by James Reston
KATHY: Bob . . . I . . .
BOB (Abstract): Anyway . . . I just didn’t feel like telling anyone. I mean, I wasn’t all that upset. I was a little upset, mostly because I thought I ought to be more upset, but as for your actual grief, well. Anything interesting happen to you this semester . . . Kathy? (KATHY has risen) Going? (KATHY is going out the door) Give my regards to that guy you‘re rescuing at the moment; what’s-his-name? (KATHY is gone. HE shrugs. The cat wanders in form the hallway) Hey, cat, what are you doing hanging around here? All the humans gone west. (Puts the cat outside and shuts the door. HE nudges the tiles with his toe and looks around at the empty room) Hey, guys, guess what happened to me? I want to tell you about this really incredible thing that happened to me . . . (HE is faltering now, choking slightly, but HE doesn’t know HE’s about to crack. His body is doing something strange, unfamiliar) Hey, what’s happening . . . (HE’s crying now) Oh, fuck, come on, come on. Shit, no, no . . .
Fade.
END OF PLAY
STILL LIFE
Emily Mann
About Emily Mann
Born in Boston in 1952, Emily Mann received a B.A. from Harvard and an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her first play, Annulla Allen: Autobiography of a Survivor, premiered at The Guthrie Theater’s Guthrie 2 under her direction in 1977 and was later produced at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and on Earplay. Mann’s most recent play, Execution of Justice, which depicts the trial of Dan White for the killing of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, was commissioned by the Eureka Theatre Company of San Francisco and first produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville, as co-winner of its 1984 Great American Play Contest. Mann’s directorial credits include the BAM Theater Company’s productions of He and She and Oedipus the King, the Guthrie’s The Glass Menagerie and ATL’s A Weekend near Madison, which subsequently ran Off Broadway. She has been the recipient of a CAPS grant, a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA artistic associateship, and is a 1985 McKnight Fellow. In 1983 Mann received the Rosamond Gilder Award from the New Drama Forum for “outstanding creative achievement in the theatre.”
Production History
Still Life premiered at the Goodman Studio Theatre in October 1980, and was then produced at American Place Theatre in New York in early 1981. The American Place production, under Mann’s direction, won Obies for playwriting, direction and all three performances, as well as for best production. The play has subsequently been performed around the world—in Johannesburg, at the Avignon and Edinburgh festivals, in London and Paris, and in major regional theatres and universities throughout the United States.
Playwright’s Note
Still Life is about three people I met in Minnesota during the summer of 1978. It is about violence in America. The Vietnam War is the backdrop to the violence at home. The play is dedicated to the casualties of the war—all of them.
The play is a “documentary” because it is a distillation of interviews I conducted during that summer. I chose the documentary style to insure that the reality of the people and events described could not be denied. Perhaps one could argue about the accuracy of the people’s interpretations of events, but one cannot deny that these are actual people describing actual events as they saw and understood them.
The play is also a personal document. A specialist in the brain and its perceptions said to me after seeing Still Life that the play is constructed as a traumatic memory. Each character struggles with his traumatic memory of events and the play as a whole is my traumatic memory of their accounts. The characters speak directly to the audience so that the audience can hear what I heard, experience what I experienced.
I have been obsessed with violence in our country since I came of age in the 1960s. I have no answer to the questions I raise in the play but I think the questions are worth asking. The play is a plea for examination and self-examination, an attempt at understanding our own violence and a hope that through understanding we can, as Nadine says, “come out on the other side.”
Production Notes
The actors speak directly to the audience. The rhythms are of real people’s speech, but may also at times have the sense of improvisation one finds with the best jazz musicians: the monologues should sometimes sound like extended riffs.
The play is written in three acts but this does not denote act breaks. Rather, the acts represent movements and the play should be performed without intermission. The ideal running time is one hour and 30 minutes.
Lyrics for “No More Genocide” by Holly Near
Verse 1
Why do we call them the enemy
This struggling nation that we’re bombing ’cross the sea
we put in prison/now independent
Why do we want these people to die
Why do we say North and South
Oh why, Oh why, Oh why?
Chorus
Well, that’s just a lie
One of the many and we’ve had plenty
I don’t want more of the same
Genocide in my name
Genocide, no, no, no, no
No more genocide, no, no, no, no
No more genocide in my name
Verse 2:
Why are our history books so full of lies
When no word is spoken of why the Indian dies
Or that the Chicano loves the California land
Do our books all say it was discovered by white man.
Chorus
Verse 3:
Why are the weapons of the war so young
Why are there only older men around when it’s done
Why are so many of our soldiers black or brown
Do we say it’s because they’re good at cutting yellow people down.
Chorus
“No More Genocide” by Holly Near, Hereford Music, Hang in There © Redwood Records 1973.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Characters
MARK, an ex-marine, Vietnam veteran, husband, artist, lover, father.
CHERYL, his wife, mother of his children.
NADINE, his friend, artist, mother of three, divorcee, a woman with many jobs and many lives, 10-15 years older than Mark and Cheryl.
Time
The present.
Place
The setting is a long table with ashtrays, water glasses, Mark’s pictures and slides upon it. Behind it is a large screen for slide projection. The look is of a conference room or perhaps a trial room.
The director may also choose to place each character in a separate area, i.e. Cheryl in her living room (couch), Mark in his studio (framing table), Nadine at home or at a cafe table.
The Play
Still Life
ACT ONE
I
MARK snaps on slide of CHERYL: young, fragile, thin, hair flowing, quintessentially innocent.
MARK: This is a picture of my wife before.
(Lights up on CHERYL. Six months pregnant, heavy, rigid)
This is her now.
She’s been through a lot.
(Snaps on photographic portrait of himself. Face gentle. Halo of light around head)
This is a portrait Nadine made of me.
(Lights up on NADINE)
This is Nadine.
(Lights out on NADINE. Snaps on slide of marine boot and leg just below the knee)
This is a picture of my foot.
I wanted a picture of it because if I ever lost it,
I wanted to remember what it looked like.
(HE laughs. Fade out)
II
CHERYL:If I thought about this too much I’d go crazy.
So I don’t think about it much.
I’m not too good with the past.
Now, Mark, he remembers.
That’s his problem.
I don’t know whether it’s 1972 or 1981.
Sometimes I think about divorce.
God, I don’t know.
Divorce means a lot of nasty things
like it’s ove
r.
It says a lot like
Oh yeah. I been there. I’m a divorcee. . . . Geez.
You could go on forever about that thing.
I gave up on it. No.
You know, I wasn’t willing to give up on it,
and I should have,
for my own damn good.
You look:
It’s all over now,
it’s everywhere.
There are so many men like him now.
You don’t have to look far to see how
sucked in you can get.
You got a fifty-fifty chance.
III
NADINE:When I first met Mark, it was the big stuff.
Loss of ego, we shared everything.
The first two hours I spent with him and what I thought
then is what I think now, and I know just about everything
there is to know, possibly.
He told me about it all the first week I met him.
We were discussing alcoholism.
I’m very close to that myself.
He said that one of his major projects
was to face all the relationships he’d been in
where he’d violated someone.
His wife is one.
He’s so honest he doesn’t hide anything.
He told me he beat her very badly.
He doesn’t know if he can recover that relationship.
I’ve met his wife.
I don’t know her.
I sometimes even forget . . .
He’s the greatest man I’ve ever known,
I’m still watching him.
We’re racing. It’s very wild.
No one’s gaming.
There are no expectations.
You have a foundation for a lifelong relationship.
He can’t disappoint me.
Men have been wonderful to me,
but I’ve never been treated like this.
All these—yes, all these men—
businessmen, politicians, artists, patriarchs—none of
them, no one has ever demonstrated this to me.
He’s beyond consideration.
I have him under a microscope.
I can’t be fooled.
I know what natural means.
I know when somebody’s studying.
I’ve been around a long time.
I’m forty-three years old.
I’m not used to being treated like this.
I don’t know. I’m being honored, cherished, cared about.
Maybe this is how everybody’s treated and I’ve missed out.
(Laughs)
IV
MARK: My biggest question to myself all my life was
How I would act under combat?
That would be who I was as a man.
I read my Hemingway.
You know . . .
The point is,
you don’t need to go through it.
I would break both my son’s legs
before I let him go through it.
CHERYL:I’m telling you—
if I thought about this, I’d go crazy.
So I don’t think about it.
MARK: (To CHERYL)
I know I did things to you, Cheryl.
But you took it.
I’m sorry.
How many times can I say I’m sorry to you?
(To audience)
I’ve, uh, I’ve, uh, hurt my wife.
NADINE:He is incredibly gentle. It’s madness to be treated this way. I don’t need it. It’s great without it.
CHERYL:He blames it all on the war . . . but I want to tell you . . . don’t let him.
MARK: My wife has come close to death a number of times, but uh . . .
NADINE:Maybe he’s in awe of me.
CHERYL:See, I read into things,
and I don’t know if you’re supposed to, but I do.
Maybe I’m too against his artist world,
but Mark just gets into trouble
when he’s into that art world.
NADINE:(Laughing)
Maybe he’s this way to his mother.
CHERYL:One day I went into the basement to take my clothes out of the washer,
Jesus I have to clean out that basement,
and I came across this jar . . .
NADINE:Especially from a guy who’s done all these dastardly deeds.
CHERYL:He had a naked picture of me in there,
cut out to the form,
tied to a stake with a string.
And there was all this broken glass,
and I know Mark.
Broken glass is a symbol of fire.
(Thinking)
What else did he have at the bottom?
NADINE:I accept everything he’s done.
CHERYL: Yeah, there was a razor blade in there
and some old negatives of the blood stuff, I think.
I mean, that was so violent.
That jar to me, scared me.
That jar to me said:
Mark wants to kill me.
Literally kill me for what I’ve done.
He’s burning me at the stake like Joan of Arc.
It just blew my mind.
NADINE:Those jars he makes are brilliant, humorous.
He’s preserving the war.
I’m intrigued that people think he’s violent.
I know all his stories.
He calls himself a time-bomb.
But so are you, aren’t you?
MARK: I don’t know what it would be for women.
What war is for men.
I’ve thought about it. A lot.
I saw women brutalized in the war.
I look at what I’ve done to my wife.
CHERYL:He keeps telling me: He’s a murderer.
I gotta believe he can be a husband.
MARK: The truth of it is, it’s different
from what we’ve heard about war before.
NADINE:He’s just more angry than any of us.
He’s been fighting for years.
Fighting the priests, fighting all of them.
MARK: I don’t want this to come off as a combat story.
CHERYL: Well, a lot of things happened that I couldn’t handle.
MARK: It’s a tragedy is what it is. It happened to a lot of people.
CHERYL:But not too, you know, not anything
dangerous or anything like that—
just crazy things.
NADINE:I guess all my friends are angry.
CHERYL:But, uh, I don’t know.
It’s really hard for me to bring back those years.
NADINE:Mark’s just been demonstrating it, by picking up weapons,
leading a group of men.
CHERYL:Really hard for me to bring back those years.
MARK: My brother . . .
He has a whole bunch of doubts now,
thinking, “Well I wonder what I’d do
if I were in a fight.”
And you don’t NEED to go through that shit.
It’s BULLSHIT.
It just chews people up.
NADINE:Leading a whole group into group sex, vandalism, theft.
That’s not uncommon in our culture.
MARK: You go into a VFW hall, that’s all men talk about.
Their trips on the war.
NADINE:I don’t know anyone who cares so much about his parents.
He’s trying to save them.
Like he sent home this bone of a man he killed, from Nam.
It was this neat attempt to demand for them to listen,
about the war.
MARK: I can’t talk to these guys.
There’s just no communication.
But we just . . . know.
We look and we know.
NADINE:See, he’s testing everyone all the time.
In very subtle ways.
He can’t believe I’m not shocked.
I t
hink that intrigues him.
CHERYL: Oh. I don’t know.
I want it suppressed as last as possible.
NADINE:He laughed at me once.
He’d just told a whole raft of stories.
He said: “Anyone who understands all this naughtiness
must have been pretty naughty themselves.”
Which is a pretty simplistic way of saying we can all do it.
MARK: I thought:
If I gave you the information,
I couldn’t wash my hands of the guilt,
because I did things over there.
We all did.
CHERYL: I would do anything to help suppress it.
MARK: (Quietly to audience)
We all did.
V
NADINE:You know what war is for women?
A friend of mine sent me this line:
I’d rather go into battle three times than give birth once.
She said Medea said that.
I stuck it on my refrigerator.
I showed it to Mark. He laughed for days.
MARK: When Cheryl, uh, my wife and I first met,
I’d just come back from Nam.
I was so frightened of her.
She had this long hair and she was really thin.
