The Plays
Full Circle [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
So.
You are Heiner Muller?
MULLER
I, uh, yes, yes, your honor, I am.
HONECKER
And you're responsible for this play?
MULLER
Well, yes, in a sense, of course, one is never entirely responsible, in
the sense that, uh, theatre is a collaborative art, so that really, it
is the uh general group or the uh collective that is responsible for a
theatrical work--the society as a whole really that is responsible.
HONECKER
Ah-ha. But would you say, in your own opinion, that this was a political
play we have just seen?
MULLER
Oh.
Political.
No.
No, not at all.
HONECKER
It seems to me like a political play.
MULLER
Yes, of course, it would appear to be so, but in actuality, it is not
political at all; it is, rather, a human play, a play about how human
beings feel, no doubt because of the way they were brought up, you know,
their childhoods, their mothers and fathers, you know the reference to
having lived there for generations.
HONECKER
A bourgeois play.
MULLER
Yes, well, no. I mean, of course, you are quite right, very perceptive,
to see that it might appear to be so, whereas in reality, it undermines
the very premises of the bourgeois play, in that you can see that this
fellow from the West is greedy because he has been raised in a capitalist
home, where he's had to learn to compensate for the deprivation of love
by becoming a consumer.
HONECKER
Ah-ha. I see.
MULLER
Otherwise, if not, of course, we would be asking your office of censorship
to correct us, as we have been corrected in the past when we have gone
off track, not seeing for the moment the error of our ways and, frankly,
grateful to you--because there are things that should not be seen on the
stage! Things that should not be seen in art at all, art of any kind!
I mean, would one want to see a bottle of piss on the stage? No! Does
one want to see pornography on stage? No! Sexuality. Sexuality of all
kinds. What one might see from these sexual relationships, what they might
show of some deeper relationships, for example, of the way in which the
public world invades our private lives, invades the very depths of our
souls so that this invasion, this twisted or perverted political structure
in which we live might in some way be seen to have shaped, or misshaped
our innermost souls? No. No! No! What we like in our work is a celebration
of the human spirit, of possibility. Optimism! Optimism!
[he is mopping his brow of perspiration]
And I must say, speaking not for myself alone, but for our entire company
here, we are grateful for a government that ensures the public order and
nurtures the public good, sometimes even by giving grants to cultural
institutions, god knows!, even though to be sure it is easier to give
grants to ballet companies or to art museums rather than to theatres where
words are used and because words have meaning, this or that word might
offend someone even without meaning to although we make every effort to
delete every offensive word we are able to locate so that the government
will be able to give us a grant--although your excellency, in all honesty,
I must say that you have cut our grants in recent years. I mean not you,
not you yourself, of course, but your granting agency.
[he is on his knees now, clutching at Honecker's knees;
he is weeping now]
I beg your pardon. This wasn't my intention. I just, whenever I start
talking on any topic at all, I can't help myself soon I find my mouth
talking about money, when I'm thinking of nothing at all, my mind turns
to money, because I've become a shameless person, shameless and pathetic,
even though still, of course, I am a citizen and proud to be one really,
overcome really with the good luck of living in our country, god bless
it. Let me kiss the hem of your garment.
