Barker: Plays Four

I Saw Myself; The Dying of Today; Found in the Ground; The Road, The House, The Road

Howard Barker

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840028515
• eBook ISBN: 9781849433792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Includes the plays I Saw Myself, The Dying of Today, Found in the Ground and The Road, the House, the Road Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. In I Saw Myself a woman's longing to understand her compulsion to transgress the laws of her society comes into collision with the conventions of an art form. In the weaving of a tapestry Barker's13th century heroine privileges private life over public responsibility. If she is cruelly punished she is also granted self-awareness. A critical moment in social decay is also at the centre of The Dying of Today, in which a stranger who luxuriates in the telling of bad news observes the effects of his devastating narrative on a humble barber. The barber's recovery from pain, and the beauty of his sensibility, bring the two strangers into an emotional proximity. Barker's most experimental work in form and content is probably Found in the Ground, a mobile, musical work set during the last days of an aged Nuremberg judge whose baying hounds and burning library form an uncanny background to his wayward daughter's struggle to make meaning from the atrocities of the 20th century. The contradictions of the humanist personality are explored in The Road, the House, the Road. Erasmus' obscure colleague Aventinus was found dead on a wintry road. How he arrived at his solitary death forms the subject of this speculation on scholarship, mischief and the murderer's vocation.

FOUND IN THE GROUND

‘In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul,
there rages a frantic prisoner…’
Theodore Adorno

Characters

TOONELHUIS
A Judge of Nuremberg

BURGTEATA
His Daughter

DENMARK
A Librarian

KNOX
The Spirit of a War Criminal

LOBE
A Valet formerly a POW

FIVE NURSES
Of a Retirement Home

HITLER
A Casual Visitor

MACEDONIA
A Headless Woman

WORKMAN
Of the Retirement Home

ACT ONE

THE EXORDIUM

The repetitive sound of an industrial process. A naked woman, headless, perambulates in front of three kennels. A pyramid of books smoulders. When the sound ceases, the woman stops.

SCENE 1

The sound of infinite distance. Five NURSES bearing trays above their heads enter marching and stop. They possess the character of an ancient Egyptian frieze. On the trays, heaps of earth or peat. The ferocious barking of dogs. An old man travels downstage in a wheelchair and stops. The barking also ceases. The industrial sound resumes. The HEADLESS WOMAN perambulates. Suddenly three bandaged dogs erupt from the kennels and travel downstage on wheels. The roar of their barking stops as they reach the edge of the stage. A long silence ensues.

TOONELHUIS: I hear a woman pissing

(Pause.)

Piss then

(Pause.)

I hear a woman stripping off her bra

(Pause.)

Strip then

Strip off your bra

(Pause. A woman enters classically attired, gloved, hatted.)

BURGTEATA: I so need

I so

I so need

So

So

So

Need

So

(The dogs erupt. The NURSES march off. The HEADLESS WOMAN perambulates. In the silence which follows,

BURGTEATA plucks her gloves.)

I call this visiting

This

This

Standing rather near

I call visiting

The driver has a novel

Do not expect I say

Do not expect to complete a single page

And leave the engine running

Idling

Idling engine

Can you hear it

The engine idling

Can you hear it idling from here

Oh yes

I call this visiting

This

This

Standing rather near

Is visiting

(She sweeps out. The dogs erupt and are drawn back into their kennels. The sound of industry. The HEADLESS WOMAN perambulates. A WORKMAN enters pushing a wheelbarrow. It is heaped with books. He tips the books onto the smouldering fire and goes out. The five NURSES march with their trays aloft and stop. Silence returns. The sound of infinite distance…)

TOONELHUIS: Bring me Hoss

Hoss now

It's noon

It's autumn

Time for Hoss

Who

Who

Has

Hoss?

(One of the NURSES walks out of line and brings her tray to TOONELHUIS, presenting it to him as if it were a breakfast. TOONELHUIS extends his arms to free the hands from the cuffs and waits. An old m...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• I SAW MYSELF
• THE DYING OF TODAY
• FOUND IN THE GROUND
• THE ROAD, THE HOUSE, THE ROAD