INTERIOR
ROOM AND BED
LIGHT COMES UP SLOWLY TO THE MUSIC OF THE BEETLES I'M A LOSER TO REVEAL SOMEONE DRESSED UP AS A HUGE COCKROACH LYING ON A LARGE WOODEN BED (NO MATTRESS). HE DOESN'T KNOW HE IS A COCKROACH YET. HE ACTS LIKE HE IS HUNGOVER. HE WAKES UP FEELS HIS FACE - CAN'T FEEL
STUBBLE JUST SHINY SKIN. PUZZLED. FEELS BETWEEN HIS LEGS. STARTLED AND UPSET. TRIES TO GET OUT OF BED FALLS OUT ON TO HIS BACK STRUGGLES, MANAGES WITH DIFFICULTY TO RIGHT HIMSELF.
USES AUDIENCE AS MIRROR TO EXAMINE HIMSELF. WHEN HE EXAMINES HIS TONGUE IT IS VERY LONG AND HIDEOUSLY YELLOW. ALL THIS OPENING SCENE TAKES LESS THAN A MINUTE.
LANDLADY
A high-pitched hysterical Irene Handl, knocking hard on the door.
Mr Srnith. Mr smith I know you are in there. Let me in let me in at once. I know you are skulking in there. You owe me 6 weeks rent and I'm not going to be put off a moment longer. It's no use you trying another one of your existential crisis on me it won't work whatever it is. If god is dead and human beings are free to act you can...
(The door gives way and she falls through the door on stage).
The set is such that it is possible to see the landlady as she stands outside. As she dusts herself off she continues her tirade taking no notice of his cockroach appearance.
LANDLADY
Look at this disgusting mess it's a Platonic puss hole, a pile of old Krapotkin, a Krapotkian Crap heap. It's as filthy as a Fregian armpit . I don't know why I stand for it, really I don't. Marx wouldn't have been seen dead in a naturalistic mess like this and his study looked like the floor of an abattoir after a particularly busy day.
You know he did finish Capital but lost some of his chapters on his desk.
But you beat even that (bitingly sarcastic ) . It ' s a masterpiece of scholarly understatement.
It 's like living in the aftermath of a bleeding great supernova explosion, Even the flies in this room are dying of typhoid.
If your mind's like that you need an immediate brain transplant .
Cockroach gesticulates and tries to squeak message.
LANDLADY
What's that . What's that you've turned into, what? I don't believe it, I don't believe it. You'd go to any extreme wouldn't you. I know you don't look your normal self this morning bleeding metamorphosis. What excuse will you come up with next.Don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes.
(The cockroach is lying on his back . She advances menacingly onto him. Picks him up. Pulls apple out of back ).
LANDLADY
What's this doing here?
(Advances threateningly, prodding cockroach in his breast plate).
You 've tried one philosophical trick after another to avoid paying the rent but this is ridiculous. Ever since I've been letting my house to students I've heard every feeble excuse in the book.
I suppose you are going to tell me you don't exist at all. I had to kick out Wittgenstein for that, he dreamt that one up when he cheated me of six month's rent . Mind you the trouble I 've had with you makes me wonder whether it's worth existing .
Starts hitting cockroach round the head with feather duster and poking him in his bodily segments.
Going through a body mind crisis are we? (prod). Are we? (prod, prod) Well, I 'm not sure whether your current position is epistemologically sound. Whether lying on your back all day and doing three times the square root of fuck all is metaphysically correct.
Prod. Prod.
I suppose if you take the position that you may not exist at all then it doesn't: follow that you should be rendered totally paralysed, the proposition could equally well lead to hyperactivity. It is like being invisible. If you are nothing then anything that happens as a result of your actions cannot have been caused. Ipso facto we have a world full only
of effects. It's not difficult to imagine you not
causing anything is it? I may not have to assume you
exist as a metaphysical subject but I don't have to as
long as the rent appears which is too bleeding
predictable that it won't and it's predictably regular
non-appearance suggests to me that somewhere in this
logical space you call your room you actually do exist
and I may get here one day before you have spent your
dole on booze or some other ridiculous piece of
transvestism .
Cockroach has been totally backed up in a corner.
This place is disgusting. Disgusting.
Picks up insect spray. Sprays room violently. Cockroach keels over and dies.
Stage is arranged so that there is another door. Behind this door is a huge breast lying on the bed. As the landlady leaves this room to knock on the other door for rent the lights come up and reveal the breast.
LANDLADY
Knocks on this door. Mr Popper, time to pay the rent.
FADE.