ACT [I]
PROLOGUE
POET/PRESENTER ENTERS FROM STAGE
LEFT ALONG THE APRON IN FRONT OF THE STAGE.
POET/PRESENTER
Ladies and gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs,
Meine Damen und Herren, guten Abend, good evening, bonsoir! Welcome one and
all! Permit me, the poet-presenter to introduce you to tonight's entertainment
-- if entertainment it is. It should be, though it may present itself more as a
tragedy. A real tragedy, whatever "real" may mean. But certainly a
glorious tragedy. Writers most often seem to just slip away, disappear, vanish,
as if into a crack in the world, or, maybe just a crack in the wall, excusing
themselves for having been here, hiding their exit behind the pile of books
they leave behind, their pile of literary droppings, so to speak. Or perhaps
they can be heard ever so softly begging for just a tiny bit more time or mehr
Licht or whatever -- but here, tonight, you will witness how the great Austrian
lyric poet & prose writer Ingeborg Bachmann, was called -- or, some, but
not I, have suggested -- called herself -- back all too early, making an exit
worthy of a Greek tragedy if such a ritual were not a religious anachronism. A
Happy End, death? It depends, I guess, on how you get there -- & through.
We will see or maybe not. You will see what you will --‚ or will want to see.
Now, what we can see, because it at least is still with us, is that her writing
did create a world, even tried to make a new, more complex world meant to bring
brain and heart together. A difficult bargain because the borders between those
two are not always open, or even porous.
One last note before we begin: Any resemblance with persons who have actually existed in
the past is due, or can be attributed, if such attribution is necessary or
desired, to my lack of imagination, or to my dislike of fiction, or to my
desire not to make up what doesn't need to be made up.
ACT [I]
SCENE 1
(I.B.'s room in Rome
INGEBORG
BACHMANN
I'm running out. (Laughs) No, no,
not going anywhere, certainly not running. Certainly not outside. No, no -- I
am nearly out: of cigarettes, of pills, "mother's little helpers,"
Henry used to call them. Oh, screw Henry, screw America Rome Vienna Vienna
(She throws empty pill bottle into
wastebasket, walks over to her writing desk, sits down heavily, crushes
cigarette out in ashtray then immediately lights another one, leans back &
blows smoke at the ceiling)
(she types with concentration for a
minute in deep silence; first slowly, picking out letters one by one, then
faster & faster: typewriter noises in an accelerating crescendo caught by
mic hidden behind it & broadcast, becoming a background noise to the scene;
brusque carriage returns scatter the ashes of the cigarette over the floor; the
Gitane in her left hand burns down to her fingers -- she just shakes it off as
if the burn didn't hurt at all, drops the minuscule butt to the floor)
Franza, Franza, you were the closest
to me, but had to die, we all have to, we all will. Easier done for real than
in a book, where the art of disappearing is a long drawn-out act, usually much
quicker in real life, well I can manage on either side of the curtain, I hope.
Yes, I can finish the book by writing into the middle now, returning to the
desert, that other empty page. Am in the desert anyway, Vienna
(She types fast for a minute, then
tears the page out of the machine, gets up and walks to the middle of the room,
another lit cigarette in her hand. She stops, looks at the page then reads it
aloud, as if trying out the sentences on an audience)
"Desert stars. Orion's belt
around my waist, a swing to swing on. Wing it on. In-between sand and sky. The
in-between that is not just the page but that is time, in-between time. Time is
in-between, in fact that is all time is: an in-between. What was the word Mohammed
used? Bar....bar... Bar-zakh -- that was in Wadi Halfa where in-between time
has become water, eternity -- to gain eternity go into the water, dive, dive
out of time.
(She drops the sheet of paper, looks
around, pauses for a moment, then says meditatively:)
Paul did jump, oh Paul, where are
you now, in time, in water, in eternity... Someone told me that in the desert
more people drown than die of thirst, flash floods far away sudden storms wash
down the dry wadi gully you sleep in...hoping to wake up in the morning...But
it is hope that kills us, hope that every time lets you down, brings you down,
but I will re-birth you, we're half-way there, we'll get there, all of us, all
of you, my many Wienerinnen, there will be more of you, you will resuscitate,
but before you can take flight, you will have to give up hope, no, not just
give it up, kill it, bury it, write it out of existence.
(She gets up, opens the window,
leans out, looks up & down the street while traffic noise of a busy Roman
evening enter in waves.)
Too much light. Day's too bright. My
bird won't fly. My bird won't come. Roll back the day, bring on the night.
(She leans further out, seeming to
strain ears and eyes as street noise Rome
[author’s note. Asked
by the TNL (Theatre National du Luxembourg) to be author-in-residence for the
2015-2016 season, I proposed as my second and final play, a 3-act drama concerning
the death of poet Ingeborg Bachmann. She died — mythically speaking — through
fire, falling asleep with a lit cigarette; though what actually caused the
3-week coma from which she wasn’t able to come out, was her addiction to pills.
In my play she is visited by the three most important men in her life:
playwright Max Frisch, composer Hans Werner Henze, and her greatest and
earliest love, Paul Celan. The play premiered, as a staged reading, at the TNL
on 14 June with Sascha Ley as Bachmann, Nickel Bösenberg as Frisch, Fred Frenay
as Henze, Raoul Schlechter as Celan & myself as the poet/presenter. (P.J.)]
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