Noir

September 11, 2013

Rehearsals have begun for “Noir- A Farce Macabre,” the play I didn’t want to do, the play I promised myself I’d never do because, like “The Happiness Machine,” it’s a bit too close to home. But then again, what’s the point of doing plays that don’t reveal anything other than technique or, maybe, a certain kind of cleverness? I used to think that was a good enough reason to stage a play. I no longer do.

Still, I wouldn’t have begun work on “Noir” if the perfect people hadn’t walked into my class. This is how trouble always starts: it’s the first day of class, and people introduce themselves, and I think I see something –  a gesture, the smallest thing…I can’t describe it. Something that I find interesting or curious. My curiosity has never failed me so far. I just know, at the end of the first week, that these will be the people I’m going to work with, and a story at the back of my mind begins to take shape, and I resist it, and then there comes a day when resisting seems pointless.

 “Noir” is the story of a private detective, one S. Night, whose office is housed inside an abandoned lamp factory. So far he’s never had a case, but that doesn’t prevent him from setting up shop every day, narrating with the best of them, carving some sort of life for himself. I’ve noticed (I’ve no idea if this is a good or a bad thing) that, whatever my plays are about, at the heart of the story there is always a Steppenwolf –  a solitary man whose isolation from the world I find incredibly attractive. These men are not heroic. On the contrary, the smallest thing, like the encounter with a woman, can shatter their world for good. Or perhaps they are heroic but their heroism does not manifest itself in the usual way, but in the strangest kinds of excellent adventures. And at the end of each adventure they are defeated. Ok. So every play I’ve ever written is a love letter to Don Quijote. So shoot me. I can’t help it. I struggled with this bothersome romantic impulse all my life, until I got old and thought I should embrace it. Pity I didn’t do it when I was 20 and still had a chance with the wolf of the steppe…But I’m digressing.

The uneventful life of Mr. Night is disrupted one evening when a movie star hires him to solve a curious case. The femme fatale explains that some people she knows, people who have been shot, stabbed or crushed by 18 wheelers, are not dying. Nobody has, in fact, died in a long time. She suspects foul play. Night, versed in the occult, suspects the case may be miraculous in nature. So far, everything unfolds in proper noir fashion: the private eye (private I?)  is very private, the femme is terribly fatale. But what I want to do with this play is switch genres in the middle, take a classic detective story and turn it supernatural. And so, when Night conducts a séance to see if he can get any information from the afterlife (Holmes has the irregulars; Night has his ghosts), a woman appears, materializes out of darkness, without memory, identity or a name. Night is smitten and horrified at the same time. For the first time in his life he plays games, plays for time, becomes a true armchair detective and tries to solve a case without ever leaving his (ware)house. By the end of a series of imaginary adventures, he knows the creature he has summoned is Death, and Death has lost her memory and, with it, her purpose. If he helps her remember, somebody will die: perhaps even the movie star he has become so fond of. This frames Night’s dilemma: if he saves the girl (any hero would) and doesn’t help Death remember, the world is in danger. If he saves the world (and what hero wouldn’t?), the girl might die. Poor Mr. Night, in love with a woman and the Angel of Death at the same time, faced with his terrible weakness, forced to make a decision. I feel for him; I’m a little in love with him, the way I am with every Steppenwolf. I want him to win. He never does. It’s not death he fears but a different kind of solitude, one which exists to remind him of the girl he’s lost and the angel he almost tricked into mercy.

These are the characters: Night, the Movie Star, and Death. The people capable of bringing them to life have just realized (during tonight’s rehearsal, perhaps), that they are at the beginning of a long process that requires precision, insane focus, and love. There’s no way around it. Deadly theatre is not just boring theatre but theatre made without love. Who was it that said something similar about teaching and stirred up indescribable outrage? How dare she? Love? In the classroom? What’s with this promiscuity? Are our children in danger? Has education become a sex act? Fools, the lot of them. Sex has nothing to do with it. Affection, on the other hand, for one’s subject, for one’s characters, for the people who bring them to life, if only for a second, is the only way to go.  Tonight: the characters. Tomorrow: the actors. For now, good night.