View Editor's Note: |
| Adrienne is truly one of our greatest playwrights ("our" as in women, theater, philosophy, writing). Here came this play in 1964 with heart-stopping filmic imagery with so much to say about emerging consciousness, the archetypal power of film, sometimes about being black, mostly about being a woman, aspirations, surroundings, a play demanding attention then, and now. |
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A MOVIE STAR HAS TO STAR IN BLACK AND WHITE (Scene II)
SCENE II
Hospital room and Viva Zapata. The hospital bed is now totally visible. In it lies Wally in a white gown. The light of the room is twilight on a summer evening. Clara's brother is handsome and in his late twenties. Beyond the bed is a steel hospital apparatus. Clara stands by her brother's bedside. There is no real separation from the hospital room and Viva Zapata and the ship lights as there should have been none in Now Voyager. Simultaneously brighter lights come up stage center. Wedding night scene in Viva Zapata. Yet it is still the stateroom within the ship. Movie music. MARLON BRANDO and JEAN PETERS are sitting on the bed. They are both dressed as in Viva Zapata.
JEAN PETERS. (To Brando.) July 11.
I saw my father today. He's come from Georgia to see my brother. He lives in Savannah with his second wife. He seemed smaller and hunched over. When I was young he seemed energetic, speaking before civic groups and rallying people to give money to the Negro Settlement.
In the last years he seems introspective, petty and angry. Today he was wearing a white nylon sports shirt that looked slightly too big
- his dark arms thin. He had on a little straw sport hat cocked slightly to the side.
We stood together in my brother's room. My father touched my brother's bare
foot with his hand. My brother is in a coma. (Silent.)
Eddie and I were married downstairs in this house. My brother was best man. We went to Colorado , but soon after Eddie was sent to Korea. My mother has always said that she felt if she and my father hadn't been fighting so much maybe I wouldn't have lost the baby. After I lost the baby I stopped writing to Eddie and decided I wanted to get a divorce when he came back form Korea. He hadn't been at Columbia long before I got pregnant again with Eddie Jr.
(MARLON BRANDO listens. They kiss tenderly. She stands up. She is bleeding. She falls back on her bed. BRANDO pulls a sheet out from under her. The sheets are black. Movie music.)
JEAN PETERS. The doctor says I have to stay in bed when I'm not at the hospital.
(From now until the end MARLON BRANDO continuously helps JEAN PETERS change sheets. He puts the black sheets on the floor around them.)
CLARA. (To her brother, at the same time.) Wally, you just have to get well. I know you will, even though you do not move or speak.
(Sits down by his bedside watching him. Her MOTHER enters. She is wearing a rose colored summer dress and small hat. The mother is in her fifties now. She sits down by her son's bedside and holds his hand. Silence in the room. The light of the room is constant twilight. They are in the constant dim twilight while BRANDO and PETERS star in a dazzling wedding night light. Mexican peasant music wedding music, Zapata remains throughout compassionate, heroic, tender. While CLARA and her MOTHER talk BRANDO and PETERS sit on the bed, then enact the Zapata teach-me-to-read scene in which BRANDO asks PETERS to get him a book and teach him to read.)
MOTHER. What did I do? What did I do?
CLARA. What do you mean?
MOTHER. I don't know what I did to make my children so unhappy.
(JEAN PETERS gets book for BRANDO.)
CLARA. I'm not unhappy mother.
MOTHER. Yes you are.
CLARA. I'm not unhappy. I'm very happy. I just want to be a writer. Please don't think I'm unhappy.
MOTHER. Your family's not together and you don't seem happy. (They sit and read.)
CLARA. I'm a very happy mother. Very. I've just won an award and I'm going to have a play produced. I'm very happy.
(Silence. The mother straightens the sheet on her son's bed.)
MOTHER. When you grow up in boarding school like I did, the thing you dream of most is to see your children together with their families.
CLARA. Mother you mustn't think I'm unhappy because I am, really I am, very happy.
MOTHER. I just pray you'll soon get yourself together and make some decisions about your life. I pray for you every night. Shouldn't you go back to Eddie especially since you're pregnant?
(There are shadows of the ship's lights as if Now Voyager is still in motion.)
CLARA. Mother, Eddie doesn't understand me.
(Silence. Twilight dimmer, MOTHER holds Wally's hand. Movie light bright on JEAN PETERS and MARLON BRANDO.)
JEAN PETERS. My brother Wally's still alive.
CLARA. (To her diary.) Wally was in an accident. A telegram from my mother. Your brother was in an automobile accident
- has been unconscious since last night in St. Luke's hospital. Love, Mother.
JEAN PETERS. Depressed.
CLARA. Came to Cleveland. Eddie came to La Guardia to bring me money for my plane ticket and to say he was sorry about Wally who was best man at our wedding. Eddie looks at me with such sadness. It fills me with hatred for him and myself.
(BRANDO is at the window looking down on the peasants. Mexican wedding music.)
JEAN PETERS. Very depressed, and afraid at night since Eddie and I separated. I try to write a page a day on another play. It's going to be called a Lesson In Dead Language. The main image is a girl in a white organdy dress covered with menstrual blood.
(CLARA is writing in her diary. Her MOTHER sits holding Wally's hand, BRANDO stares out the window, JEAN PETERS sits on the bed. Now Voyager ship, shadows and light.)
CLARA. It is twilight outside and very warm. The window faces a lawn, very green, with a fountain beyond. Wally does not speak or move. He is in a coma. (Twilight dims.)
It bothers me that Eddie had to give me money for the ticket to come home. I don't have any money of my own: the option from my play is gone and I don't know how I will be able to work and take care of Eddie Jr. Maybe Eddie and I should go back together.
( FATHER enters the room, stands at the foot of his son's bed. He is in his fifties now and wears a white nylon sports shirt a little too big, his dark arms thin, baggy pants and a little straw sports hat cocked to the side. He has been drinking. The moment he enters the room the MOTHER takes out a cigarette and starts to nervously smoke. They do not look at each other. He speaks to CLARA, then glances in the direction of the MOTHER. He then touches his son's bare feet. Wally is lying on his back, his hands to his sides. CLARA gets up and goes to the window. BRANDO comes back and sits on the bed next to JEAN PETERS. They all remain for a long while silent. Suddenly the MOTHER goes and throws herself into her daughter's arms and cries.)
MOTHER. The doctor said he doesn't see how Wally has much of a chance of surviving: his brain is damaged.
(She clings to her daughter and cries. Simultaneously.)
JEAN PETERS. (To BRANDO.) I'm writing on my play. It's about a girl who turns into an Owl. Ow. (Recites from her writings.) He came to me in the outhouse, in the fig tree. He told me, You are an owl, I am your beginning. I call God and the Owl answers. It haunts my tower, calling.
(Silence. FATHER slightly drunk goes toward his former wife and his daughter. The
MOTHER runs out of the room into the lobby.)
MOTHER. I did everything to make you happy and still you left me for another woman.
(CLARA stares out of the window. FATHER follows the MOTHER into the lobby and stares at her. JEAN PETERS stands up. She is bleeding. She falls back on the bed. MARLON BRANDO pulls a sheet out from under her. The sheets are black. Movie music.)
JEAN PETERS. The doctor says I have to stay in bed when I'm not at the hospital.
(From now until the end MARLON BRANDO continuously helps JEAN PETERS change sheets. He puts the black sheets on the floor around them.)
JEAN PETERS. This reminds me of when Eddie was in Korea and I had the miscarriage. For days there was blood on the sheets. Eddie's letters from Korea were about cannot call you and I cannot come.
For a soldier to come home there has to be a death in the family.
MOTHER. (In the hallway she breaks down further.) I have never wanted to go back to the south to live. I hate it. I suffered nothing but humiliation and why should I have gone back there?
FATHER. You ought to have gone back with me. It's what I wanted to do.
MOTHER. I never wanted to go back.
FATHER. You yellow bastard. You're a yellow bastard. That's why you didn't want to go back.
MOTHER. You black nigger.
JEAN PETERS. (Reciting her play.) I call God and the Owl answers, it haunts my tower, calling, its feathers are blowing against the cell wall, it comes feathered, great hollow-eyes, with yellow skin and yellow eyes, the flying bastard. From my tower I keep calling and the only answer is the Owl.
July 8 I got a telegram from my mother. It said your brother has been in an accident and has been unconscious since last night in St. Luke's hospital. Love, Mother. I came home.
My brother is in a white gown on white sheets.
(The MOTHER and the FATHER walk away from one another. A sudden bright light on the Hospital Lobby and on Wally's room. CLARA has come to the doorway and watches her parents.)
MOTHER. (To both her former husband and her daughter.) I was asleep and the police called and told me Wally didn't feel well and would I please come down to the police station and pick him up. When I arrived at the police station they told me they had just taken him to the hospital because he felt worse and they would drive to the hospital. When I arrived here the doctor told me the truth: Wally's car had crashed into another car at an intersection and Wally had been thrown from the car, his body hitting a mail box and he was close to death.
(Darkness.)
Go Back to Scene I
Proceed to Scene III