by David Ives
RUTH: How can you live in the world believing in nothing? How can you get up from day to day?
JACK: I can live in the world because of people like you.
RUTH: Oh, that’s very beautiful.
JACK (over her words, slightly): Because of people like you.
(Phone rings.)
RUTH: I won’t live with you.
JACK: Do you need a contract?
RUTH: And there’s one other thing.
JACK: Yes?
RUTH: If we ever got married our kids would have to be brought up Jewish. I’d never agree to marry you without that.
JACK: Which means—?
RUTH: Brought up Jewish.
JACK: They’d be Jewish anyway. Isn’t that Jewish law or something? That it’s passed through the mother? So what’s the—?
RUTH: That’s not what I mean.
JACK: You mean—?
RUTH: If I ever had kids I’d want them brought up the way I was. I wouldn’t feel right if my kids didn’t go to temple and Hebrew school and do tashlich and everything else I did.
JACK: Hebrew school?
RUTH: That’s right.
JACK: You’re kidding.
RUTH: Nope.
JACK: What for?
RUTH: To learn Hebrew.
JACK: Yeah I know but—what for? Are there any great detective novels written in Hebrew? Besides the Bible, I mean?
RUTH: I went to Hebrew school when I was a kid.
JACK: I toasted cats over bonfires when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I’d want my kids to do the same.
RUTH: Your grandmother was German and you—
JACK (underneath): Great-grandmother.
RUTH: —and you speak German. I’m Jewish and I’d want my kids to learn Hebrew.
JACK: Do you really think that I could buy that?
RUTH: You have to buy it.
JACK: Well what are you going to do? Are you going to tell your kids that there’s a god? A Jewish god?
RUTH: I don’t know what I’d tell them.
JACK: An Isaac Bashevis Singer in the sky?
RUTH: I don’t know what I’d tell them.
JACK: You’ll have to tell them something. And don’t you think you’d better think about it before you have them?
RUTH: What would you tell your kids?
JACK: I’d tell them I don’t know. I’d tell them to think about it.
RUTH: Well I couldn’t do that.
JACK: So what the fuck do you do?
RUTH: You bring them up in a tradition and let them figure it out for themselves.
JACK: Oh. A tradition.
RUTH: That’s right.
JACK: Sure. So they can produce more kids like you, who just pass the shit on without thinking about it. You’re a smart woman, Ruth! You’re a twentieth-century adult!
RUTH: Kids can’t just grow up in a void, like you did.
JACK: I did not grow up in a void.
RUTH: Kids can’t just grow up with nothing.
JACK: But you don’t believe any of that stuff!
RUTH: How do you know what I believe?
JACK: Do you believe it? Jewish law? Pork is dirty? Everything?
RUTH: This doesn’t have to do with believing.
JACK: DO you believe it. (She says nothing.) If you don’t believe it, then why bring your kids up that way? And if you do believe it, why aren’t you off living in Israel?
RUTH: Maybe I’m not a very good Jew. Maybe I’m a lousy Jew. Maybe I don’t keep up with things as well as I—
JACK (overlapping her last words): So what are you going to pass on but lousy Jewishness? And you’re not a Jew anyway. You’re you, remember? You’re Ruth.
RUTH: I’m afraid I am a Jew.
JACK: But that’s just blood!
RUTH: I’m afraid I am a Jew.
JACK: That’s just chromosomes! That’s not what’s important!
RUTH: What is important?
JACK: What you are.
RUTH: What I am is a Jew, and that’s important.
JACK (overlapping her words): What you are is important.
RUTH (overlapping him): Deciding what you want out of life is important. And kids are important. And living in a tradition is important. Otherwise—
JACK: You’re just hanging on to a tradition for the sake of hanging on to it!
RUTH: What’s it to you if I hang on to the way I was brought up?
JACK: Just for the sake of hanging on to it?
RUTH: Yes. Maybe.
JACK: In your head you’re still a twelve-year-old girl going to Hebrew school and believing what your parents tell you. You’re thirty-five years old and you won’t think for yourself!
RUTH: Well I can’t turn my back on five thousand years of human society the way you can. And I can’t treat my parents like people I met on a bus, the way you can. And I can’t live two thousand years in the future, in some Utopia. And don’t say “what century is this anyway,” because I don’t care. And don’t go into the “religion-is-all-superstition-and-slavery” speech, because I’ve heard that fucking speech a hundred thousand times. And it doesn’t matter what you think the world is supposed to be like, because it’s not like that. It’s not Utopia and it probably never will be. It’s like this, and we have to live with it.
JACK: And you don’t even know what you believe in.
RUTH: What is it about religion that turns you into such a fucking moron?
JACK: What is it about marriage and kids that turns you into such a fucking moron?
RUTH: Have you ever thought that maybe it isn’t even religion in general that does this to you? Have you ever thought that maybe you’re just a bigot?
JACK: Oh. A bigot.
RUTH: That’s the word.
JACK: An anti-Semite. Is that what you’re calling me?
RUTH: Just like your lovely parents. In their great tradition.
JACK: Yes. Bigots because of their politeness.
RUTH: Has it ever struck you that—
JACK: Sure, I’m such a bigot that I’ve been going out with you for six months.
RUTH: When you start in on that fucking accent, and telling those fucking jokes—
JACK (overlapping her last words): I have heard that same accent how many times out of your own mouthy lady!
RUTH: But I can say those things. You can’t!
JACK: Yeah? Why can you insult the Germans and the French and anybody else, but your own tribe is sacred?
RUTH (underneath his next phrase): Nobody ever tried to exterminate the Germans and the French.
JACK: What makes it sacrilege in my mouth? And what makes you so sensitive on this subject all of a sudden?
RUTH: The way that you insult Esther and her husband?
JACK: Yes. People who deserve to be insulted, for their small-minded greed.
RUTH: Their “greed”?
JACK: Yes, their greed.
RUTH: Maybe what you don’t like about Esther is that she’s Jewish.
JACK: What I don’t like about Esther is that she is a boring cunt. And that she would love to pry us apart.
RUTH: Maybe you’re just a bigot.
JACK: All right. We’re getting down to definitions now. I’m an anti-Semitic parasite. And you, what are you. Let’s see. How about something indistinguishable from your good friend Esther. You want a house, you want a husband, you want kids, you want your blue shoes—
RUTH (underneath his next words): Will you shut up about those fucking shoes?
JACK: You want, you want, you want. Why not just change your name to Trendstein and find yourself a sheikh?
RUTH: I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable—
JACK (underneath her next words): Marry into a toilet-paper fortune.
RUTH: —to ask for certain things out of a marriage.
JACK: Since you’re just a fucking Jap.
(Pause.)
RUTH: Okay. I want certain things from this world. And from a marriage. If that m
akes me a Jap, then fine. I’m a Jap. Does that satisfy you? I want a husband and I want a house and I want some kids who can enjoy what I enjoyed when I was a kid, which had much to do with being Jewish. Is that being a Jap? Go ahead and call me one. I don’t think that it’s a crime to want a husband and a house and kids. And I don’t think it’s a crime not to want to be poor in this world. Life is too short for being poor. And if you won’t provide those things for me then I have to find someone who will.
JACK: “Provide” for you …
RUTH: How long are you planning to live the life that you do? Without this and without that. When are you planning to grow up a little?
JACK: I have been living the life that I want to. On principles that I believe in.
RUTH: Well it’s not the life that I want.
(Pause.)
JACK: So I guess we both have our answer.
(Pause.)
RUTH: You’re always saying that what’s important is likeness.
JACK: That is what’s important.
RUTH: And being alike.
JACK: We are alike.
RUTH: Maybe we’re not as alike as we thought.
JACK: But we’re the same person, Ruth! We are the same person!
RUTH: All you ever talk about is how awful it is to wake up alongside the same body all the time. Well that applies to us too, you know. So we’d be doomed anyway. Married or not.
JACK: “Doomed”?
RUTH: Any way you cut it, we’d be waking up alongside each other every day. And you’d hate that with me just like with anybody else. And I’d wake up one morning and you wouldn’t be there.
JACK: “Doomed anyway” … ?
RUTH: Sure we have fun together. Sure we laugh a lot and have a good time. Sure we fuck well together. Other people fuck well together, too, so what’s so special about us?
JACK: How long have you been planning to dump me, Ruth?
RUTH: I don’t believe that you would say that—
JACK (cutting in on her): No. How long have you been planning to get rid of me? Since before Esther’s cousin’s anniversary thing, or after?
RUTH: You’re such an asshole.
JACK: And I thought I was so fucking smart! You didn’t really mean it when you asked me to marry you!
RUTH: I meant it.
JACK: That was just a show. I see. Well you did it very well. It was very convincing.
RUTH (under his next words): I meant it!
JACK: “Will you marry me, Jack, because if you won’t then we can’t be together anymore.” Knowing all along what the answer was likely to be. You only asked me to marry you so that I could turn you down and you could drive me out!
RUTH: All right then, leave!
JACK: Fuck you!
RUTH: Leave!
JACK: Fucking Jap!
RUTH: Then leave!
(Pause.)
JACK: Okay well I guess this really is it, huh. Any way I cut it I can’t win here. Any way I cut it I’m doomed.
RUTH: Jack, if we have to end, then let’s do it…
JACK: HOW. HOW are we supposed to do it.
RUTH: I don’t know. How do two people like us come to a stop?
JACK: I’ll tell you how we do it. If this is over then that means it’s over, pal. Over. You know? Over? That means that after I walk out that door—as I will very shortly—then I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear from you, I don’t want you to write me, or call me—I don’t even want you to think about me. I don’t even want you to remember me. You are history, pal. You are erased. You died today.
RUTH: Don’t say that—
JACK: If this is over, then this is gone.
RUTH: You can’t really mean that.
JACK: You are tearing the heart right out of me! And then you say that I don’t mean it? Oh Jesus! Jesus…!
(Long silence.)
RUTH: So what do we do, Jack?
(The phone rings.)
What do we do?
(The phone rings again.)
JACK: No polyester.
RUTH: No parents.
(The phone rings again.)
How do two people like us come to a stop?
JACK: I don’t know.
RUTH: Two tall, thin, funny people who are crazy about each other?
JACK: No idea.
RUTH: So what do we do, Jack?
JACK: I don’t know. Maybe we could have some kind of a timetable. You know—cut down on each other the way people quit smoking.
RUTH: Instead of Smoke-Enders—
JACK: Joke-Enders.
RUTH: First one phone call a day, then a phone call every other day, then every third day—see each other a little bit less, till we’re just a crack of light under the door.
JACK: And then we vanish.
RUTH: Exactly.
JACK: So much for Utopia, huh. Well but what’s the difference anyway, right? Let’s take the long view. Does it really matter if two shmucks in some obscure corner of the universe move off in different directions? Will the cosmos tremble?
RUTH: Nope.
JACK: Not a hair. In the shadow of eternity, we’re nobodies.
RUTH: Happens every day.
JACK: A million times over. So what’s the big—Jesus, Ruth. I can’t even look at you. (Takes a deep breath, puts a hand over his heart.) And where are those braille pajamas when you really need them. To tell you where you are.
RUTH: I’m sorry, Jack.
JACK: Don’t be sorry.
RUTH: I’m sorry anyway. I feel sorry.
JACK: I just can’t imagine it. I’m spoiled. I can’t imagine life without you. I’d be a half of something.
RUTH: I’ll tell you what you’d be.
JACK: What.
RUTH: You know what you’d be without me?
JACK: What.
RUTH: Ruth-less.
JACK: Ouch. Ouch.
RUTH: Sorry.
JACK: Okay. So. We invented a new genre. Screwball tragedy.
RUTH: You know, the sad thing… The sad thing isn’t that love comes to an end. Or that people go out of your life, or die. The really sad thing about the world is that you get over it.
JACK: I won’t get over it.
RUTH: And forget.
JACK: I won’t forget.
RUTH: And even forget what really happened.
JACK: I won’t forget.
RUTH: A year from now, we’ll be ancient history.
(The phone rings. It rings again. Lights change, and they move back onto the bed together exactly as at the start of the play. We begin to hear the Bizet in the distance. We have returned to the beginning.)
JACK: So why look for Utopia anywhere but here.
RUTH: Utopia …
JACK: Why look for paradise anywhere but in this bed.
RUTH: Paradise …
JACK: Absolutely. Two people who are alike and who like each other.
RUTH: Do you realize what the world would be like if everybody lived like this?
JACK: We’d know how to put a world together.
RUTH: How come they never asked us?
JACK: The fools.
RUTH: As usual.
JACK: It’d be Utopia.
RUTH: Absolutely.
JACK: Earthly paradise.
RUTH: And will it ever stop?
JACK: Never.
RUTH: Will it ever stop?
JACK: It’d be Utopia.
RUTH: Will it ever stop?
JACK: No polyester. No parents.
RUTH: Jack …
JACK: It’s paradise.
RUTH: Will it ever stop?
(The lights fade until there is only a crack of light under the door. And then that’s gone.)
CURTAIN
PHILIP GLASS BUYS A LOAF OF BREAD
This play is for Jason Buzas,
Liz Larsen, Randy Danson,
Chris Wells, and Ryan Hilliard.
The sweet sound of perfection.
Philip Glass Buys
a Loaf of Bread was first presented at the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre (Steve Kaplan, artistic director) in New York City, in January 1990. It was directed by Jason McConnell Buzas; the set design was by David K. Gallo; costume design was by Sharon Lynch; lighting design was by Danianne Mizzy. The cast was as follows:
FIRST WOMAN Liz Larsen
SECOND WOMAN Randy Danson
PHILIP GLASS Christopher Wells
BAKER Ryan Hilliard
A bakery counter with a bakery case below it. Behind the glass of the bakery case, a single loaf of bread on a shelf. A large clock high up on the wall, stopped at 12:01. A sign that says NO CHANGE. A door to the outside, with a bell over it.
At lights up: A BAKER is behind the counter, smiling, PHILIP GLASS is before the counter. Quite serious, TWO WOMEN are at the door of the bakery, about to go out. THE FIRST WOMAN is looking back at PHILIP GLASS. The SECOND WOMAN is looking away. The BAKER and PHILIP GLASS form one distinct area, the TWO WOMEN another, separate from them. They all remain like that, very still for a moment.
FIRST WOMAN: Isn’t that Philip Glass? (The SECOND WOMAN turns and looks.)
SECOND WOMAN: I think it is.
BAKER: Can I help you, sir?
GLASS: Yes. I need a loaf of bread, please.
BAKER: Just a moment.
FIRST WOMAN: It’s time now.
SECOND WOMAN: Yes. Let’s go. (But she doesn’t move, GLASS turns and looks at her.)
BAKER: Do you know that woman, sir?
(A bell rings.)
(The bell rings again.)
BAKER: Do you know that woman, sir?
GLASS: Yes. I loved her once.
FIRST WOMAN: What’s the matter?
SECOND WOMAN: Nothing. Nothing. (The TWO WOMEN go out.)
PHILIP GLASS: I also need some change.
(The BAKER points to the NO CHANGE sign.)
BLACKOUT
DAVID IVES
David Ives was born in Chicago and educated at Northwestern University and the Yale School of Drama. He won the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Playwriting Award for the Primary Stages production of All in the Timing, which was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Play. He is the author of an opera and short stories, and has written for Hollywood and television. He lives in New York City.