This dialogue comes from a slightly gimmicky play that I wrote while in college. I had just finished reading a volume of Beckett, and I wanted to try to make something modern, although, in my heart I knew that the era of modern theater had given way to contemporary or post-modern.
The actors were on the stage but they carried tape recorders to play their lines. There were a few lines that they would perform live but for the most part it was all taped.
There were a few other gimmicky things that are important for production and understanding the entirety of the play, but they are sort of complicated and boring. Here is the fun:
Hatchinson
Here we lie side by side. An ancient bone pile by the sea. We eat the land. The land eats us. Then the sea eats everything. A fieldful have slipped away with the shore. Blackened ships manned by blackened bones set into a calm black earth. Nothing left now. No jib. No spanker. No leg-of-mutton sail even. To chew? To gnaw more like it. TO GNAW
(Pause)
Cleave through to the raw, naked shore. GNAW THROUGH! A length of blackened box a century. Slow progress. But we get to the waves in time. The others did. A fieldful did. And soon we'll set to drift, you and me. Prisoners borne on a prison ship from a prison earth to a prison sea. From locked keep to locked keep. Then?
(Pause)
Oh, then...more of the same. We go, a piece at a time. They're all gone now. All except us.
Joseph
(With controlled anger)
One hundred and three thousand, two hundred and TWO times you've blown your mind out. One hundred and three thousand, two hundred and TWO times I've blown mine out. Once a night. AND I"M FUCKING TIRED OF IT!
Hatchinson
(Coolly, matter of fact)
And you were late on every game
