Infinity

by Hannah Moscovitch

  Amy Rutherford: Carmen

  with Andréa Tyniec on violin

  Composer and Music Director: Njo Kong Kie

  Director: Ross Manson

  Choreographer: Kate Alton

  Lighting Design: Rebecca Picherack

  Set and Costume Design: Teresa Przybylski

  Stage Manager: Isabelle Ly

  Punctuation.

  Dash (—): a dash at the end of a line of dialogue indicates a cut-off

  Dash 2 (—): a dash in the middle of a line of dialogue indicates a quick change in thought or a stutter

  Ellipsis (. . .): an ellipsis at the end of a line indicates a trail off

  Ellipsis 2 (. . .): an ellipsis in the middle of a line indicates a hesitation or a mental search for a thought or a word

  Ellipsis 3 (. . . dialogue . . .): ellipses on either side of a line of dialogue indicates that the person who is speaking is doing so over the other character or trying to interrupt the other character

  Slash (/): a slash indicates the point at which the character that speaks next interrupts the character that is currently speaking

  Beat: approximately a one-count

  Pause: approximately a three-count

  Silence: approximately a six-count

  Notes.

  Time, place, and memory in the play can be created with light, sound, choreography, props, and small hints of furniture. Nothing naturalist. The stage can be cluttered or empty but it should have open dark space in some places so that characters can emerge and recede into blackness.

  Music.

  The music in the play is composed for solo violin by Njo Kong Kie. It was written for, and integral to, the original production and remount at the Tarragon Theatre. It is encouraged that future productions use the same music. For further information about acquiring performance rights, please contact Ian Arnold at Catalyst TCM (416.645.0935, info@catalysttcm.com), and for information about acquiring music rights and the performance edition of the score, please contact info@musicpicnic.com.

  Characters.

  Sarah Jean (various ages; a little girl of eight years old to midtwenties)

  Elliot (various ages; midtwenties to midthirties)

  Carmen (various ages; midtwenties to midthirties)

  The names of the characters in this play are not intended to limit casting to any particular ethnic group. Casting should reflect the diversity of the country where the play is being produced.

  Overture.

  Act One.

  Scene One.

  sarah jean stands there, considering, looking at us, twitching her hand.

  Finally, she speaks to us.

  sarah jean: On the way home in the cab, I was uh—uh crying, and the cab driver smiled at me and said: “Love?” I said: “You picked me up in front of a funeral home; so, no.” Then I thought about it and I said: “People do that? They sit in your cab and cry over love? That seems a little . . . much to me.”

  Beat.

  He turned and gave me a surprised look.

  sarah jean considers, twitching her hand.

  And now I can’t stop . . . thinking that . . .

  Beat.

  sarah jean twitches the fingers on her hand.

  (very low) Fuck.

  Beat.

  The thing is: two weeks ago, a friend of mine, my . . . big blond American friend, from Iowa, said this thing to me about . . . what I’m like, and . . . I’m trying to think if—if it’s—if she’s . . .

  Pause. Thinking.

  She said that—that I’m . . . uh, uh, fucked up . . . about love . . . which . . . ?

  Pause. Thinking.

  Which I don’t think is . . . ? I’ve had lots of good . . . ? I’m very normal.

  Transition.

  Allegro.

  Scene Two.

  We’re in a small room off of a party, where partygoers have left their coats. Perhaps there’s a coat rack. Indie hipster music is playing, off. carmen is putting on her coat, holding a wine glass with red wine in it that’s nearly empty now. elliot enters. carmen looks at elliot for a split second. The split second after carmen looks away, elliot smiles. (This will only be visible in small houses.) As elliot says the lines below, carmen isn’t looking at or paying attention to elliot at all: she’s draining and putting down her wine glass, pulling on a winter jacket and gloves, finding her keys in her handbag, etc. All carmen’s conduct should suggest she’s about to leave the party.

  elliot: I couldn’t catch your eye in the kitchen. I’m Elliot, I . . . came in here: I want to meet you.

  carmen: Why?

  Beat.

  elliot: I . . . asked about you, I asked the other people at the party, and I found out your name’s Carmen and . . . you’re single.

  Pause.

  carmen: I’m—yeah. I’m . . . yeah. I’m single.

  elliot: Yeah?

  carmen: I just broke up with my fiancé.

  Beat.

  elliot: How’s that . . . going?

  carmen turns and looks at him, hostile.

  I’m not . . . joking: I’m trying to find out if . . . y . . . ?

  carmen: What?

  elliot: (new tack) Can I ask: why did you break up with him?

  carmen: I stopped loving him.

  elliot: Well, yeah: but why?

  Pause as carmen thinks, hard; then:

  carmen: I . . . don’t know. I don’t know: he’s not a shithead, he’s . . . ! He’s very kind, and I’m not saying he’s not masculine. He grew up on a farm, he drives tractors and . . . snowmobiles—I met him in high school, in the library; he was failing math, and a lot of subjects, and I helped him out. I didn’t tutor him, I taught him to cheat, and he asked me to senior prom: I lost my virginity to him, prom night, like a cheerleader, and then I lived out on his family’s farm for a while and they were so kind to me and then I got into Harvard and moved here and we’ve been—I don’t know . . . I don’t know.

  elliot: Is it because he’s stupid?

  carmen regards elliot curiously and with some hostility because she’s just realized that it’s probably true: her ex-fiancé was stupid. She twitches her fingers as she thinks about it.

  You hadn’t uh . . . ? You hadn’t . . . ? That hadn’t occurred to you?

  carmen: No.

  Silence as carmen twitches her fingers and thinks. She forgets about elliot for a moment. elliot watches her.

  elliot: What’s that twitch?

  carmen looks at her hand.

  carmen: (twitching it) That?

  elliot: Yeah.

  carmen looks at her hand, twitches it more slowly.

  It’s a scale.

  carmen: Yeah.

  elliot: I like musicians.

  carmen: Why?

  elliot: Uh—

  carmen: You like music.

  elliot: Uh no, no, it’s not the music, it’s that musicians know about time. They . . . have a . . . sense of what time is, that it . . . doesn’t exist, that it . . . slides, and that’s something most people don’t understand: you know, Einstein’s dictum that the distinction between past, present, and future is merely a very persistent illusion.

  Beat.

  And how musicians talk—they speak in intervals, they use a lot of timekeeping terminology—

  carmen: I don’t.

  elliot: You probably do.

  carmen: No, I don’t.

  elliot smiles, changes the topic.

  elliot: This morning, on campus, I asked a composer for his thoughts on time. He said that time, in music, divides the genius from the dilettante. He said, “Taste and tastelessness exist side by side on the continuum: they’re divided by the length of a pause.” He asked me if I’d read Adorno on time. I said no. He said: “You should.” I asked him if
he’d read Einstein on time. He said: “No.” I said: “Oh skip it.”

  carmen smiles.

  I think I picked him up, actually, uh . . . I was so . . . interested in what he was saying, it seemed . . . sexual to him, I think . . . Time is also the dividing line between genius and the abyss in theoretical physics, but it all comes down to time, time spent on research—

  carmen: You’re a theoretical physicist.

  elliot: I’m—yeah—I’m doing a PhD in theoretical physics.

  carmen smiles.

  carmen: How specialized is it?

  elliot: It—it—why?

  carmen: I’m trying to picture what you do.

  elliot: I’m working on a theory of well, uh, uh, everything.

  carmen: Everything.

  elliot: Yeah, it’s—yeah—it’s not a field of study that goes in for much humility. But in particular my work, because . . . I’m trying to . . . unify all physics. I recently proved explicitly the two-loop finiteness of string theory. That means that to the third order of an approximation scheme the theory has no problem with infinities. And now I’m working on solving the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which is a mathematical attempt to combine the ideas of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

  carmen tries hard to reckon with what he just said.

  elliot watches this, then:

  It—yeah: it’s specialized, but it—it is fulfilling, in some larger sense. I—sometimes I—this’ll probably sound . . . stupid, but I stand in . . . the lab and listen to the atoms and they sound . . .

  Beat.

  carmen: Like what?

  elliot: (reaching to describe it) Sometimes it’s like . . . a kind of . . . everything. Sometimes it’s more like a dull ache: longing . . .

  carmen: They sound lonely?

  elliot: (realizing it’s true) Yyyyeahhh . . .

  carmen: The atoms are lonely.

  elliot: (grinning) Yep.

  carmen: Are you . . . ? You’re . . . spending a lot of time by yourself?

  elliot: Yeah.

  elliot and carmen grin at each other.

  There is a sudden animal stillness between them: attraction.

  carmen: There are a lot of pretty girls out in the kitchen.

  elliot: You’re very pretty.

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: Plus most of those girls are in the Social Thought department: they say things like: “Science is just another language.” I don’t want to date them, I want to give them a seminar on the philosophical implications of their stupidity. No: you know what? I don’t know why. But I am certain it’s you I . . . want.

  There is a still beat between elliot and carmen. Then elliot moves towards carmen. carmen leans in. elliot holds carmen, kisses her—delicate but with hunger. carmen breaks off the kiss.

  carmen: I just—wait: whoever you are—

  elliot: Elliot.

  carmen: (unaware of her exact use of time) Elliot, I left my fiancé two days ago so I can probably offer you fifteen to twenty minutes of sex, followed by forty-five minutes of crying. That’s the ratio of sex to crying I have to offer right now.

  Pause as elliot smiles.

  Why are you smiling?

  elliot: You’re using . . .

  carmen: I’m oh—I’m using timekeeping terminology. I’m—yeah—I’m a violinist, and a master’s student . . . of music composition. And yeah okay: I do think of music as a . . . sculpture in time.

  Silence: they look at each other, grinning. Then elliot and carmen kiss again: passionate, mutual. There’s an escalation of sexuality, sexy, then:

  Transition.

  Interlude Act One Scene Two–Three.

  Scene Three.

  sarah jean thinks and thinks: she’s considering: am I fucked up about love? Then abruptly she turns and speaks to us.

  sarah jean: Okay, for example: here’s a good one. When I was at Harvard, I dated a mathematician for almost a year. He was a very good mathematician. We’d take our clothes off, and have some sex, and that’d be bracketed by doing mathematics on both sides. He was . . . It was appealing to be with him because . . . I’d finally found someone who thought how I thought. I had a lot of blackboards up on the walls of my apartment and he’d be naked, yelling at me about mathematics, and scribbling his arguments down on the blackboards. He broke a lot of chalk. There was a lot of chalk dust in his pubic hair.

  sarah jean stops waxing romantic and becomes worried about herself.

  I was nineteen years old at the time. He was thirty-six, and married. He was also my teacher and famous.

  sarah jean considers.

  She gets a little more worried about herself, and a little defensive.

  Hunh, okay maybe that one’s not . . . as good . . . an example as I thought.

  Transition.

  Interlude Act One Scene Three–Four.

  Scene Four.

  We’re in a public washroom. carmen is holding a pregnancy stick. There are pregnancy kit instructions and a torn-open pregnancy kit box lying on the ground. carmen stares at the stick, unblinking, seething. elliot looks at his watch and then looks back at carmen. We hear silence or sound that suggests silence.

  elliot: I’d like it.

  carmen: No.

  elliot: No, I would: I’d like it.

  carmen gestures at elliot’s watch.

  carmen: How long has—have . . . ?

  elliot: (looking at his watch) Ten seconds.

  Silence.

  carmen: I said to the secretary: “My husband Elliot Green’s a teaching assistant, I’m having a medical emergency, please go get him.” She said: “Mr. Green’s not married.” I said: “Yeah, well, he will be married if I’m having the medical emergency I think I’m having.” Then I watched it . . . click, she said: “Just a minute, Mrs. Green.” Then I had to wait there, with that . . . information in the . . . (gestures to the air) . . . She wanted to know how long we’ve been together. I said a year, more or less, a year since I fucked you. I didn’t say that. It felt mean calling you out of class, but I just—I didn’t want to . . . leave you a message on your answering machine, or—

  elliot: I’m happy you called me out of class.

  Beat.

  I love you.

  Beat.

  I . . . love you—

  carmen: That’s not germane.

  Pause as elliot tries to work out how it’s not germane.

  elliot: What’s germane then?

  Beat.

  I have . . . money for us?

  carmen: Yeah, that’s not—come on.

  elliot: “Come on” . . . what . . . ?

  carmen: There’s—!

  elliot: What?

  carmen: There’s grease that’s dripped down the side of your fridge and it’s pooled on the floor. There’s dust rolling down your hallway—

  elliot: That’s germane?

  Pause.

  My mom was—I’ve told you she was hippyish—well, she bought me dolls to play with, I was the only boy in the neighbourhood who played with dolls, and I was good with the dolls, all the family friends said so, I was always washing them and clothing them, taking them for walks in their . . . stroller.

  Pause.

  I’m conscious my apartment’s dirty, in the same way I’m conscious my eyes are bloodshot and my hands are starting to ache—

  carmen: My dad left my mom by herself with me and my sister—

  elliot: Yeah that’s not—that’s because . . .

  Beat: carmen looks at elliot.

  That’s because your mother’s a monster.

  carmen: No she’s not!

  elliot: No: yeah, she’s a monster.

  carmen: She’s—no—she’s bitter, because she got left with two kids / to raise by herself!

&nbs
p; elliot: Last time—last time she called your house, she told me your ex-fiancé’s better looking than me.

  carmen: He is.

  elliot: Okay.

  carmen: He had a bigger cock too.

  elliot: Yeah?

  carmen: Yes.

  elliot: How much bigger?

  carmen: Twice the size of yours.

  elliot: (measuring it out with his hands) So like that?

  carmen: Bigger.

  elliot: So it probably ruptured your cervix . . .

  carmen: . . . yeah . . .

  elliot: . . . when you had sex with him, you had to go to the hospital . . .

  carmen: . . . mmhm . . .

  elliot: . . . and get it stitched up, up there—

  carmen: I did and I lay there in the hospital moaning in ecstasy.

  Silence.

  elliot: I’m writing my PhD—

  carmen: Yeah, well, yesterday, I clipped my toenails. And then I tweezed a couple of hairs out of the mole on my back. And then I worked on my symphony, and that fulfilled me for seven hours, and then I wanted to be fulfilled in another way than work, so I called you and you didn’t pick up, so I called my mother, and for forty-five minutes she talked about my sister, and how my sister bought a house just down the street from her, and how . . . !

  Beat.

  (calmer) I haven’t seen or heard from you in a week. We’re in a public washroom, doing a pregnancy test—

  elliot: (low) I’m sorry.

  carmen: Yeah?

  elliot: I—I’m . . . sorry: I know I’m being . . .

  Beat.

  I’ve been trying to get through this . . . part, when I get through it, I’ll / slow down.

  carmen: This part! This part!

  elliot: I—yeah: this part.

  carmen: This part!

  elliot: Yeah this part! I’ve—look, I’ve stopped clipping my toenails. I’m not even . . . masturbating. I’ve only been doing it when I’m so distracted by my crotch that I can’t concentrate—!

  carmen: Do you even like me?

  elliot: I’m forcing myself to try and get / through this so I can . . .