You Are Happy
Page 1
Contents
Production History
Characters
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
To Write of Love
translated from Rébecca Déraspe’s
author’s notes
Writing of love
Means making do
And laughing
At others
At myself
At you
And seeing the sickly sweet conceit of lovers
And loving that, too
Writing of love is no joke
Or else too much of one
Because love has the face of a big tacky diva
But one we listen to
Behind closed doors
Writing of love means searching for the humanity inside the caricature
When Les Biches Pensives approached me to write about being single
About being a couple
About intimate life in the face of the outside world
I wanted
To write for Love
Making it see itself
In the acid of my words
Making it laugh at itself
This Love
That thinks it can get away with anything
And takes itself so seriously
Deux ans de votre vie premiered in Montreal on August 16, 2011, at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, under the artistic direction of Marie-Thérèse Fortin. The play was commissioned and produced by Les Biches Pensives. It featured the following cast and creative team:
Jérémie Castonguay:
Benoît Drouin-Germain
Brigitte Castonguay:
Dominique Leclerc
Chloé Jolicoeur:
Annie Darisse
Director:
Jacques Laroche
Set and costume designer:
Marzia Pellisier
Lighting designer and stage manager:
Josiane Fontaine-Zuchowski
Sound designer:
Gaël Lane Lépineß
Movement coach:
Andrew Turner
You Are Happy, translated by Leanna Brodie, was given a public reading (under its working title, It’ll Never Last) in Vancouver on May 18, 2014, during the Ta Gueule Festival held by BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective, as part of Up in the Air Theatre’s rEvolver Arts Festival at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (The Cultch). The translation was commissioned and presented by Ruby Slippers Theatre under the artistic direction of Diane Brown. It was supported by the Theatre International Program of the Canada Council for the Arts. It featured the following cast and creative team:
Jeremy Castonguay:
Sean Harris Oliver
Bridget Castonguay:
Melissa Oei
Chloe Hartwell:
Evelyn Chew
Director:
Diane Brown
Characters
Jeremy
Bridget
Chloe
I
JEREMY
Hi
It’s all over
When it’s gotten this bad
It has to stop
I mean
I can’t
Right now you are inside a closet
My sister’s, actually
Face squashed between her turquoise skirts
And her upscalerrific dresses
As you can see it’s pretty cramped in here
I’m sitting on a box full of sunflower knick-knacks
I’m squeezed in so tight my knees are in my mouth
It smells of stale perfume
You hear me sneeze
And you’re concerned
Dust allergy
But don’t worry about me
I won’t be here for long
Oh no!
You see the rope I’m holding in my hand
And now
You’re getting the picture
It’s a thick sailing rope type thing
I stole it from the quay
At the marina
I do some sailing, you know
I’m a guy who’s super-qualified to go out on the water
It’s over
You’ll be the witnesses to
My suicide
You can tell the story afterwards at those dinner parties where people tell stories about terrible things
You’ll probably be rewarded with a couple of pats on the back
And some very good advice
Along the lines of: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger
You’ll be comforted by that
I make a noose with the rope
Get a splinter from the rope
It hurts
I swear
I suck my finger
To get it out
I mean, I don’t want to take that with me to the grave
Or the funeral home
How dumb would I look?
There’s no one here to stop me from doing what I’m about to do
No girl who said “I love you” this morning
Who would’ve seen I wasn’t doing too well
Who would’ve followed me
And then taken me in her arms crying, telling me, don’t do it
No one
I have razors with me too
My sister’s razors
She’s an aesthetician—so you just know they’re good and sharp
This way
If the rope doesn’t work
I’ll slit my wrists
Because
That’ll make an impression
Even more so in fact
Actually
I can’t quite make up my mind
If I was a girl
And I was really into me
I don’t know which one would be more traumatizing
The razors or the rope
The most shocking image
The gut punch
That would make me spend my whole life regretting I never told me that I loved me
I hear some noise in the house
Quick
I climb onto the knick-knack box
Fasten the rope
Put it around my neck
It doesn’t work
The noose comes apart
The box collapses
Down I go
Split my knee wide open on a piece of broken sunflower crap
Gross
Gross
Gross
I take the razors out of my pocket
I wait
for a bit
I hear footsteps on the stairs
Then in the hall
BRIDGET
Hi, Jeremy!
JEREMY
I’m unwrapping the razors
Goddamn stupid plastic packaging
BRIDGET
Hello?
JEREMY
Come on
BRIDGET
Jeremy?
JEREMY
Come on
BRIDGET
Je-re-my!
JEREMY
Okay
Here we go
I’ve got one
BRIDGET
Say something! I know you’re here. I saw your car in the driveway.
JEREMY
I hold my breath
BRIDGET
Are you hiding in my closet again?
JEREMY
Soon as she’s close enough to the bedroom
I’m gonna slash my wrists
BRIDGET
Jeremy!
JEREMY
She opens the bedroom door
Runs over to me
Takes me in her arms
Now
I can pass out in total safety at last
BRIDGET
Not again!
II
BRIDGET
Hi
Right now you’re with me inside the grocery store
Neon illuminating happy faces
Couples—choosing
The best kind of salad dressing
All around me
Hands are in hands
Eyes gaze into eyes
I push my cart
Head held high
I avoid
As best I can
The amorous looks
The lovey-dovey smiles
The caresses
The “Sweetheart, what do you feel like eating, my little boo-boo bear”
The click of my heels on the ground reassures me
I pass by cans of tomatoes
Cans of mushrooms
Cans of peas
Cans of carrots
Dried pasta
Fresh pasta
Vaguely Asian condiments
Tap
Choose
Sniff
Judge
Weigh
Count
Check
Pick
In the baby-care aisle
A man and a woman look at each other
Smiling
At a happy newborn seen in long shot
On a pack of eco-friendly disposable diapers
They kiss
And suddenly
I understand
Everything
I stop dead
Paralyzed—except
My head, which does a kind of three-hundred-and-sixty-degree scan
Everyone here is two
Couples
Man/woman
Man/man
Woman/woman
Buying butter
And meatballs for two
Love me tender
Love me true
“Babe, do I like roast beef?”
Oh come on
Come on
I don’t need someone to hold my hand and tell me I like three-fruit marmalade
I figure out
Right here
Right now
Bam!
Right in front of you
That I’m different
Everyone needs to be two
Everyone
Even my mother
Who’s been cheated on in her own marriage bed
Even my father
Who cheats on his wife with a man
Even that girl
Wearing a black eye for makeup
Even that guy
Holding his girlfriend’s hand like it was a rancid salmon
Even my brother
My poor brother
I can’t make love to him to make him forget that the world’s a mess
I can’t take his hand to show everyone that someone loves him
And then
She appears
Her
Standing in the personal-care aisle
All alone
I wait a bit
Hiding behind my little grocery list
Someone’ll come and join her
I can’t believe that no one
But no
No one
III
CHLOE
Hi
Right now you’re in my bedroom
My bedroom is a beautiful room
With frames
And photos in the frames
Me as a child
Me as a teenager
Me now
Me with my parents
My parents as children
My parents as teenagers
My parents now
There are lovely wooden shutters on the windows
You say to yourself
What lovely wooden shutters on the windows!
You promise yourself to remember to ask me where I got them from
You really like me
You look at my bed
A double bed
The pillows are placed in the middle
You can tell I’m sleeping alone
You conclude from this that I always sleep alone
You don’t like single people
They’re scary, with their disastrous date stories
Their forgot-the-condom stories
Single people have genital warts
And abortions
And drink too much
It’s a well-known fact
You see me
Me
Alone
In front of my mirror
You think I wear too much makeup
You prefer natural girls
Who prefer a quiet park to music in bars
I light up a smoke
You think that’s insane
After all
What with the booze
Cancer
Abortion
And warts
That’s a lot on my plate already
You look for my bottle of antidepressants
You don’t find one
That scares you even more
My name is Chloe
I met Bridget in a supermarket
IV
CHLOE
I was just standing there in front of the razors for women
Pink
Blue
I didn’t know which one to choose
She came up to me
She was wearing a pretty white summer dress
A dress you could trust
BRIDGET
Don’t know which one to choose?
CHLOE
Excuse me?
BRIDGET
Getting groceries by yourself?
CHLOE
Yes.
BRIDGET
Me too.
CHLOE
Great.
BRIDGET
It’s unusual.
CHLOE
Yes it is. I’ve gotta say it would be easier to choose my barbecue sauce if I had a second opinion.
BRIDGET
You don’t have a boyfriend?
CHLOE
You know, just someone to hold your hand while you try to figure out which pineapple is the juiciest.
BRIDGET
I understand.
/> CHLOE
Well . . . Bye.
BRIDGET
I work for a razor company.
CHLOE
I’m a waitress.
BRIDGET
Those ones there.
CHLOE
She held out a pack of pink razors
So these ones’re good?
BRIDGET
Very good.
CHLOE
Okay.
I put the pack of razors in my basket
BRIDGET
I’ll give you two years of free razors.
CHLOE
You’re kidding.
BRIDGET
All you have to do is come and see me once a month and tell me about the razors. So the company can improve the product.
Come on
Come on
Come on
CHLOE
Why not?
It was just on impulse
She gave me the address of her office
I gave her the address of my apartment
So she could mail me my survey reward
Then we went up to the cash
She paid for my razors
We shook hands
All official and everything
V
CHLOE
Today
The day of our first meeting
I leave my apartment
You follow me
We walk down the street
It’s nice out
Even though we’re hot
The heat feels so good
But still you’re pining for the snowflakes of January
The ones that let you get under a blanket
With a hot chocolate
And romantic movies just made for days like that
Deep down, we’re all the same
An old lady crashes into me with her walker
Hey! Goddammit!
Watch where you’re going!
You think I’m rude
But you understand
If I’ve got something against grandmothers
It’s because mine never loved me
Which breaks your heart
A little
Clutching the piece of paper with the address on it
I arrive at
A building several storeys high
I go inside
I take the elevator
I wait
At every floor I hope that someone will get in
And the someone is a man
And this man is the love of my life
But elevators don’t stop all by themselves just to please us
They keep on going
Seventh floor