Scenes from an Execution

Howard Barker

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849434683
• eBook ISBN: 9781849435574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Commissioned to paint a vast canvas celebrating the triumphant Battle of Lepanto, the free-spirited Galactia creates instead a breathtaking scene of war-torn carnage. In her fierce determination to stay true to herself, she alienates the authorities and faces incarceration. Her younger lover Carpeta is approached to take over and seizes the assignment for himself. Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution makes sixteenth-century Venice the setting for a fearless exploration of sexual politics and the timeless tension between personal ambition and moral responsibility, between the patron's demands and the artist's autonomy. Art is opinion, and opinion is the source of all authority. This edition includes a new essay by Howard Barker, entitled The Sunless Garden of the Unconsolled: Some Destinations Beyond Catastrophe

SCENE ONE

A studio in Venice. A naked man sketched.

SKETCHBOOK: The sketchbook of the Venetian painter Galactia lying on her parted knees speaks of her art, speaks of her misery, between studies of sailcloth in red chalk the persistent interruption of one man’s anatomy… On every margin where she has studied naval history his limbs or look intrude the obsession alongside the commission…

GALACTIA: Dead men float with their arses in the air. Hating the living, they turn their buttocks up. I have this on authority. Their faces meanwhile peer into the seabed where their bones will lie. After the battle, the waves were clotted with men’s bums, reproachful bums bobbing the breakers, shoals of matted buttocks, silent pathos in little bays at dawn. The thing we sit on has a character. Yours says to me KINDNESS WITHOUT INTEGRITY. I don’t think you will ever leave your wife.

CARPETA: I shall leave my wife, I have every intention of leaving my –

GALACTIA: No, you never will. I believed you would until I started this drawing, and now I see, your bum is eloquent on the subject, it is a bum that does not care to move…

CARPETA: I resent that, Galactia –

GALACTIA: You resent it –

CARPETA: I resent it and I –

GALACTIA: Resentment is such a miserable emotion. In fact it’s not an emotion at all, it’s a little twitch of self-esteem. Why resent when you can hate? DON’T MOVE!

CARPETA: You are the most unsympathetic, selfish woman I have ever had the misfortune to become entangled with. You are arrogant and vain and you are not even very good looking, in fact the contrary is the case and yet –

GALACTIA: You are moving –

CARPETA: I couldn’t care if I am moving, I have my –

GALACTIA: You are spoiling the drawing –

CARPETA: I have my pride as well as you, and I will not lie here and be attacked like this, you have robbed me of all my resources, I am exhausted by you and my work is going to the –

GALACTIA: What work?

CARPETA: I HAVE DONE NO WORK!

GALACTIA: Carpeta, you know perfectly well you only stand to benefit from the loss of concentration you have suffered through loving me. You have painted Christ among the flocks eight times now, you must allow the public some relief –

CARPETA: YOU DESPISE ME!

GALACTIA: Yes, I think I do. But kiss me, you have such a wonderful mouth.

CARPETA: I won’t kiss you.

GALACTIA: Please, I have a passion for your lips.

CARPETA: No, I will not. How can you love someone you despise?

GALACTIA: I don’t know, it’s peculiar.

CARPETA: Where are my trousers?

GALACTIA: I adore you, Carpeta…

CARPETA: I AM A BETTER PAINTER THAN YOU.

GALACTIA: Yes –

CARPETA: FACT.

GALACTIA: I said yes, didn’t I?

CARPETA: And I have painted Christ among the flocks eight times not because I cannot think of anything else to paint but because I have a passion for perfection, I long to be the finest Christ painter in Italy, I have a longing for it, and that is something an opportunist like you could never understand –

GALACTIA: No –

CARPETA: You are ambitious and ruthless –

GALACTIA: Yes –

CARPETA: And you will never make a decent job of anything because you are a sensualist, you are a woman and a sensualist and you only get these staggering commissions from the State because you –

GALACTIA: What?

CARPETA: You –

GALACTIA: What?

CARPETA: Thrust yourself!

GALACTIA: I what?

CARPETA: Oh, let’s not insult each other.

GALACTIA: Thrust myself?

CARPETA: Descend to low abuse –

GALACTIA: IT’S YOU WHO –

CARPETA: I am tired and I refuse to argue with you –

GALACTIA: Get out of my studio, then, go on, get out –

CARPETA: Here we go, the old Galactia –

GALACTIA: You are such a hypocrite, such an exhausting, dispiriting hypocrite, just get out –

CARPETA: As soon as I’ve got my trousers –

GALACTIA: NO, JUST GET OUT.

PRODO: (Entering.) Signora Galactia?

CARPETA: I want my –

GALACTIA: No! Ask your wife for some trousers, she’ll make you some trousers, down on her knees, eye to the crutch, sew, sew, sew, little white teeth nipping the thread –

CARPETA: We can’t go on like this, can we? We can’t go on like this –

GALACTIA: Snip, snip, snip, lick, lick, lick –

PRODO: Signora Galactia?

GALACTIA: I HATE YOU, YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE.

(Pause, then the door slams.)

I am losing my mind. My mind is breaking up and drifting in all directions, like an ice field in some warm current, hear the crack, drifting blocks of consciousness that took me forty years to put together, I look ten years older and I already looked old for my age, I cannot let myself be splintered like this, can I? I cannot! Who are you? What do you want?

PRODO: I’m Prodo, the Man with the Crossbow Bolt In His Head.

GALACTIA: Oh, yes.

PRODO: Come at two o’clock, you said.

GALACTIA: Yes…

PRODO: It is two o’clock.

GALACTIA: Yes…

PRODO: I am prompt because I am in demand. Where there is no demand, there is no haste. I would appreciate it if we got on, I am required by a Scotch anatomist at half past three.

GALACTIA: Yes.

PRODO: The fee is seven dollars but no touching. I also have an open wound through which the movement of the bowel may be observed, and my hand is cleft to the wrist, if you’re interested. I suggest two dollars for the bowel, and the hand you can look at with my compliments. It is a miracle I am alive, ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Scenes from an Execution
• The Sunless Garden of the Unconsoled