Speech Acts
A short time later. Barbara has opened a small journal that she brought in earlier with the newspapers and papers.
Benjamin is in the middle of reading. The others eat.
BENJAMIN (Reads): “An older actor tells me that the spells in Macbeth by the witches are based upon real magic. And therefore you conjure evil every night, as actors we conjure whatever it is we’re supposed to conjure—and that was this actor’s explanation why most productions of Macbeth have accidents.” We conjure . . .
TIM: I’ve never heard that explanation . . .
BENJAMIN: We conjure . . .
(As Benjamin turns pages in the journal:)
BARBARA: I thought you would be interested in this, Tim.
TIM: I am.
RICHARD: How did you get—?
MARIAN: She just said—
JANE (For the second time): When Barbara visited Chicago last month—
RICHARD: I know Barbara visited— But who—?
BARBARA: Uncle Fred’s wife had it. She had it with Mom’s old stuff. When I was looking for Mom’s scrapbook for the Kennedy things, I found that. Benjamin must have been visiting them at some time and left it there in Chicago.
MARIAN: Most of it’s about theater.
BARBARA: I think it’s all about theater.
RICHARD (To Jane): I remembered about Barbara’s trip to Chicago.
MARIAN (To Benjamin, about the notebook): I’m sure you don’t remember that notebook.
BENJAMIN (Looking through the notebook): How do you know?
(The others smile.)
BARBARA (To Benjamin): Does it look familiar?
BENJAMIN: The handwriting . . .
BARBARA: Besides that.
Years ago, I remember you saying you wanted to write a book about the theater, Uncle. I think that’s what . . . Your notes. (To the others) His notes. For his theater book.
BENJAMIN (Reading): “It should be the most unnatural place to be. Talking as if in a normal voice so perhaps a big audience can hear or feel or see or whatever. You’re doing it again and again night after night. You’re doing it at a funny time of night, when most people are going home or are home. There’s nothing normal or natural about it, you’d think. But it can be the place where you feel most at home.”
JANE (To Tim): You’ve said things like that . . .
BENJAMIN (Another page, reads): “Barbara tells me a story about how she’d run backstage . . .”
BARBARA: When I was a kid.
BENJAMIN: “. . . in the hope that if she got to me fast enough in my dressing room she’d find—the character I’d just been playing. But no matter how fast she’d run she never got there in time. But she never found me either at first.”
BARBARA: I think Mom told me I once even cried.
BENJAMIN: “The person there wasn’t yet ‘Uncle Benjamin’ and it wasn’t still the character either, something halfway in between, she said.” “Halfway.”
BARBARA: I think I just wanted you to pay more attention to me. (Takes his arm) I still do . . . (Smiles, he smiles)
JANE: You are so handsome, Uncle.
(Benjamin gets up.)
BENJAMIN: Can I read this outside?
BARBARA: It’s stopped raining, Marian.
MARIAN: You want a cigarette?
BENJAMIN: I want a cigarette.
BARBARA: He wants a cigarette. Stay in the backyard.
(Benjamin goes.)
He has packs hidden all around the kitchen . . .
TIM: How does he remember where they’re hidden?
JANE: You remember what you want to remember.
MARIAN: They’re not really “hidden.”
BARBARA: “He was something halfway in between.” He must feel like that all the time . . .
MARIAN: Richard, Barbara found a photograph stuck in that notebook. Mom and Benjamin in swimsuits. Some place with palm trees. Uncle keeps it at his “inn . . .”
BARBARA (To Richard): You haven’t seen Uncle for a while, Richard.
RICHARD: He seems okay.
BARBARA: Does he? Marian thought it was the medicine. The “inn” makes him take all this medicine.
MARIAN: But then we found all these pills stuffed between the cushions of our couch. He comes home every weekend, and stuffs his pills into the couch . . .
BARBARA: So it’s not the medicine . . .
RICHARD: Is that safe to just . . .?
(Then:)
JANE (To the others): Tim and this teacher at Bard— (To Richard) Tim’s teaching a class there. (To Tim) You’re not just a waiter.
TIM: Just a workshop. Voice. For a few weeks.
RICHARD (To Jane): You told me. (To Tim) She’s very proud.
BARBARA: There’s nothing wrong with being a waiter.
JANE (Over this): And they’ve been talking, Tim and this teacher—
TIM: We know each other from Boston—
JANE (Over this): —about writing a book together—or an essay? For a theater magazine. (To Tim) It sort of relates to what Benjamin was reading to us. His—notes. (To Barbara) He’s still having auditions all the time.
RICHARD (To Tim): What’s the essay . . .?
TIM: Comes from a British philosopher. Our idea. We’re going to write it together. He’s a good writer.
JANE: So are you—
TIM: This philosopher developed a theory—of what he called “speech acts”? Those moments in life when by saying something we are also doing something.
MARIAN: What does that mean?
JANE: Tell them. Explain it. It’s interesting.
TIM: When I say, “I promise,” I’m in fact—making a promise. Doing a promise. Speaking becomes then also an act. A speech act. In a marriage ceremony, for example, the saying of “I do”—given the right circumstances—means you’re now married.
JANE: And Tim’s always felt that that somehow relates to theater. Speech acts.
TIM: Maybe it’s nothing. I’m not sure how to explain it exactly.
JANE (To Tim over the end of this): Tim’s friend, the teacher, thinks it could make an interesting article or book.
You get it published, and your name gets exposed in this magazine. Theater people read it—it helps, gets you noticed. Helps your acting.
TIM: That’s not why—
JANE: That’s what you said. (To the others) Tim is so worried that he’s going to be forgotten, here in Rhinebeck.
TIM: You’ve told them that.
MARIAN: John was telling me . . .
(This has gotten their interest.)
. . . this was when we were still seeing each other—
RICHARD: Maybe now . . . After . . .
MARIAN: Adam’s not dead yet, Richard.
RICHARD: I didn’t mean—
BARBARA (Explaining to Richard): John’s moved on.
MARIAN: I knew he would. Why shouldn’t he? (Shrugs)
BARBARA: John and Marian are no longer together.
MARIAN (To Barbara): I saw them in the CVS, she was just staring at him. (Shrugs) He told me about a famous painter—he was painting a portrait. A nude. And one day, he is painting her breasts, his model’s breasts, and he suddenly has the feeling—that they are empty. The model’s chest is empty. Then two days later, she commits suicide. That was interesting. “Art—” (To Tim) “whatever sort of art,” John said, “maybe it shows us things that otherwise we can’t see with our own eyes.”
(To Barbara, explaining) He (“Tim”) was talking about art doing things . . .
(Then:)
JANE: Growing up around Uncle—around an actor, it was always difficult for me to know what was true and what wasn’t true.
BARBARA: Was that just because he was an actor?
(Laughter.)
JANE: Maybe. But, still, all the “acting.” Was I the only one who felt this way?
MARIAN (Over this, to Barbara): We’ve talked about this too . . .
(Barbara nods.)
JANE: Benjamin being an actor—how strange or odd was that for us? Richard?
RICHARD: I have never thought about it.
JANE (Continues): Didn’t you ever wonder—what’s acting and what’s real? I think there are times when the acting can be more real—more emotionally raw and real . . .
BARBARA (A joke): Tim’s an actor too.
(Laughter.)
TIM: I’m never real. (He laughs)
JANE: He has an actress friend— (Turns to Tim) Kathy . . . Old girlfriend.
TIM: That was a long—
MARIAN: The one whose couch you slept on in Chicago?
JANE: Another one. (She “rolls her eyes”)
TIM: You told them about—?
JANE (To Marian): You don’t forget anything.
RICHARD (Helping him out): I’m listening.
JANE: She had the part of Shakespeare’s Rosalind. You know that play?—
TIM: They know it—
RICHARD: Do we?
JANE: Tell them. This is funny. Even if it’s a bit—chauvinistic.
RICHARD: Now I’m interested.
TIM: Rosalind literally runs the Forest of Arden. She has complete control. Doing this, doing that. Incredibly organized. And my friend, she was, shall we say, not the most organized “person”—
JANE: He means “woman.” Just say it.
TIM: “Female”—on this planet. But she suddenly—at home, during the run of the play—became super organized and efficient—in her private life, in her home life. Washes everything. Cleans the floors. No more dishes piled up in the sink. Her husband— (Turns to Jane) She’s been married now for like . . . I don’t know. (Continues) Her husband says to her after the run of the play is over, and their apartment’s a mess again—he says, in a hopeful, even desperate voice: “Kath, couldn’t you play a few more parts like Rosalind?”
(Laughter.)
MARIAN: Are we making too much noise?
BARBARA: Adam can’t hear—
MARIAN: I meant his mother—hearing us . . . Laughing.
(Then:)
BARBARA (To Tim): Benjamin can put that in his book about the theater.
MARIAN (To Tim): Or like a prayer . . .
RICHARD: What? What is?
MARIAN: Tim’s—what did you call it? Speech what?
TIM: Speech acts.
MARIAN: Prayer. Praying. To speak a prayer is an act of faith, isn’t it? It’s doing your faith. By speaking . . .
TIM: I think he even talks about prayer too. The philosopher. In a way like that . . .
(No one knows what to say. Then:)
I have another one for Benjamin’s book.
(Marian looks toward the living room.)
She can’t hear, Marian. They’re on the other side of the house.
JANE (To Tim): Go ahead.
TIM: The great playwright—Beckett?
(They know who he is.)
A friend of a friend of mine was actually doing one of Beckett’s plays and Beckett himself is directing him. This is obviously years and years ago. In Europe. The play’s a monologue, and he has to talk into a tape recorder and shuffle around this little room. In slippers.
Each day the designer brings in another pair of slippers for him to try. And each day Beckett says, “No, no, not right!” This goes on and on, days pass. They’ve tried twenty pairs of different slippers. Until finally the completely exasperated Beckett leaves rehearsal, goes to his nearby apartment, and comes back with—a pair of old, beaten-up bedroom slippers. The actor puts them on.
They sort of fit. He shuffles around. Beckett “listens.” And Beckett then says, “Now that’s what I was looking for.”
BARBARA: They were his slippers.
(Tim nods.)
MARIAN: So he wanted just to hear his own footsteps on the stage?
TIM: I suppose to him what he’d written was—personal . . .
MARIAN: But how would the audience know they were his slippers?
TIM: Maybe it didn’t matter to him. Maybe, he thought, they would just somehow know that it was—true.
(The lights fade.)