The Script
By Will Klotz

Summary
A little bit after the style of ‘Waiting for Godot’, two characters discuss the nature of reality and the point and purpose of their lives. Are they real, or just scripted characters in someone else’s play.

Characters
One male, one female

Script

(Woman: is onstage crying, Man: enters from offstage.)

Man: What, what is it?

Woman:  I’m sorry, God, I’m sorry.

Man:  What? About what?

Woman:  Not being what you want me to be.  God, I’m sorry.

Man: (looking up)  I’m sorry too.

Woman:  What?

Man:  For letting you think that.

Woman:  But it’s true, and unavoidable.

Man:  No, it’s not true.  I just speak the words, I don’t write them.

Woman:  You don’t have to speak them.

Man:  I’m playing a part, this isn’t real.

Woman:  (walking into aisles of auditorium)  Its real, we’re alive, we’re speaking, its all real.

Man:  It’s just dialog.

Woman:  What isn’t?

Man:  Stop it, let it go, everything is fine.

Woman:  (to audience member)  You could have changed my life, you could have made it better.

Man:  (starting into auditorium)  Or worse.

Woman:  No, I think it would have been better.

Man:  (angry)  What gives you the right to say that.

Woman:  Nothing . . . free will, I guess.

Man:  Well, stop it, you’re just a character talking to an observer.

Woman:  No, we’re all people.

Man:  You are just a character of someone’s mind.

Woman:  What’s that make you then.

(Silence.  Man: walks back onto the stage.)

Woman:  (to another audience member)  Do I look real to you, can I just have come from nowhere?  (walking back to stage)  Am I just a Manifestation or am I real.  If I’m not real, then what is?  What is reality?

Man:  Stop it, this is impertinent.

Woman:  How can it be, whether or not I am from nothing is important.

Man:  I’m telling you that we are just playing a part now.

Woman:  But when does it stop?  We’re always what we are, and I just want to know what that is.

Man:  We’re from something bigger than ourselves, we live in the world and play our parts as we are asked.

Woman:  But do we?  (to audience member)  Have you played your part exactly as you were asked to?  Are you happy?  Do you want to be here now, even?  Do you want me to leave?  (to the Man)  Stop the questions, which can only stop the answers.

Man:  Why are you doing this?

Woman:  I want to see exactly what is and exactly what isn’t.  All the while just looking for my place in the world.  In the universe.

Man:  I don’t have those answers.

Woman:  Maybe you should look.

Man:  ( joining her in the auditorium)  Fine, alright.  Hey, (going to audience member) hi, nice to meet you.  Will you shake my hand?  Thanks.  Is that a real hand you’re shaking?  Am I real person, or am I some kind of character written in a script?  I ask you, of course, assuming that you are real, real enough to answer at least.  (to another)  Am I saying this because I have to, or because I want to?

Woman:  Well, well, did I spur his interest, does he really wonder his place?

Man:  Maybe I do.

Woman:  That’s good

Man:  Listen honey, I’m sorry.

Woman:  About what?

Man:  For those things you said you think, that you’re not what I want you to be.  I’m, sorry you think that

Woman:  Maybe we both have to find some answers.

Man:  Why?

Woman:  Because we have a place, we just need to find where it is, in who’s script.

Man:  Maybe we are more than characters.

Woman:  Maybe.  That’s what we are going to find out.  (tenderly, to audience member)  I could have loved you.

Man:  What are you doing?

Woman:  Looking at all that I could’ve been.

Man:  Why are you so unhappy with what you are?

Woman:  I’m not, I am just looking at the affects that any other thing could have had on me.  What has effected me has shaped me, did someone else choose how I am, or did I?

Man:  But can’t you be happy with the character you have in your script.

Woman:  I don’t know, sometimes it’s hard without knowing the author.

Man:  Is that what you are looking for?

Woman:  Maybe it is.  

Man:  Or is it who you are looking for?

Woman:  That’s why I’m looking.

Man:  Do you want another author or another script?

Woman:  Both?  Neither?  Who knows?  (To an audience member)  You want to write my script?

Man:  Then you‘d have to direct too.

Woman:  Who needs direction anyway?

Man:  We all do, that’s why the author directs.

Woman:  Not always.

Man:  Oh, but yes.  In how we were made, things we have to do, things we can do, choices and decisions.  (to an audience member)   Do you have free will?  You could get up and leave anytime, we could disgust you to that end.  But it only takes a certain type to actually do it.  There’s no shame in not doing it either.  (Going around auditorium using audience members for examples)  What I say may incense people to no end, but others may sit and nod their heads in agreement, others may sleep through any and all words, others may study every open end of dialog.  To analyze all that we say.

Woman:  Perhaps it just depends on who wrote their character.

Man:  Maybe it’s all a big script, we all do interact.  (Running through the audience)  We’re all together, interacting.  Some of what we said will be taken away and continued, you  (to an audience member)  you’ll go talk to your friends and since you are a part of this script, and a part of that script, it must be the same one, right?  (to another)  you, do you always remain the same character through all your life.  Through all those people that you interact with, all those people you affect, and all those who affect you, do you remain the same constant character?  Maybe your character has different attributes, but there is never a complete change.  It all goes together, a big puzzling script.  With me, and you, and you and your friends and your mothers and relatives and pets and all the powerful politicians and . . . the  actors.  All in the same script.

Woman:  So where is the author?

Man:  Where isn’t the author?

Woman:  I want answers.  You give me theory when I want fact.

Man:  The fact is that we are all interlocked.  The fact is that everything is theory until we prove it to ourselves

Woman:  What about our parts.

Man:  What?

Woman:  In the script, we’re still just characters.  Isn’t there a release?  Can’t we write our own script?

Man:  We can try, but then we’ll never find where we are from.  I thought you wanted to know.  Even if we think we are writing our own script as we go, we‘re still in some bigger one.

Woman:  (to an audience member)  Do you know?  Looking in at us, in our play, do we answer any questions?  What is our purpose, there is one.  That much must be.  Maybe I need to know more about my own play.

Man:  What is there to know?

Woman:  Well, you said it is the same play that everyone here is in.  We are all the same, but yet so different.  Maybe that will find some answers.  All the same basic image, but different pasts, different ethnicities, different ideas and ideals...

Man:  Maybe it’s part of the answer.

Woman:  I think it is . . . I know what you want me to be now.

Man:  What?

Woman:  The same thing you want of yourself, and I of myself.  To understand without having to know for certain.

Man:  Except by proof of mind.

Woman:  Your own mind, which can see the logic in the only possible answer.

Man:  I want to accept and know, because I understand.

Woman:  I want to love my author for making me, love the script for guiding me and love you for walking with me.

Man:  (getting onto the stage)  I will bow to the mind that made this play real.  Accept you for being a character, one that learns as she goes along, like me.

Woman:  (meeting him on stage)  To love you, and in turn, love the script and the author that wrote it.
(They join hands and look at each other as if they newly found each other.)

..........................................
Copyright Will Klotz.
I would like to be given feedback by any group that performs this, whether it be any changes you that were made or just the approach you took.  Please email your comments, ideas, suggestions or questions to klotztheatre@yahoo.com.  If you have no feedback, please just notify that you did it.