Nice Fish

Mark Rylance, Louis Jenkins

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780018430
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre américain

On a frozen Minnesota lake, the ice is beginning to creak and groan. It's the end of the fishing season, and two old friends are out on the ice, angling for something big; something down there that is pure need.

Something that might just swallow them whole.

In Nice Fish, celebrated actor Mark Rylance draws on his own teenage years in the American Midwest, in a unique collaboration with critically acclaimed Minnesotan contemporary prose poet Louis Jenkins and the whole company.

This sublimely playful, profound and very funny play transferred direct from a sell-out run in New York to the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, in 2016, in a production directed by Claire van Kampen and starring Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl.

ACT ONE

Preset and Scene One

The Ice Fisherman

A frozen lake somewhere in Northern Minnesota.

Late winter. Early spring.

The last day of ice-fishing season.

Early morning.

Upstage, a high wall of white cloud, divisible from the snowy white ice of the lake only by a very distant shoreline of spruce trees and bare poplars, which disappears from stage right into the far horizon center stage.

Only a few miniature brightly painted ice-fishing huts are visible on the ice in front of the distant shoreline. Perhaps a miniature truck pulls an ice house off of the ice. The shore looks unpopulated. We are far north.

We hear the sound of the ice booming as it shifts and cracks. The wind. Distant snowmobiles. Perhaps we hear, drifting across the ice, a little of ‘The Calle Schewen Waltz’ played by Mel Brenden and the Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble.

A train passes slowly along the shoreline. We see its lights and hear its whistle.

Mid-stage, we see a man in black ice fishing as described in the following poem.

All distant characters are portrayed by puppets operated from below.

We hear the voice of Louis Jenkins, or WAYNE.

WAYNE (off). From here he appears as a black spot, one of the shadows that today has found it necessary to assume solid form. Along with the black jut of shoreline far to the left, he is the only break in the undifferentiated gray of ice and overcast sky.

Here is a man going jiggidy-jig-jig in a black hole. Depth and the current are of only incidental interest to him. He’s after something big, something down there that is pure need, something that, had it the wherewithal, would swallow him whole.

Right now nothing is happening. The fisherman stands and straightens, back to the wind. He stays out on the ice all day.

Blackout.

Scene Two

A Strike Master Hand-held Ice Auger

Lights up.

Very early morning.

A beautiful morning sky at back.

Mid-stage left, apparently a hundred yards away, a seemingly abandoned ice house has appeared. It has a chimney and one side of it has sunk into the ice a foot or so and refrozen. It has a door on the stage-right side. Snow has drifted up over it and around it, covering a sofa that is on the downstage side but leaving visible a black barbecue stove, on the stage-left side. Underneath the snow covering one can see patches of color where the front of the hut has been painted with a beach scene of palm trees, sun and sand. There is a small window in the downstage side.

There are two other more conventional huts in the far distance before you get to the shore.

Offstage right, always unseen to the audience, WAYNE’s spear-fishing house and ERIK’s truck will be referred to.

Downstage right we see RON, or a bundle of winter clothes inside of which, somewhere, is RON. He is drilling a hole in the ice by hand with a Strike Master hand-held ice auger. Standing behind him, holding some fishing equipment and watching, we see ERIK.

A few moments.

Blackout.

Scene Three

A Strike Master Gas-powered Ice Auger

In the darkness, we hear the sound of the gas-powered auger start up.

Lights up.

ERIK, similarly dressed for the intense cold, is drilling a second hole in the ice with a Strike Master gas-powered auger. RON, collapsed on the ice with his hand-held auger, watches, exhausted.

Blackout.

Scene Four

In Just a Little Closer

Lights up.

ERIK places his underwater camera, radar, and bucket with fishing poles next to his freshly drilled fishing hole. His is the stage-left hole. He opens his tackle box.

RON is seated on one of two five-gallon buckets that have appeared, unpacking his new sunglasses.

It is quite cold.

ERIK. I’ve spent a great deal of my life fretting over things that most people wouldn’t waste their time on. Trying to explain something I haven’t a clue about. It’s given me that worried look, that wide-eyed, staring look. The look that wild animals sometimes have, deer for instance, trying to make sense of the situation: ‘What is that?’ Motionless, transfixed. The same look that’s on the face of this fishing lure. Stupidity? Terror? What is the right bait for these conditions? High stratus clouds, maybe snow later. It’s all a trick anyway. What is this thing supposed to be? A minnow? A bug? Gaudy paint and hooks all over. It’s like bleached-blond hair and bright-red lipstick. Nobody reallybelieves it. There isn’t a way in the world I’d bite on that thing.

RON. I might swim in just a little closer.

Blackout.

Scene Five

The Back Country

Lights up.

RON approaches from offstage right, as if he is coming from the offstage truck, carrying his blue chair, and wheeling a red-and-white cooler.

He is wearing fancy new sunglasses, label still attached, over the brow of his hat.

ERIK is looking at the gear on a sled, which has also appeared, and setting up his fishing technology, radar, underwater camera, etc.

RON speaks with the audience.

RON. When you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Production
• Poetry, Prose and Play
• Dedication
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information