The Plays
The War to End War [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
VOICEOVER
Ah yes Sonya, they all take the celluloid doll for a changeling and shout:
God Save the King!
(Canned laughter)
The whole Monist club is gathered on the steamship Meyerbeer. But
only the pilot has any conception of high C
(Canned laughter)
I pull the anatomical atlas out of my toe a serious study begins. Have
you seen the fish that have been standing in front of the opera in
cutaways for the last two days and nights?
(Canned laughter. Catcalls, whistles, sirens.)
Ah ah ye great devils-ah ah ye keepers of the bees and commandants.
With a bow wow wow with a boe woe woe who today does not know
what our Father Homer wrote I hold my peace and war in my toga but
today I'll take a cherry flip
(Canned laughter. Sounds of airplane engines starting. Wittgenstein
comes out very slowly and solemnly, slowly and ceremoniously strips
naked, then turns his backside to the audience, moons them for a while,
and then finally makes his buttocks jump up and down as though in time
to music.)
Today nobody knows whether he was tomorrow. They beat time with a
coffin lid. And fuck the politicians
(Canned laughter)
I say fuck the politicians.
(Canned laughter)
I say fuck the politicians.
(Canned laughter)
If you get my meaning.
(Uproarious canned laughter)
If only somebody had the nerve to rip the tail feathers out of the trolley
car it's a great age.
(Canned laughter.)
I say, if this is political philosophy, give me a chocolate egg cream.
(Hilarious canned laughter. More airplane engines. Other engines. The sounds of heavy equipment. Garage doors opening. Clanking. While this
Voiceover continues with the dialogue below, another is added to it, that
of Kurt Schwitters, so that we hear two voices over the loudspeakers at
once. Schwitters is calm, but insistent.
Continuing throughout: the sounds of cowbells, farting, pot covers
banging, rattles, whistles, crashing glasses, a wailing woman, a moaning
woman crying for help or sympathy, hiccups, a yodelling woman,
canned laughter.)
