There are at least two entrances/exits.
There is a
makeshift workstation (or two) where bodies are
dissected.
The end of the play reveals a Rube Goldberg–like
machine made from the slaughter. It is one of the more
spectacular moments ever to be seen in the history of
theater.
CHARACTERS
CAROL: A midwife.
GARY: A clown, who becomes a maid, who dreams of
being a Fool.
JANICE: A maid.
BABY:A real baby. Son of Aaron and Tamora. A visibly
dark-skinned baby.
ACCENTS
Gary and Janice speak in slightly overdone British
cockney accents. The vernacular is not accurately
cockney but an American’s playfulness in writing
cockney. Carol uses an RP (the non-posh version) and
Janice and Gary use an East End London cockney (try
not to fall into parody; walk the line between realism
and awareness).
CORPSES
There is the appearance of at least one thousand corpses
on the stage (a painted backdrop or other theatrical
techniques that give the illusion of one thousand corpses
may be used; still there should be at least a few hundred
three-dimensional corpses). The corpses are soldiers,
senators, tribunes, and civilians. They are separated into
three mounds: An uncovered large mound at least
fourteen feet high, which takes up a third of the stage
and consists of clothed “unprocessed” corpses; a
medium-sized mound of “processed” male corpses that
are naked and stacked orderly; and a covered, processed
mound of women and children.
Though they are present in the larger mound, no
female corpses are ever seen. This is a dramaturgical
and ethical choice. This means Lavinia, Tamora, and the
Nurse are not seen. Dresses and jewelry are amongst the
items pillaged from the mound of unprocessed bodies,
but when we see these items they are not on the bodies
of the dead (they are either worn by Janice, put on the
male bodies by Gary, or free from bodies).
PROLOGUE
A lush curtain hides the world behind.
Carol enters. She receives entrance applause and isn’t
sure what’s happening. Perhaps they’re applauding because
her throat is slit, which it is. She holds it with one hand so
she won’t bleed out.
CAROL
Like God, a sequel hides inside an ending:
When time is up you pray that it’s extending.
For life, to cultured, and to the philistine
Once felt, is craved ’til thrills become routine.
But once routine the thrills, to thrill, must grow.
And if they don’t, an outrage starts to show.
So double up on savagery and war:
To satisfy you multiply the gore.
(Blood squirts from her throat. The squirt has a big arch.)
You make the aftermath a catapult
To pageantries of battle. The result:
A feasting on the gore ’til you are ill;
(More blood squirts.)
Until you vomit what did once ful ll.
To feast we start inside a banquet room,
But one whose table is a bloody tomb.
A scene so monstrous it sends up the savage,
(Blood squirts from both sides of her neck.)
Presumably to snu what makes us ravage.
But making spectacle of vengeance, do we pause?
Or spur it on with centuries of applause?
In grappling, here and now, with all that’s past
We wonder how to slow what’s been too fast?
(She takes her hand away from the wound. Blood runs
down her for the rest of the Prologue. What was funny is
now disturbing.)
Will we surpass the past or be its equal?
Will we a rm or break the bloody sequel?
Intensify ’til cruelty does cascade?
Or let the cleanup come? Enter the maid.
(Carol looks stage left as Gary enters, pulling a mop and
bucket with him. We hear entrance applause. Gary, who
doesn’t notice Carol, looks into the audience.)
GARY
A maid just enters and he gets applause?
Best rst day on the job that ever was.
(Climactic symphonic music plays. Carol grabs the curtain’s
rope for support, then passes out, pulling the curtain open
and disappearing amongst it [or she grabs the curtain and
pulls the entire thing down with her, disappearing
underneath it].
We are in Titus Andronicus’s opulent banquet room,
during the Roman Empire and a few hours after the coup,
which transpired at the end of Shakespeare’s Titus
Andronicus. Nothing has been cleaned. Instead, the banquet
room has been used as a storage space for the aftermath.
There are at least one thousand male corpses onstage. Stage
right, encroaching into the center, is chaos. Bodies are
everywhere, including a dump-heap mound of them, which
one may climb, that reaches at least fourteen feet high.
There’s a smaller covered mound of bodies as well [where
the women and children are kept and unseen throughout].
The stage left side of the room has been set up as a
workstation: various instruments, buckets, and
accoutrements needed for the task of cleaning/organizing
corpses.
The music comes to a climactic nish.)
