what we worked on today

Customer (Brianne) enters space. [She wears a nametag labeling her as the “Teacher.”??] She sits in a chair facing away from the audience at the upstage end of the space. She listens.

Voice (Michelle, in audience, through distortion mic): “Please be aware that someone might be watching you from a hidden camera, so you must be on your best behavior at all times.” The Teacher nods.

Voice: “Please turn on the television.” The Teacher nods again, goes to the timer sitting on a table SR, and turns it on quickly and precisely (to 15 minutes).

Voice: “Please call the Learner in and flip the switch. If she does not comply with the rules stated beforehand, please press the first button in front of you.

The Teacher nods again, calls out, “Go!” and flips a switch on the table.

The Waitress (Michelle) hurriedly enters from audience to DSL with a tray holding a ticking timer in her left hand (or she sets the timer for one minute?). [She is also wearing a nametag, but it says, “Learner.”??]

Customer crosses back to chair (SL) and sits. Waitress crosses to SR of table. Timers tick.

• Customer holds up a menu and slowly scans it, eyes intensely focused, moving her head slowly from the left side of the menu to the right side of the menu in fifteen seconds. Then moving in the same way right to left in fifteen seconds. Repeat both directions once more.

• Simultaneously, Waitress pours water in four directions.

(Timer buzzes?)

Customer sings a list of objects [while eating soup??]. Waitress intermittently turns on and off a fluorescent lamp. Each time the light goes on, Customer flinches, but keeps singing. The list:

Chair
Table
Desk lamp
Clipboard
Egg timer
Light switches
Memory cards
Buzzer
Rhinoceros mask
Cups of coffee
Shoe
Horn
Steam
Race
Helmet
Captain
Forest
Staple
Balcony

Recorded voice (Kimi): “Each morning, they would put on the masks and perform their roles for the neighborhood; a signpost to the world that everything was as it should be.”

Waitress delivers mask to Customer, goes back to table and takes mask for herself. Both the waitress and the customer put on masks. Customer faces US, Waitress faces DS.

From opposite ends of the stage, on a diagonal, the waitress and the customer alternately yell the following at one another.

Waitress: “I once had a healer tell me that guilt is a useless emotion. I believe her. But then I begin to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. What is this? Meta-guilt?”

(pick up change gesture; pick up pencil gesture; juggle mask away from face to right; mask back to face)

Customer: “Is the guilt greater or lesser because of distance?”

Both make half turn and one step closer; Waitress faces US, Customer faces DS.

Waitress: “I once had a healer tell me that guilt is a useless emotion. I believe her. But then I begin to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. What is this? Meta-guilt?”

(masks become trays; pouring water gesture 4 times, each time getting closer to each other)

Customer: “Is the guilt greater or lesser because of distance?”

Waitress and Customer circle as they repeat their lines to each other.

Then, over the dialogue below...
• Customer: polishing coffee cup gesture with plate.
• Waitress: heavy trays gesture into stacking plates on arm... plates get heavier and heavier as she sinks to the ground.

Waitress: I do not order your immortality. I can no longer live without you. That need overwhelms us. That’s why anguish bursts forth: because the need pushes us toward the realization – no matter what, yes, I must die.

Customer: There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb it doesn’t eat. The other side of the scene is the paradoxical refined magnificent love of the wolf. It’s not difficult for the ewe to love the lamb. But for the wolf? The wolf’s love for the lamb is such a renunciation, it’s a Christ-like move, it’s the wolf’s sacrifice – it’s a love that could never be requited. This wolf that sacrifices its very definition for the lamb, this wolf that doesn’t eat the lamb, is it a wolf? Is it still a wolf?

Waitress: Why does the idea that you are going to eat me up fill me with such pleasure and such terror? It’s to get this pleasure that you need the wolf. The wolf is the truth of love, its cruelty, its fangs, its claws, our aptitude for ferocity.

Customer lays her plate on top of the stack and Waitress falls to ground, spilling plates everywhere.

Kimi (recorded) sings the following several times:

Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

At the same time Kimi is singing:
• Waitress tries to sing with her while picking up the plates.
• Customer hands out light switches to audience members and instructs them to turn them on and off at will. When they do this, a buzzer will sound
• Customer operates this buzzer. Each time buzzer goes, Waitress goes into shock, then continues her task and singing as she is able.

At the end of the song, Waitress (kneeling behind table): “Mother, may I fill the glasses with water?”

Customer speaks to audience: “I’m really sorry. The researcher told me I had to do it. If she were here I could argue with her, but I don’t think she can even hear me. I feel really guilty, I mean, I could have been you in this experiment. If you want to switch places … but I think we have to stay in theses roles. You know the moves. Enter the room, stop, say Mother may I fill the glasses with water, proceed after confirmation, and fill glasses C, M, O, T, H, D, R, K, W, V, Q, A, L, E, and P, in that order. You know the moves.” The Teacher looks around nervously. "I don't think we really should be talking. Not that I don't want to talk to you. But I think in the rules it states that there should be no contact between us. I'm sorry."

• While Customer is speaking, Waitress moves (gesture dance) to SL, ends with plates held above head.

Without turning, the Teacher says, “You didn’t say ‘Mother, may I fill the glasses with water?’”

Waitress spills all the plates again.

Waitress: "The danger is when you create a world, designed as a whole and for a whole people, made up of two individuals. This world-of-two depends for its survival on a single other person. The world-of-two is immediately surrounded and threatened by death. Death closes in around it tightly. Love immortalizes me. Only that which gives me life can take it away from me. That which gives, gives to enjoy, that which gives to enjoy, gives to fear its loss. Give to lose. The gift and its opposite."

[?? - Waitress looks at audience member and says, "Zoom. Fourteen minutes. Zoom. Another fourteen minutes. Zoom."]

Customer: "That is incorrect." She lays down tip on table and repeats, "That is incorrect"

Customer and Waitress dance. [?? - Audience member (instructed earlier? or sparked by an action?) sounds buzzer intermittently. Each time buzzer sounds, there is a misstep.]

Dance becomes more and more chaotic and clumsy. Customer and Waitress are driven further and further apart.

At end of dance, both Customer and Waitress flip off switches around their necks, and we hear recorded scream.

Waitress and Customer look at audience.

Recorded Voice: [Something along the lines of...] “You have just taken part in an experiment. You voluntarily participated. You were the subject of our experiment. Thank you for your participation.”