I feel you have stirred something in me. You understand me.

(recovering, earnest, moved) And who are you?

DAVID: I am David.

MARTHA: Which David?

DAVID: (with a sigh) I am the blinded David, the guilty David who let his Giovanni die; who didn't trust Giovanni's love.

Un tempo

(Martha takes his hand, with empathy)

(sad) Yes, I am the David who refused to open my mind and my soul to Giovanni’s love. Who did not understand it.

Un tempo

(infinitily sad and wise) Because it is so difficult to understand when something TRUE happens in your life. It is so rare, you do not expect it. And when it comes, you are surprised, it seems impossible, surreal. You just can’t believe it. It’s like dropping an ember in your palm. You do not know how to handle it. You look for the catch.

Un tempo

And then it’s gone. It’s too late. Lost. And you never can get it back. Never make it right.

Un tempo

And your life becomes miserable.

(summing up his strength, recovering, leaving Martha’s hand) I am the David who now keeps searching for Giovanni. For a new Giovanni.

Un tempo

To start anew, and, this time, make it right. Un tempo Farewell Martha. Free yourself from your own prison! Settle for less than you dream of, explore, discover and accept the reality without prejudice, and you will find more happiness than you thought possible.

MARTHA: (emphatically, unreasonably hopeful) Wait! Will you… will you marry me, David?

DAVID: (laughing) Marry you? You are not… not the… not… my type!

MARTHA: (hurt but warmly) It’s not becaue I do not have a penis between my legs that I cannot give you what you need! I could be very good to you. I can make it right for you.

Un tempo

Besides, you had the sex with Giovanni, but it is not the sex you are feeling guilty about.

Un tempo

I can give you what you are missing. I will receive it and accept it. It does not matter whether I am a man or a wonan, does it?

DAVID: (tempted, then his mind made up) Oh no! I will not marry you!

(turning away) I need to go. Looks like I need to suffer a bit more for my cowardice.

MARTHA: Where are you going?

DAVID: (turning his upper body towards her, then looking around one last time) Not sure. Giovanni isn't here so he must be elsewhere. Maybe at the theater Rio…

David exits.

SCENE 4: Each Person is a Prison

Julia enters through the curtains, dragged, each arm, by two men. The men wear a mask, possibly of Francis Bacon characters. She laughs. They laugh. Festive disco music starts. The men dance up to her: one in front, one in her back; they caress her while dancing on the joyous music. She let herself be seduced, accepting their nuptial parade of sorts. She is sandwiched, imprisoned between them. After a while the man behind her bends her over, she puts her arms around the neck or the waist of the man in front of her, and he mimics penetration, 4-5 thrusts, then he turns her over and the scene repeats itself, roles inverted, with the other man. After the simulacra of their male orgasm, both men drop her and leave, obviously satisfied. Julia is left alone. She drops on her knees. The music fades into silence. After a few seconds the slow, faint sobbing of Julia can be heard: the fundamental loneliness is hers again.

SHE enters.

SHE: Julia! What happened? You look shaken. Are you all right?

JULIA: (smearing her tears with the back of her hand, tidying her hair behind her ears) Yes…more or less… yes.

SHE: (doubtful) Mmhhh: I do not know… you look….

JULIA: I am all right. I guess… I am all right.

SHE: (gently) Come’on. Please: tell me!

JULIA: I do not know how to explain. I feel empty.

SHE: Why?

JULIA: Just… because. I feel lonely suddenly. I will never make it.

SHE: Making what?

JULIA: I will never find what I am looking for.

Un tempo

I just do not understand what’s wrong with me: I even do not know how to describe. Whenever I meet a guy whom I like, and we fall in love, and we stay together…

(crying sweetly) Even then, I just cannot keep myself from continuing to search… Even if I am happy in a relationship, I cannot refrain from looking: I observe other guys, I ask myself if it would work with that dark haired over at the bar, or the tall one in the metro, or the young one in the shop.

Un tempo

It’s like I want them all! It is destroying me…

SHE: Maybe it’s because you never found everything you needed in any of the men you have been with?

JULIA: I already do not know! I can be very happy with a guy, really… care about him and I want no other guy actually… But I cannot control it: my screening radar is always on, constantly! I cannot shut it off. Always weighing odds, pondering, exploring and imagining or even anticipating possibilities…

Un tempo

Why is it so?

Un tempo

It’s like every time I have to look for something else… something more… No matter what I have, I look elsewhere… As if the WHAT is secondary and the searching, the waiting, the discovering is the main purpose…

Un tempo

In fact I do not know WHAT I am looking for. I could not even describe it! Whenever I think I have found the right man, turns out it isn’t!

Un tempo

That, after all, I didn’t know.

Un tempo

She squeezes her hand

Yes, I feel alone. Desperately alone. Irrevocably alone. For eternity. And I do not think there is a cure against that.

SHE hugs Julia. A deep empathy arises from the mute scene.

(darkness)

NOTES

PROLOGUE

SHE comes home after a night out.

We learn of a curious relationship with her lover whom we never see: the monologue conveys an impression of solitude (is she alone? Is there really someone else in the room?). The repetitive, monotonous and mechanical answer “Of course I do” may be a sign that she is loosing her mind, maybe a beginning of schizophrenia. We perceive her relationship to the imaginary lover starting as one of worship and apparent submission turning into the beginning of a process of detachment. The money and the responsibilities are used as tools (excuses) for divide and a way to cope with the pain of the process. We see the very early stages of the detachment process. From here it can get back to normal or lead to full emancipation.

The rest of the play is a recount how this fragile moment of awakening has come about: it describes the emancipation of SHE from the love of HIM. More exactly it attempts to describe how the emancipation process starts.

EACH LOVE IS A REFUGE

Martha: finds refuge in her moral values, the church, order and discipline and sacrifice. She finds refuge in her certainties, which make her pontificate and moralize.

SHE gets “trapped” by Martha’s parochial point of view on marriage. Martha’s failure in relationships is turned into gratuitous, vicious and malicious nastiness. In her fantasy, Martha takes SHE’s place and revels in playing out what could be for herself.

EACH LOVE IS A PRISON

SHE: finds refuge in the escape (e.g. from her marriage - cowardice) and in intellect (e.g. with her lover). She thinks that knowledge - the Mind - can defeat the Loneliness. Martha shows her the power of Guilt.

Her love for Him is overwhelming and disproportionately dependent (chains). As such this love is a prison of which she must learn to free herself.

She will manage to break some of her chains (notably through Desire), and now we understand that it is a new, but still fragile, SHE that has entered the apartment in the Prologue.

EACH PERSON IS A REFUGE

David finds refuge in his pursuit of redemption, and the suffering the guilt entails. This is something Martha ultimately understands and shares.

Martha sees the possibility of finding refuge in David by proposing to take over David’s guilt. But David actually does not seek redemption per se, or he will loose the refuge (the excuse for suffering). David must find refuge in himself, not in someone else.

EACH PERSON IS A PRISON

Julia: refuge in the spontaneous and orgiastic love of Nature, sex, proliferation, multiplication. Julia is trapped by her insecurity, need for recognition and her inability to make choices. It’s not about making the right choice, but to be sure not to make the wrong choice. Hence she delegates those choices to others. Hence need for multiplicity. It is a way to be easily accepted by others (short term). She is herself a self made prison and she hands her keys to someone else. Desires (sexual and others) cloud the issue for her. She does not make love, she is made love to.

Refusing to commit to a relationship, or to call herself into question, she externalizes criticism and the responsibility of the (potentially wrong) choice. And she can let her desire be.

CONSIDERATIONS

Symbolically, at the end we understand that the curious metal stripes piercing through the room divider are knives and the drips of liquid are probably blood. It is a metaphor guiding the viewer throughout the play, suggesting SHE wants to free herself from the prison which is the Love of HE: SHE has killed her Lover as the ultimate way to acquire her freedom (breaking the last chains). The repetitive “Of course I do” are a pre-recorded sentence that plays over and over activated by a mysterious mechanism. The very high shelves filled with books epitomize the uselessness of intellectual knowledge alone. The high windows refer to the difficulty to access freedom, to escape. The apartment is the “normal” life, the prison. The lover is invisible yet its presence can be felt behind the room divider, creating a “weight” shift towards that side of the stage (reinforced by the glances and the physical postures of SHE as she addresses HIM). This is why the bathtub and the easy chair and the source of light (lamp) are important on the left hand side of the stage. Of the four characters, SHE is the only one with a chance to make it through: at the cost of guilt, pain, doubt. All others remain imprisoned in their limitations.

BACKGROUND

Nietzsche: Each love is a refuge and a prison. Each Person is a refuge and a prison.

Love cannot be outsourced (the family, the attentive husband, the church). It cannot be found through multiplication (of lovers, of clothes and possessions). And it is not to be found in the books or the intellect (reading and learning helps understand life but not to LIVE it).

The described variations on how love is a refuge for a human being prove ineffective ultimately because each love, besides a refuge, is also a prison.

Love implies attachment, dependency, heaviness (chains).

Once we have abandoned the hope of finding an acceptable refuge in love, we understand the person in itself is also a prison (BEING is a prison).

One must free itself from this prison to acquire a fully independent course of action (purpose, destiny) in life. To rise as a FREE being. Not fate, but deterministic action, will and choice. This is the new Antigone (she doesn’t die, but is reborn).

EARLY NOTES (discarded)

At the disco. They drink. They talk: Martha has a rage against men: profiteers, unfaithful bastards, church, family values etc. Julia (from a conservative background, but wants to break free): agrees, with restraint, but does not stop eyeing the boys on the dance floor. SHE theorizes about Love, free sex, spiritual growth, idealized relationship. Julia and SHE get seduced by two guys. Martha is left alone (she is not pretty). Julia ends up kissing her cavalier, then it is suggested they go making love in a dark corridor or toilets. SHE flirts with the other guy: small kisses (experience) fugitive caresses, in the end before the situation becomes too serious, she leaves him.

They end up in the one room apartment. They drink, talk, dance, kiss etc. SHE drags the man to the bed; they undress partially and start making love on the bed, half hidden by the divider (low light, some noises of love making). After the sex she pushes the guy out of the apartment, violently, brutally. He does not even have the time to fully dress. She throws his pants and shoes at him, through the door as he is thrown out of the apartment. SHE starts crying. Asks forgiveness to HE. And the usual Do you love me? Un tempo. HE: Of course I do.

One scene: SHE has been to an exhibition. She talks about Magritte first (illusion, ontology, symbol vs. Icon etc, then Pollock (chaos theory, quantum mechanics) finally Rothko, (the infinite, universal depth … death) all in a very theoretical/doctoral/intellectual way.

One scene: she talks about Antigone. Turns into a literary analysis (destiny versus free will, individual versus society (what is acceptable, HE is married and he left his family to go with SHE, that she made him leave to have him to herself), relationship to authority (her relationship to the authority of HE: she appears subdued to him, to his qualities etc but turns out she has imprisoned him and she is the dominating force. She sequestered HE physically to get to his Intellect/moral values.)