by Alan Filewod
(The Interviewer enters, standing behind the audience, sometimes walking up and down the aisle. Although there is a set list of questions, The Interviewer may improvise, as may those answering. The answers should be improvised as much as possible. To indicate the humorous nature of the responses, some of them are recorded here in brackets.)
Interviewer: Are you ready? Are you comfortable? What’s your name? Speak up, please! You over there – how old are you? Do you have any children? How many? What did your father do? Do you really like yourself? Do you work at all? What is your worst quality? (Victim 1: Eat too much!) What are you afraid of? (Victim 2: Dinosaurs!) Have you ever been in a fight? Who started it? Where are your children now? What are your qualifications? (Victim 2: I’m a nice person!) How do you make a car? How do you get a mortgage? (Victim 3: My uncle is a lawyer and you …) How do you rob a bank? (totally exasperated) How do you toss a salad? (All victims make wild tossing gesture) What are you doing here? Do you drink? (Victim 1: Socially.) Do you smoke? (Victim 1: Socially.) Are you happy? (Victim 1: Socially.) State your weight … (Victim 2: 135 pounds!) … in kilograms! (Victim 2: I’m too fat!) Do you cry? Often? Is it a hobby? What are you afraid of? (Victim 2: Dinosaurs!) Who do you hate … the most? (Victim 1: Jane Fonda! Other Victims: You don’t hate Jane Fonda. Victim 1: The workout, I hate the workout.) Would you do a thing like that? (To Victim 3) Fix your makeup when you talk to me! (To Victim 2) Push back your hair! (To Victim 1) You over there – can you dance? can you dance!
(Victim 1 sheepishly takes centre stage. She dances a few modest steps, and ends with a small flourish, to the sound of the typing instructions.)
Interviewer: Dance!
(Victim 1 begins to dance again, as the typing tape is overlaid with a disco beat. She dances the twist, the swim, with the encouragement of the other victims.)
Interviewer: (interrupting her) Dance! (Victim 3 desperately begins to dance with her feet only, still seated.)
Interviewer: Dance!
(The victims exchange secretive glances. Victim 2 reaches for a photograph of a young girl dressed up for the prom. Victim 3 takes a razor from her purse, rolling her eyes at the audience. Victim 1 dances over to Victim 3, gets the razor. Victim 3 taps out a drum roll with her feet. Victim 2 walks to centre stage displaying the photo. Victim 1 defiantly slices it in half. The victims giggle in complicity.)
Interviewer: That’s not very funny!
(All the victims apologize profusely as they clean up the stage. The interviewer walks down to the stage. When everything is ready for the next scene, Victim 1 looks at the audience.)
Victim 1: I told you not to watch this scene.
(The lights change for the last scene.)
THE STORY OF MARIANNE BACHMEIER
(Briefly all Mariannes pace back and forth. M.3 swiftly climbs up on stage and walks up to the refrigerator. When she begins to speak, the other Mariannes get into place: M.4 far stage right, M.1 close to her, M.2 seated by the accordion dorwnstage left.)
M.3: This is a story of revenge. It’s about a beautiful woman named Marianne. The Avenging Mother. Die Rachemutter.
Accordionist: (sitting on floor behind accordion) Revenge. Revenge. Beware you terrible man. You won’t escape me. Even if an entire world stood between us I’d crawl up to you on all fours, feeling for each step with my hands. I will catch up to you and then … (pause)
Curlilocks, curlilocks,
What did you do?
Your nest is so empty,
Your fingers are blue.
You are the fairest in all of the land.
Rockabye, rockabye,
Fly away home.
(The Accordionist – M.1 – gets up, and walks to stand beside the fridge, stage left. M.3 stands with her back to the audience, leaning on the fridge, staring at Anna’s photo.)
M.4: (physically restrained by M.1) My name is Marianne Bachmeier. (M.3 opens the fridge door and gently swings with it.) I’m 30. I have a wonderful daughter, Anna. She was seven years old. On that day, I was out in my van. Everyone knows my van, it’s brightly painted with flowers. I can’t keep my eye on Anna all the time. I’m always at the bar. I work there. I thought Chris was at home. I’m not married, there was never any reason. Anyway, I’m not seeing him now. That has nothing to do with it.
(M.2 lights a cigarette.)
M.1: (restrained by M.4) They say I got off easy. But I think six years is long enough. After all, it wasn’t planned. Although it’s hard to make people believe it. Sometimes I don’t believe it myself… It was well hidden. I let my hand glide over the pistol … What seems to bother people is that I was armed and he wasn’t. But that’s hardly the point, is it?
M.2: Anna?
M.3: (shuts fridge, turns to look in the light) Of course I remember the day. It was a Wednesday. (Gets a cigarette.) I saw Anna in the morning before she went off to school. She was making her favourite sandwiches for lunch. She was quite grown up in a lot of ways. (Lights cigarette.) Most of the time I gave her some money and she’d eat at the place on the corner. I had lunch with her sometimes – well, it’s breakfast for me. Anna was very important to me and I don’t see how all this has anything to do with it.
(The slide projector clicks on catching M.2 in a square of light. All Mariannes move their heads as in mug shots, while the projector clicks away. Centre-right-centre-left-centre-centre-centre. M.2 remains staring into the white light.)
M.2: Could you stop that please? (The light goes out.) I would like to ask the jury, what did you think I was – hysterical? (She takes a short puff from her cigarette.)
(The second scene with Marianne and her friend, this time in prison. The blocking is identical to the previous scene, except that the actress who played the friend now plays Marianne and vice versa.)
M.4: Thanks for coming.
Friend: You don’t have to thank me. I’m your best friend. I’m going to visit all the time.
M.4: Every week?
Friend: As often as they’ll let me.
M.4: What if I get a life sentence?
Friend: Oh come on, you won’t be in that long.
M.4: Did you see the papers?
Friend: Of course. They’re hard to miss.
M.4: What did you think?
Friend: Well, so far everyone seems to be on your side.
M.4: I think it’s great. The day Anna was killed I thought: the whole world has to know about this.
Friend: What the whole world knows is that you shot him at his own trial.
M.4: Anna was on trial there. Not him.
Friend: What’s it like here? Do they treat you well?
M.4: Well, It’s not the Riviera. The guard is nice though. She worries that I smoke too much.
(Pause.)
Friend: Can I ask you something?
M.4: Sure.
Friend: How did you feel when you shot him?
M.4: It felt all right.
Friend: But how did you feel?
M.4: I felt OK.
Friend: Oh come on.
M.4: No, I was fine … Oh, I don’t know … I’m just sorry I didn’t get him in the face … and they took my pistol away from me.
(M.2 and M.3 have watched this scene, smoking. M.2 puts out her cigarette. M.3 crouches down)
M.3: All right, Anna. You want a story? I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a little girl and she was born and her mother was miserable.
(All Mariannes begin to pace again. M.3 puts out her cigarette and paces as well. M.2 gets a glass of milk. As she speaks to Anna, the other Mariannes take the shooting gesture through a series of starts and stops with each new sentence.)
M.2: Anna, don’t eat that! Careful of the cars! Now you come straight home from school. Anna, I told you not to talk to strange men. (She sips milk as other Mariannes bring down a pointing gun.) Anna …
(Other Mariannes relax the gesture and say softly: “Anna?”)
M.2: (laughing) … you’re such a clown!
&n
bsp; (M.2 returns the milk to the fridge.)
THE JURY SCENE
(The actors walk into the area stage left.)
Woman 1: Is that the judge?
Woman 2: No, no – that’s his lawyer. And there’s Grabowski.
Woman 3: He looks like a murderer.
Woman 2: There’s his fiancée.
Woman 4: I wish I could see her face. She’s wearing a veil.
Woman 3: Well, no wonder. Wouldn’t you?
Woman 2: I don’t know.
Woman 4: He’s still engaged?
Woman 1: Yes. You know, he’s divorced. He has two children.
Woman 4: I don’t believe that stuff about Anna. It’s filthy.
Woman 1: He’s a sick man.
Woman 2: He has a filthy mind.
Woman 3: He’s lucky he’s in jail. Otherwise he’d be lynched.
Woman 1: There she is.
All others: Marianne?
Woman 1: At the door.
Woman 4: This must be so hard for her to listen to.
Woman 3: Tragedy. It marks the face.
Woman 4: No one knows how a mother feels. She’s so sad. It breaks my heart.
Woman 1: Here she comes. She’s walking to her place.
(Woman 3 starts a slow clap.)
Woman 4: What was that?
Woman 3: Oh my God.
(The clapping increases, also on tape. Everyone improvises on these lines, as they rush forward, run away, applaud: “She shot him. He’s dead. She shot him. I don’t believe it. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo.” When the clapping has died down, The Fiancée begins to speak. She stands stock still, upstage right. The two remaining members of the jury return to their seats.)
Fiancée: Yes yes yes, of course the death of a child is a terrible thing and I share her mother’s grief. But you cannot expect me to sympathize with Marianne Bachmeier. Klaus was my … Klaus Grabowski was my fianeé … I wish people would think of him sometimes. He hadn’t had a job in months. He had nothing to do all day. He was a severely depressed man. Pretty little Anna comes knocking on his door. She didn’t have to. He didn’t force her to come there. He lets her in, he gets her some pop, some licorice … This is not a nice story. But he said in the courtroom that little Anna threatened to tell her parents that he’d touched her. And he swore in the courtroom that Anna said her father touched her there. Her father. And that her father paid her for it. He said it under oath. Look, I know him. He did not mean to, he just lost control. And he was sorry. (M.1 appears behind The Fiancée, holding a glass of milk.) He was sorry for Anna’s parents. He was terribly shocked by what he’d done. But Marianne? She knew what she was doing. She shot him in the back. And she wasn’t sorry. She didn’t care that he was dead. All she cared for was the loss of her gun.
(M.1 takes a few steps forward, while The Fiancée turns away)
Woman 3: She’ll get life for this.
Woman 4: She doesn’t look like a murderer. If it had been me, I would have …
Woman 3: Maybe she was hysterical.
Woman 4: My mother sent her flowers.
Woman 3: She shouldn’t get away with this. The law is there for a reason.
Woman 4: I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all.
Woman 3: God never sends us more than we can bear.
Woman 4: She’s been through a lot. But at least she’s not alone – no one seems to know his name though – the new one?
Woman 3: (pause) He’s a Turk. (Pause.) Apparently he’s a regular at the bar where she works. What a sleazy life.
Woman 4: I really sympathize with her. If it had been me, I would have…
Woman 3: She was hysterical.
Woman 4: Apparently she works night and day.
Woman 3: Abortions, rapes. These things don’t happen to just anyone.
Woman 4: She wanted Anna to have a beautiful future.
Woman 3: And why did pretty little Anna have to dawdle about the streets like a little whore? Because her mother didn’t give her lunch.
Woman 4: She was just a little girl.
Woman 3: She was just a little whore.
Woman 4: If it had been me, I would have …
M.1: (coming forward) I could have put strychnine in his coffee. I could have put arsenic in his soap. If I had a knife … I could have hit him with my van … or if he had a child …
Fiancée: No.
M.1: No. (Opens the fridge.)
Woman 4: If it had been me, I would have chopped him up into little bits.
Woman 3: (starts to slash the air with her red purse) Chopped him up into little bits, chopped him up into little bits, chopped him up into little bits …
M.1: (sotto voce) I could have put arsenic in his soup … (Continues to improvise underneath.)
Woman 3: (leaps up) She shot him.
Fiancée: In the back.
Woman 3: She shot him!
Fiancée: In the back.
Woman 3: She shot him!!
Fiancée: In the back!
Woman 3: Bravo!
Fiancée: No.
Woman 3: Bravo!
Fiancée: No.
Woman 3: Bravo!!
Fiancée: No!
Woman 4: She was just a little girl.
(M.1 slams the fridge, Woman 4 stands up and as she does so her white purse opens and spills out a mess of nails on the floor, Woman 3 drops her red purse in the middle of the nails. Everybody freezes on stage. Then without taking their eyes off the nails, they gingerly make their way back to their final positions – as Mariannes. M.1 and M.2 stand on the downstage edges of the stage as in the beginning. M.4 sits in the chair stage left of the fridge and smokes a cigarette. M.3 stands behind her, at a slight angle. They get into place with great difficulty – one woman crawls up the stage, another creeps across the fridge, for example. When everyone is in place:)
M.3: (as Anna) Mami, du bist zu spat gekommen. (Mummy, you came too late.)
(M.4 turns her head irritably and says “tsk!”)
M.1: You’re smoking too much.
M.4: Tsk!
M.3: Mami, warum bist du so spät gekommen? (Mummy, why did you come so late?)
M.4: Tsk!
M.2: You should get more sleep.
M.4: Tsk!
M.3: Mami, du sollst nicht spat sein. (Mummy, you musn’t be late.)
M.4: Tsk!
M.1: I think I’ll read Anna a story tonight.
M.3: Mami –
M.4: (angrily) Anna!
(The slide projector comes on.)
M.4: It’s crazy to blame yourself.
M.3: When I think about Anna, I think about the beautiful things. Even her funeral was beautiful, I made sure of that. She wore a pretty skirt and bracelets, and I put flowers and stars in her hair. And we played her favourite music – Pink Floyd.
M.4: I considered Anna a human being, not my property. I didn’t want her to be dependent on me, and I didn’t want to be dependent on her. It’s like this: Anna wasn’t planned for, so when she came along, she just had to hang in there. And she did, she always did.
M.3: Anna’s childhood was ten times better than my own. She had a dog. She flew to Ibiza, Spain, countless times. I didn’t go anywhere until I was twenty.
M.4: Once, Anna was out skating and I was supposed to pick her up, but I got delayed. When I finally arrived, she was frozen stiff, with blue lips and everything. And all she said to me was, “Mummy, you came too late. Don’t come late next time, Mummy.” That was it. No tears, nothing.
M.3: That’s what Anna was like.
M.4: No interviews.
(The slide projector goes out.)
(An improvised dialogue takes place between M.1 and M.2, during which M.1 and M.4 occasionally perform a moving gesture – leaning forward and walking into the courtroom, a small movement. The following is an approximation of the dialogue between M.1 and M.2. The major agreements are content and the first and last lines.)
M.1: What happened? Do you remember?
M.2:
Give me time. Give me time. It was a sunny day. I walked up to the courtroom, I opened the door.
M.1: It was a sunny day. I walked into the courtroom.
M.2: Did they search you? Why didn’t they search you?
M.1: I let my hand glide over the pistol. It was well hidden.
M.2: It was a sunny day.
M.1: It was a Wednesday.
M.2: It was a Wednesday. I remember the day.
M.1: I saw his back. What if it hadn’t been him?
M.2: I saw his back. It was only afterwards I thought – what if it hadn’t been him? What if it had been someone else?
M.1: I let my hand glide over the pistol. How many times did you shoot him?
M.2: How many times did you shoot him?
M.1: Seven times, they said you shot him seven times.
M.2: Seven times, no, I couldn’t shoot someone even once. It was a sunny day.
M.1: I saw his back. How did you feel?
M.2: I felt fine.
M.1: All I could think of was Anna.
M.2: I’m not sorry he’s dead.
M.4: I would not do it again today.
M.3: I’m glad I did it.
M.4: Simply because it is wrong to kill another human being. I don’t wish that he could be alive again.
M.3: I’m glad he’s dead.
M.4: I only wish I hadn’t done this myself.
(M.3 steps forward, walks down a few steps, then turns to face the fridge. As she walks up to the fridge, the lights dim. She opens the door. Yodelling music begins. She turns and pours a glass of milk. She pours and pours. The milk splatters over her hand and onto the floor.)
M.1 and M.2: (very softly) I did it for you, Anna.
(M.3 offers the milk to Anna. She puts the glass back inside the fridge and shuts the door.)
Blackout
THE END