[At curtain rise, Felice, the male star of an acting company on a tour which

has been far more extensive than was expected, comes out of a shadowy area,
hesitantly, as if fearful of the light. He has a quality of youth without being
young. He is a playwright, as well as player, but you would be likely to take
him for apoet with sensibilities perhaps a little deranged. His hair is almost
shoulder length, he wears a great coat that hangs nearly to his ankles; it has a
somewhat mangy fur collar. It is thrown over his shoulders. We see that he
wears a bizarre shirt — figured with astrological signs — “period” trousers of
soft-woven fabric in slightly varying shades of grey: the total effect is
theatrical and a bit narcissan.
He draws a piano stool into the light, sits down to make notes for a monologue
on a scratch pad]
FELICE. [slowly, reflectively, writing] To play with fear is to play with fire. [He
looks up as if he were silently asking some question of enormous consequence]
— No, worse, much worse, than playing with fire. Fire has limits. It comes to a
river or sea and there it stops, it comes to stone or bare earth that it can’t leap
across and there is stopped, having nothing more to consume. But fear —
[There is the sound of heavy door slamming off stage]
Fox? Is that you, Fox?

[The door slams again]

Impossible! [He runs his hands through his long hair] Fear! The fierce little
man with the drum inside the rib cage. Yes, compared to fear grown to panic
which has no — what? — limits, at least none short of consciousness blowing out
and not reviving again, compared to that, no other emotion a living, feeling
creature is capable of having, not even love or hate, is comparable in — what? —
force? — magnitude?
CLARE. [from off stage] Felice!
FELICE. — There is the love and the — substitutions, the surrogate attachments,
doomed to brief duration, no matter how — necessary … — You can’t, you must
never catch hold of and cry out to a person, loved or needed as deeply as if loved
— “Take care of me, I’m frightened, don’t know the next step!” The one so loved
and needed would hold you in contempt. In the heart of this person — him-her
— is a little automatic sound apparatus, and it whispers, “Demand! Blackmail!
Despicable! Reject it!”

CLARE. [in the wings] Felice!

FELICE. Clare! … What I have to do now is keep her from getting too panicky to
give a good performance … but she’s not easy to fool in spite of her — condition.

[Clare appears in the Gothic door to the backstage area. There is a ghostly spill
of light in the doorway and she has an apparitional look about her. She has,
like her brother, a quality of youth without being young, and also like Felice an
elegance, perhaps even arrogance, of bearing that seems related to a past
theatre of actor-managers and imperious stars. But her condition when she
appears is ‘stoned’ and her grand theatre manner will alternate with
something startlingly coarse, the change occurring as abruptly as if fanother
personality seized hold of her at these moments. Both of these aspects, the
grand and the vulgar, disappear entirely from the part of Clare in “The
Performance,” when she will have a childlike simplicity, the pure and sad
precociousness of a little girl.
A tiara, several stones missing, dangles from her fingers. She gives a slight
startling laugh when she notices it, shrugs, and sets it crookedly on her
somewhat dishelved and streaked blonde head. She stars to move forward,
then gasps and loudly draws back]
Now what?

CLARE. [with an uncertain laugh] I thought I was —

FELICE. Apparitions this evening?

CLARE. No, it was just my — shadow, it scared me but it was just my shadow,
that’s all. [She advances unsteadily from the doorway] — A doctor once told me
that you and I were the bravest people he knew. I said, “Why, that’s absurd, my
brother and I are terrified of our shadows.” And he said, “Yes, I know that, and
that’s why I admire your courage so much …”
[Felice starts a taped recording of a guitar, then faces downstage]
FELICE. Fear is a monster vast as night —

CLARE. And shadow casting as the sun.

FELICE. It is quicksilver, quick as light —

CLARE. It slides beneath the down-pressed thumb.

FELICE. Last night we locked it from the house.

CLARE. But caught a glimpse of it today.

FELICE. IN a corner, like a mouse.

CLARE. Gnawing all four walls away.

[Felice stops the tape]

CLARE. [straightening her tiara] Well, where are they, the ladies and
gentlemen of the press, I’m ready for them if they are ready for me.
FELICE. Fortunately we —

CLARE. Hmmm?

FELICE. — don’t have to face the press before this evening’s performance.

CLARE. No press reception? Artists’ Managemtn guaranteed, Magnus

personally promised, no opening without maximum press coverage on this
fucking junket into the boondocks — Jesus, you know I’m wonderful with the
press … [She laughs hoarsely]
FELICE. You really think so, do you, on all occasions?
CLARE. Know so.

FELICE. Even when you rage against fascism to a honking gaggle of — crypto-
fascists? … With all sheets to the wind?

CLARE. Yes, sir, especially then. — You’re terrible with the press, you go on and
on about “total theatre” and, oh, do they turn off you and onto me … Cockroach!
Huge! [She stamps her foot] Go! — I read or heard somewhere that cockroaches
are immune to radiation and so are destined to be the last organic survivors of
the great “Amen” — after some centuries there’s going to be cockroach actors
and actresses and cockroach playwrights and — Artists’ Management and —
audiences … [She gestures toward the audience]
FELICE. Have you got an “upper”?

CLARE. One for emergency, but —

FELICE. I think you’d better drop it.

CLARE. I never drop and upper before the interval. What I need now is just
coffee. [She is struggling against her confusion] — Tell Franz to get me a carton
of steaming hot black coffee. I’m very annoyed with Franz. He didn’t call me …
[She laughs a little] — Had you forbidden him to?
[There is no response]
So I’m left to while the long night away in an unheated dressing room in a state
theatre of a state unknown — I have to be told when a performance is
canceled! — or won’t perform! [Her tiara slips off. She crouches unsteadily to
retrieve it]
FELICE. The performance has not been canceled and I called you, Clare.

CLARE. After I’d called you.

FELICE. I have some new business to give you, so come here.

CLARE. I’ll not move another step without some — Oh, light, finally something
almost related to daylight! But it’s not coming through a window, it’s coming
through a —
FELICE. [overlapping] — There’s a small hole in the backstage wall. [He
crosses to look out at the audience] They’re coming in.
CLARE. Do they seem to be human?

FELICE. No — Yes! It’s nearly curtain time, Clare.

CLARE. Felice! Where is everybody? — I said, “Where is everybody?”

FELICE. Everybody is somewhere, Clare.

CLARE. Get off your high horse, I’ve had it! — Will you answer my question?
FELICE. No cancelation!

CLARE. No show!

FELICE. What then? — In your contrary opinion?

CLARE. Restoration of — order!

FELICE. What order?

CLARE. Rational, rational! [Her tiara falls off again]

FELICE. Stop wearing out your voice before the —

CLARE. Felice, I hear gunfire!

FELICE. I don’t!
CLARE. [sadly] … We never hear the same thing at the same time any
more, caro … [She notices a throne-chair, canopied wiht gilded wooden lions
on its arms: on the canopy, heraldic devices in gold thread] Why, my God, old
Aquitaine Eleanor’s throne! I’m going to usurp it a moment — [She mounts the
two steps to the chair and sits down in a stately fashion, as if to hold court]
FELICE. [holding his head] I swear I wouldn’t know my head was on me if it
wasn’t aching like hell.
CLARE. What are you mumbling?

FELICE. An attack of migraine?

CLARE. You’d better take your codeine.

FELICE. I’ve never found that narcotics improve a performance, if you’ll forgive
me for that heresy, Clare.

CLARE. — Is this tour nearly over?

FELICE. It could end tonight if we don’t give a brilliant performance, in spite of

—

CLARE. Then it’s over, caro, all over … How long were we on the way here? All I
remember is that it would be light and then it would be dark and then it would
be light and then dark again, and mountains turned to prairies and back to
mountains, and I tell you honestly I don’t have any idea or suspicion of where
we are now.

FELICE. After the performance, Clare, I’ll answer any questions you can think
of, but I’m not going to hold up thte curtain to answer a single one now!

CLARE. [rising] — Exhaustion has — symptoms …

FELICE. So do alcohol and other depressants less discreetly mentioned.

CLARE. I’ve only had half a grain of —

FELICE. Washed down with liquor, the effect’s synergistic. Dr. Forrester told
you that you coul dhave heart arrest — on stage!
CLARE. Not because of anything in a bottle or box but —

FELICE. [overlapping] What I know is I play with a freaked out, staggering —

CLARE. [overlapping] Well, play with yourself, you long-haired son of a
mother!
FELICE. [overlapping] Your voice is thick, slurred, you’ve picked up —
vulgarisms of — gutters!
CLARE. [overlapping] What you pick up is stopped at the desk of any decent
hotel.
FELICE. [overlapping] Stop it! I can’t take any more of your —
CLARE. [overlapping] Truth!
FELICE. [overlapping] Sick, sick — aberrtations!
[There is a pause.]
CLARE. [like a child] When are we going home?
FELICE. — Clare, our home is a theatre anywhere that there is one.

CLARE. If this theatre is home, I’d burn it down over my head to be warm a few
minutes … You know I’m so blind I can’t go on without crawling unless you —

FELICE. Wait a minute, a moment, I’m still checking props — bowl of soapwater
but only one spool …

[Clare encounters the Gothic wood figure of a Madonna]

CLARE. — You know, after last season’s disaster, and the one before last, we
should have taken a long, meditative rest on some Riviera instead of touring
these primitive God-knows-where places.

FELICE. You couldn’t stop any more than I could, Clare.

CLARE. If you’d stopped with me, I could have.

FELICE. With no place to return to, we have to go on, you know.

CLARE. And on, till finally — here. I was so exhausted that I blacked out in a
broken-back chair.

FELICE. I’m glad you got some rest.

CLARE. [hoarsely] The mirrors were blind with dust — my voice is going, my
voice is practically gone!
FELICE. –Phone where? Piano tp. No. Table. — Yes, you never come on stage
before an opening night performance without giving me the comforting bit of
news that your voice is gone and … [imitating her voice] “I’ll have to perform in
pantomime tonight.”
CLARE. Strike a lucifer for me.

[He strikes a match and she comes unsteadily into the interior set: he gives her
a despairing look]
FELICE. — Why the tiara?

CLARE. [vaguely] It was just in my hand, so I put it on my head.