by Edward Albee
LOUISE NEVELSON, seventies, tells about wood and how she became a world-renowned sculptor.
Scene
A stage.
Time
Now.
NEVELSON
OK. I want to talk to you about wood. I was wandering around one day and I saw some wood lying in the street—discarded stuff—and I said that looks nice and so I carted it home and I put it in my studio. And then I did it the next day; oh, that looks nice, and so I took it home. And I had people help me. We’d go out for a walk and find wood—broken chairs, banisters, flat pieces, anything—and I’d collect it. I’d worked with wood before. I mean, I’d made sculpture out of wood and ceramic and all, but this was something else. I filled my house with it! My studio! My living area! Mike’s room! My kitchen! The hallways! Everywhere! Finally it was floor to ceiling . . . piled up everywhere! I moved the furniture out so I could have wood. I knew I was going to do something with it, but I didn’t know what. And finally I did. What is all this good wood doing lying around my house in piles? Why is it lying there? Why don’t I . . . and suddenly I knew! Stand it up! Make it all vertical!
And it began to happen.
Small at first, and then bigger.
And then I got the idea of stacking up wooden boxes and putting wood inside them.
And suddenly there it was! And I had a show of it and it was wonderful! It was a whole world! And I looked at it and I started to dance.
[She dances.]
And I danced, and I danced. I never felt more free in my life.
[Stops; points.]
There it was! My world! And I went on.
Black; black; and then I did white, and then I did gold. And there it was.
There it all was.
All of a sudden I had become me, and I was that!
Well, no; not just like that. It took a few years and it was better and better and people looked and I had show after show and everything sold, and museums gave me whole rooms to fill, and . . . and I became very famous . . . and I stayed that way. If you finally come into yourself like I did, if you finally know the space you . . . occupy . . . well, then . . . you go on. You don’t relax; you don’t . . . bask in it. Now they want you; you’re famous and they’re throwing around words like great and magnificent, and so you go right on. You work harder than ever. You turn the world into one huge Nevelson. It was . . . fucking . . . wonderful. And what was wonderful was what I’d always known would happen—deep inside of me—if I could only ever find it, if I could only hang on.