Silent Planet

Eve Leigh

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783192052
• eBook ISBN: 9781783197040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

Silent Planet is a love story about our love of stories, a passionate and poetic fable about the power of literature in a world in which the wrong words can get you killed. At the height of the Cold War, dissident writer Gavriil is detained in a Soviet mental prison as a punishment for protesting against the government. His only escape is the prison library, a treasure store of banned literature available to the patients, but off-limits to the prison staff. His interrogator, Yurchak, offers to protect him from torture in exchange for sharing the forbidden stories. Their agreement allows them both a kind of freedom - at the risk of their lives.

Characters

GAVRIIL

A wiry man in his early thirties.
Being Ukrainian, he is not from the same country
as Yurchak, and has a strong accent.

YURCHAK

In his late forties.

THE GUARD

A very big man with a beard in his early twenties.

THE DOCTOR

In his late forties.

Setting: A psychiatric prison on an island, somewhere in the USSR, in 1978. Before the revolution, the prison was a monastery.

The poem Gavriil quotes is ‘Phone Booth’ (Avtomat.),
by Andrei Voznesensky, in a translation by Richard Wilbur.

“/” indicates overlapping dialogue.

Notes:

The characters and events of the play are fictional, but are based on an incident in the life of Vladimir Bukovsky.

The cell is like an egg. It is self-contained and anything can happen there. Until the shell breaks. Gavriil and Yurchak relate to each other in the way that they do because of the terrible world outside the egg.

When Gavriil tells stories, shapes form in the darkness.

SCENE 1

GAVRIIL is alone.

YURCHAK is alone.

Many years pass.

GAVRIIL: You are gone and I am left. I do not regret your death. I am sorry I can’t forget you.

Music, rhythmic and chiming, is heard. The music fades into the sounds of the psychiatric prison.

SCENE 2

An interrogation room. It was once a monk’s cell. It is very high up. Snow is falling outside the barred window. YURCHAK is wearing a fur-lined army coat. GAVRIIL is in his prison scrubs, shivering.

YURCHAK: Let me ask you what…what.

GAVRIIL: What?

YURCHAK: Are you trying to be funny?

GAVRIIL: No, I’m just…no.

YURCHAK: Are you sure?

GAVRIIL: Yes, definitely – not at all.

YURCHAK: All right.

Pause.

YURCHAK: Would you like a cup of tea?

GAVRIIL: …Really?

YURCHAK: Yes.

GAVRIIL: Yes I would like a cup of tea.

YURCHAK: Uh-huh.

YURCHAK makes a note, carefully.

YURCHAK: So. Why do you think you’re here?

GAVRIIL: Well…I mean, I think you know why I think I’m here.

YURCHAK: It’s interesting to me, because no matter how many chances we give you, you always end up here, again. Or somewhere like here.

I think it’s curious, don’t you?

I think it demands an answer.

GAVRIIL: I think the question is undignified. /I think –

YURCHAK: When were you first apprehended? You were still a student, /were you not?

GAVRIIL: I think you’re not the person – I think I’m not the person who needs to explain myself. I think you’d do better to explain yourself. All of you.

YURCHAK: I’m the only other person in this room. I’m the one asking the question.

GAVRIIL: I don’t believe you.

YURCHAK: Why?

GAVRIIL: You’re telling me you’re not – you’re telling me they’re not going to know what I say? I’m not a moron.

YURCHAK: You would do better to pay closer attention to the world around you and the problem in front of you, Gavriil Stepanovich. I. Am asking you. A simple question. Of course there are higher authorities at work on the island than I. But I’m saying this for your own good, Gavriil Stepanovich. Why do you think you’re here?

GAVRIIL: Because…you’re systematically shutting down voices of dissent. As you have for sixty years. Over sixty.

YURCHAK: You take no responsibility for your presence here?

GAVRIIL: How could it possibly be my responsibility?

YURCHAK makes a note.

YURCHAK: What do you spend your leisure time on?

GAVRIIL: “Leisure time”?

YURCHAK: Your leisure time, yes, the time when you’re not being tested or…other structured activities.

GAVRIIL: (Uneasy.) The library’s…very good here.

YURCHAK: Yes. I’m told it’s full of your type of literature.

GAVRIIL: Yeah, all the books you hear about but you don’t think – haven’t you ever been?

YURCHAK: The doctors aren’t permitted.

GAVRIIL: Really?

YURCHAK: The books are dangerous. We’re functional members of society. The patients are already so far gone…

GAVRIIL: What do you read?

YURCHAK: I read science fiction, mostly. But –

GAVRIIL: It must be lonely on the island without many books.

YURCHAK: Excuse me?

Deadly pause.

YURCHAK: Let us direct the conversation back to you. What is your writing like?

GAVRIIL: Don’t you know?

YURCHAK: What I know or do not know is none of your business. I’m interested to hear you describe it.

GAVRIIL: That’s not part of the normal therapy. Thought I was meant to forget all about it and start…“adjusting to my environment like a normal adult”?

YURCHAK: Obviously the normal therapy isn’t working in your case.

GAVRIIL: So you’re varying your tactics?

YURCHAK: You could say that.

GAVRIIL: I tell you what. I’ll tell you about my writing if you tell me about my diagnosis.

YURCHAK: You have a right to be informed of your diagnosis.

GAVRII...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Characters