question
- what does a man like talking about most
- answer
- himself
- we should pen an elegy
- elegy for the last man
- for the first man
- for the body of man
- for the brevity of man
- for the beauty of archaic man
- for the liberty of nomadic man
- for the potency of the beastly man
- for the inconsolable gaps
- between the first man
- and the last
- every angel is terrifying
- drink doesn't help you
- we have abandoned the angel 
- banished
- quarantined
- exiled 
- a drink can help us all
- we have exiled the angel
- we don't say grace
- we court science
- and then and only then, the world 
- will be steeped with goodness
- advancement
- what use is the angel
- what use is that ethereal beauty
- that terror
- that shadow
- form
- thing
- yes, what use
- Ach, wen vermögen wir denn zu brauchen?
- we correct you
- remnants of an age that hath come to pass
- we eschew what cannot be known
- we will map the world
- we will know everything
- we will order nature
- we will construct more metropolises
- roads and drains and bridges and palaces
- o make me excited about that which is forthcoming
- rouse me from my heady slumber
- buoy me with your intoxicating air
- we propose a theatre of absolutes 
- we say fuck off to that which cannot be known
- seen. said. touched. conquered. owned
- we are pioneers
- we are makers of myth
- Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt
- brutes
- very funny 
- quite a joke
- a man must always lament that which he is about to surpass
- I am a man with brute hued dreams
- and so you mourn for the death of the angel 
- that death which heralds progress 
- the angel is my lyric 
- and I am steeped in his death
- you cannot help infusing our efforts with drama
- but still I cannot help
- the drama doesn't make me feel it 
- feel
- feel it inside
- the skin. the sin
- I shiver
- and so the curtains close
- I am a man whose head is always being rained upon
- in moments of solitude
- they will rise
- again
- we are making important breakthroughs
- we are in the throes of a new epoch

MAN 1 begins to wake

- I dreamt of an angel a beautiful angel an angel with gossamer skin a luminous face enormous wings he called out to me

the angel flew from the centre of the black born from that invisible well to which all shadows go to die black on white on black on white on white the only place for art to go said the angel

o can you forgive me for being so implacable said the angel

he told me that there was more that we don't know about
dimensions we couldn't touch see hear
a word the world a whirl a wheel the well the wall

now this curious this bizarre black blank black on white where the angel came from a well in space form against form anticipating touch without breath the absolute negation of everything

the energy that resonates in the space before the touch that is the only holiness left knowing that skin will meet skin that is the only real articulation to be made 

that is what the angel said
and we are lucky to be touched by that holiness, for it is love

- you ridiculous creature
- imbecile
- you think you have dreamt of what is best and what is highest
- I think I dreamt of the whole
- I think I dreamt of a kind of god. a kind god
- Nichts ist so stumm wie eines Gottes Mund
- I think you have been dreaming of that which is absent
- all I ever lived for was love
- love of the father, spirit, holy ghost
- wanting
- in the womb of night I have held myself and pretended my arms were her arms
- how my body turns
- the love of the lover
- the love of the mother
- she whose womb I leapt from
- from black fruit to black fruit

MAN 4 is lowered further into the space

*

- did you ever think
- did you ever think of swallowing some bottles of pills
- or knotting some rope
- lying down on your bed
- not if I shared it with her
- writing some letters
- putting your papers in order
- deciding who should have your things
- maybe you would kiss a photograph of your children
- or your wife, your lover
- you would curl up and hug your knees to your chest
- whisper something sweet to yourself
- it would be the last sound
- unless there was the quick bleat of the gun
- and nobody would know what those last cries sounded like
- you wouldn't let them hear you
- it would be a small salvation
- and then you would be the last man
- we are on the threshold of greatness
- this is important
- important, yes
- everything
- how you are possessed
- yes
- it is the tyranny of excellence
- narcissist
- except our mirror will be that life in motion
- upon the stage
- for this our names shall be inscribed in the skin of eternal history
- this is what makes us who we are
- who we are
- yes
- as the flesh succumbs to the power of the word
- this is what I call rebellion
- this is what I call deification
- yes
- but who is the god
- where is the god
- I don't know. I don't know how
- how to
- how to be

It rains newspapers

- newspapers!
- fluttering around like larks

The MEN grab at the newspapers
They read from the headlines

- a great war rages
- fifty million soldiers
- six billion guns
- fifty billion cubic metres of gas
- thirty-seven million casualties
- four years, three months, fourteen days

It rains skulls
MAN 4 is hit by the skulls
He is bloodied and bruised
He releases himself from the harness
He plummets to the floor
He withers and dies

*

MAN 1 pulls a match from his pocket
He lights it
There is a long pause

- the outside world has crumbled
- and so we must fall 
- fall accordingly
- what does this mean
- nothing
- nothing can mean anything anymore
- and so we live on
- and on and on and on and on and on
- no
- we don't just live on
- we reconfigure our way of thinking
- we can't just forget 
- we can't just ignore
- we can't just devise a new theory
- everything is being blown up
- so we react to that, I suppose
- and keep devising more circles 
- with more peripheries 
- the world has had enough of ideas

MAN 3 drops the manifesto onto the floor
He moans and vomits

- look what you have provoked
- I didn't provoke anything 
- why should we go on 
- how is anything important
- what is the fucking point
- what is the point
- what is the fucking point
- hollow, hollow heart
- emptiness
- filled with darkness
- the point is the arrow
- no longer pumping any blood
- it's a kind of dust that seeps into everything
- we share a house with no foundations
- the body without organs
- Lazarus will not rise again
- the face without a name
- the heart that is a screen
- a mere moving image
- an absence first
- a presence after the fact
- after the face
- after the fact that is the world
- after the dream that isn't a dream
- after the name that is the world

MAN 3 tears up the manifesto

- my hand bleeds. it has been nailed through
- it is for this our names shall be inscribed in the skin of eternal history
- I have a daughter. I have a son
- I have a mother, a sister
- and a brother and a wife and a father and a grandmother and two aunts and 
- a friend in Prague
- a godfather in Sicily
- a colleague in Calcutta
- a lover on the other side of the wall
- I once had a neighbour who simply disappeared one morning. he was a doctor
- you have no diadem
- I rise. a phoenix. I rise
- perhaps the doctor had had enough
- I want to lie down in the city square and I want the pigeons to peck me to death
- come on. have another drink won't you
- there is no cross
- give me a reason
- how do we know
- what
- how to live
- drums at my funeral. for then the ground will tremble
- I want to die in the streets of the city in which I was born
- we are at the mercy of the word
- the thorn in the text
- I am just an idea
- the whole in the world
- yes
- I once believed

MAN 1 puts some pieces of the manifesto into the steel pail
He puts the rest of the manifesto on the table

- rubble. bubble, bubble, toil and trouble 
- outside all you can see is rubble
- mad! I am mad! how I love thee, insanity
- and so there can be no progress
- out! out! brief candle
- I don't know how to stop this war
- I don't know how to stop this war
- I dream that I wash myself to death
- I dream that I fuck someone to death
- I dream that I shit myself to death
- war! war! war! war! war!
- war! war! war! war! war!
- I don't know how to stop this war
- I don't know how
- when is the revolution
- I don't know
- where is the revolution
- the revolution
- know! no! know! no! know! no! know!
- revolution
- I don't know how to stop this war

MAN 2 picks up the pieces of the manifesto
He goes over to Black Square and pins the fragments onto the painting
MAN 3 splatters red paint onto Black Square

- the angels are my lyric 
- death is inside my skin 
- it hurts in here
- black chasing white 
- a world chasing its own image 
- infinite, falling, into nothingness 
- I had a son
- do you hear me calling out to you at night
- falling into something else 
- a bomb and then crumbling 
- it's a feeling
- coming from the vastness of sleep
- the angels weep 
- you have a son
- the kind of feeling I've never experienced
- my heart is an engine of grief
- we once wanted reality 
- numbness
- we once called this reality 
- yes and no
- before the black on white 
- before the chase 
- before the image was the world 
- I promised we would take dancing classes together
- before the image was the word 
- was the war 
- something only you can understand
- Max, his name is
- was the number 
- before the image 
- was
- before the word 
- before the war 
- his name was
- on the outside 
- his name is
- in the real
- the true 
- only the touch can take you to paradise
- she said
- beyond the grit and the grime
- you can leave now
- I remember the warm yellow that drenched all the mornings I woke beside her 
- the yellow made us ready for the day 
- before the gaze. before the glaze
- who
- and the green vines in my garden made me small again 
- fox trot, salsa, cha cha, the tango
- o I can never leave this place
- I would wait for the baby apple to grow 
- ripe for the picking 
- and for the newspapers delivered by morning 
- nestled in dewy grass, my hands wet as I undid the twine 
- I want to find the memories from before the manifesto 
- before the war 
- before they are greys
- and winces
- I morph into a paper bride 
- a pauper bride 
- wedded only to filth 
- yes
- to black 
- I shall never leave this place
- but without anchor 
- without earth 
- a whole earth
- where is she
- there was a swallow I used to talk to
- without the monolith 
- where is she
- I no longer understand 
- there is no continuum anymore 
- dark and possessed
- terror is against terror 
- like black on black 
- I cannot touch
- there is no reason 
- who, if I cried out 
- every thing is a maze
- a maze unto itself
- a road
- a path
- a lane
- a canal
- a path that connects to that which is not there
- who would hear me among the angels' hierarchies
- no one, no angel 
- nothing more
- no love, no light
- nothing further
- no sun, just black on white 
- I have no further comment
- on black on white on white 
- I cannot offend 
- just black
- going into white 
- married to death 
- married to nothing 
- married to sleep 
- if I could just sleep 
- in a glass box 
- if I could just sleep somewhere, frozen 
- or dead to time 
- I remember her brown hair and that peculiar smell 
- my hand on her back as we waltzed 
- her back so slight, her waist filling the palm of my hand 
- I thought she might fall to pieces 
- my wife. I'm talking about my wife
- and the smell of softness 
- and her hair
- freshly cleaned clothes
- or the lingering knowing of soap on skin 
- her smell
- soon I will have to pay for the memory 
- of skin on skin
- and I will have to fish it out from the pail in the well of black 
- heart against heart in the heat of nakedness
- and the memory might be a word I've never seen 
- the black on black on black
- o to know that smell once more
- the purity of touch 
- to be clean again
- o to be steeped in holiness again

The MEN eat the audience's dreams from the pail
They set alight the audience's dreams

- on skin, on skin, on skin
- tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
- o to be steeped in holiness again

It begins to rain feathers

- can you see that
- what
- the whiteness
- it's called sleet
- it's
- it's a kind of wetness
- it doesn't look like snow or rain
- it's like snow that has been soiled
- dirty snow
- o to be steeped in holiness once more

The MEN discover the body of the white angel
 

Notes

Once in the halls she walked and she was war
from Agamemnon, The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
(trans. Robert Fagles).

angel of war, angel of agony, lighting men to death
from Agamemnon, The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
(trans. Robert Fagles). 

Ach, wen vermögen wir denn zu brauchen? 
[Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?]
from the poem The First Elegy, Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. Stephen Mitchell).

Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt.
[Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world ]
from the poem The First Elegy, Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. Stephen Mitchell).

Nichts ist so stumm wie eines Gottes Mund
[Nothing is so mute as a god's mouth - German]
from the poem Straining so hard against the strength of night, by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Stephen Mitchell).

The Oresteia, Penguin, London, 1976.
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Picador Classics, London, 1987.