The audience has settled in the auditorium. A voice over the loudspeaker asks everyone to turn off their mobile phones. The darkness descends slowly over their heads and shoulders. Sinks over arms that touch here and there, spreads down over the red plush seats and bags that have been placed between feet, over shoelaces, then someone coughs, someone clears their throat as though they may never get another chance. They are here to listen to a one-hour monologue, Andreas is about to take the stage. He is sitting on the steps behind the thick curtains, he looks onto the stage, which is completely bare except for a pair of shoes that are glued to the floor. The shoes and a small area around them will be illuminated by a pool of light in a few seconds. Andreas will slip his bare feet into the shoes and stand for an hour without moving, and talk. A great physical challenge awaits him; after a while he will start to feel dizzy and possibly lose all feeling in his legs. But he’ll cope; he’s spoken to the Royal Guards at the palace and learned a few smart tricks for how to deal with it.
* * *
The curtains open, a spotlight focuses on the shoes in the middle of the stage. Andreas is still sitting hidden on the stairs, or, to be more precise, he is sitting curled around his own body, he’s holding his knees, someone comes over and whispers, Now, but Andreas shows no sign of having heard what was said to him. He holds on to his own body on the stairs.* The person gives up, shrugs to someone else who is standing farther away clasping his brow, to show that it’s impossible. The person holding his brow takes a couple of resolute steps toward Andreas, who is sitting curled around his own body, and silently shakes Andreas’s arms, trying to open a gap between Andreas’s upper body and thighs, but doesn’t succeed. He makes an obscene gesture in front of Andreas’s eyes, which are probably looking down at a step. Then he does a kind of pirouette around himself, silently throws up his hands, goes over to the other person, who has watched this performance with a rather disinterested look on his face. They walk away.
* * *
In the meantime, people have started to titter about the pair of shoes in the middle of the stage that have not been filled by anyone. The fact that it’s taken so long, and is still taking time, that nothing has happened yet, seems to amuse them, they probably see it as an allusion to other plays, largely from the postwar period. And after the first wave of laughter comes the first silence, Andreas knows the pattern; the uncertainty spreads; something is not right after all, maybe it’s not supposed to be like this, maybe we laughed too soon. They rummage for sweets, they check that they HAVE turned off their mobile phones, which they have of course done. Ragnhild has even taken out the battery! Then, after about ten minutes, the first person gets up and leaves, which then makes the most intellectual member of the audience burst into a loud solo laughter that echoes around the auditorium, to show everyone that he has understood. (And this is what he has understood, or rather, these are the associations that now make him laugh: He sees the performance as a commentary on the futility of existence. There is a pair of empty shoes on the stage, they don’t move, no one moves, the stage has been empty for ten minutes now, which has provoked the audience to start moving, in other words THE AUDIENCE IS NOW GETTING TO ITS FEET, and in a while the auditorium will be as empty as the shoes, but precisely BECAUSE the stage has not been able to produce a movement, a being; a pair of legs, a person. In other words, in some strange and paradoxical way, art has interfered with life and done something to it. In other words, art has conveyed a moral, and my goodness, it’s been a long time since there was evidence of the will to do that, and if he, a member of the audience, were to call this form of theater anything, he would absolutely and without a doubt call it action theater. He’s enjoying the obvious paradox!) And the others think about it and decide that it’s actually quite funny, and deeply tragic. In the meantime, another person has gone over to Andreas and asked him in as quiet a hiss as possible if Andreas could PLEASE get a GRIP on himself, that this can’t carry on much longer, that he’ll get the boot if he doesn’t pull himself together. Andreas sits curled around his body and doesn’t move, thinks if they just wait for fifteen minutes. But there is no way for Andreas to communicate this to the person, because if he does, terrible things will happen, the world as we know it will collapse. He can’t say a word until fifteen minutes are up. The person walks away. Makes a movement with his hands, and the curtains close. Before fifteen minutes have passed. As usual. A thunderous applause erupts. Finally, Andreas stands up and goes out onto the stage to receive his applause, as if it’s something he has to do. He shrugs apologetically, opens the curtains just enough, puts his big toe into the shoe as if he were dipping it in water, quickly pulls his foot back as though the water were cold, laughs a little, then gives another apologetic shrug, the audience applauds, Andreas bows, exits left in twelve long strides and steps on the last gap between the planks perfectly, he has to hit it in such a way that the gap divides the sole of his foot in two.