Boguslaw Schaeffer

An Anthology

Boguslaw Schaeffer, Magda Romanska

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781849434645
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781849437226
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'I place Boguslaw Schaeffer's genius firmly at the centre of the European cultural heritage which expressed avant-gardism during my lifetime.' Richard Demarco

This anthology of plays by Boguslaw Schaeffer, a Polish playwright, composer, musicologist and graphic designer, includes his most frequently performed works: Scenario for a Non-Existing, but Possible Instrumental Actor (1976), Quartet for Four Actors (1979), and Scenario for Three Actors (1987). The plays are examples of Instrumental Theatre. Like Schaeffer's microtonal compositions, they are carefully structured and employ cyclical repetitions, and codes. Schaeffer's most famous instrumental play, the Quartet for Four Actors, has been so successful that it has been staged by practically every Polish theatre. Scenario for a Non-Existing, but Possible Instrumental Actor, opened in 1976 and has since been staged over 1,500 times around the world. During its 40-year run, it has been critically acclaimed and has won many awards, including the 1995 Grand Prix at New York's Theatre Festival. Winner of many prestigious international awards, Scenario for Three Actors, has been a permanent fixture in many Polish theatres since its premiere. Schaeffer is a universal artist, unafraid to explore a range of fields,forms, and subject matter, and his theatre, like his music, defies previous, established conventions and techniques, surprising its audiences with innovative and invigorating form and style.

SCENARIO FOR THREE ACTORS

Scenario for Three Actors. Directed by Mikołaj Grabowski. Photo by Anna Włoch.
Courtesy of the author, 1998. Teatr Stu [Stu Theatre]. From the left: Andrzej
Grabowski, Mikolaj Grabowski and Jan Peszek.

I ALLEGRO

FIRST
(Alone and silent for a while; suddenly.) Ha! He had it coming! Every idiot wants to outshine every other idiot! Stun everyone with his brilliance, no matter what! Great artist, he is, right! He invites a mob – excuse me, the audience – and makes a happening! And when I ask him, what is it exactly that he’s doing, he replies that he doesn’t know yet, but it will come to him at the last minute! It will come to him! What can possibly come to that moron! He says: Oh, I don’t need a director, it’s not theatre. It’s a situation, which will just come to him, come out. Come out! To him! (Takes a pause and calms himself.) A director is needed even for the simplest, dumbest things. School recitals, fashion shows, even funerals! Of course, I’m not pushy. I just want to help. He’s too dumb to even know he needs a good director. And I happen to have directed this and that: an opera and an operetta, an oratorio to remember the victims – and of course, before that, one to celebrate the victors – the students at school recitals and, naturally, the classicists. Even a bank robbery needs to be directed. Yes, it has to be directed and acted out, each move and each gesture, someone has to be in control. That’s the director’s role. (He doesn’t notice that he begins to rhyme, so he speaks without rhyming, on the border between prose and poetry.) Even a heist! And the raid, of course, too, and political provocation, the enthusiasm of the crowds, the success of the spectacle – everything needs to be directed, everything, everything – otherwise, nothing will come out of it. (Getting excited.) Chaos and confusion will come out! Shit will come out!

SECOND
(Entering on the FIRST’ s last words.) Will you come out with me for a walk? I have two brief errands to run – really brief – and then, I’d like to discuss with you the relationship between music and drama. I believe that drama doesn’t need music, just like music doesn’t need drama. We can talk about it while we walk! You know, I’m an idealist, and I’d like to keep it that way! I know, I know, composers can occasionally make some money by working in theatre, but for me, it’s humiliating. And really, most plays don’t even need it. Music to Ibsen, Wilde, or Molière… Forgive me, but music just fills in the time, so it will seem to pass faster. But it passes oh, so slowly, especially if the play’s badly directed. Do you want to get a drink somewhere while we’re out?

FIRST
Aren’t you talkative today? What’s wrong with you? Are you ill? You don’t want to compose it, all right, then, don’t compose it, but don’t make it a bigger deal than it is.

SECOND
I’m not making a big deal out of it. I’m serious. If you insist on having music in the play, I can give you something that I’ve already done, but no way will I be staying up all night composing anything new.

FIRST
You are making a big deal out of it. You see, you work in isolation. All you have to do is spread out the notes on a piece of paper, and that’s it – a happy-go-lucky artist. And me? I have to deal with dozens of people on daily basis. Even an actor who just brings in the tray needs to have it all explained: why is he bringing that damned tray, and what does him bringing it mean for the play. I have to explain to the carpenter the philosophical underpinnings of the playwright’s intentions. Otherwise, he can end up making such furniture that people will be rolling in the aisles with laughter. I’ve lived through stories like that; trust me, I’ve seen it all. They say, oh, a young, inexperienced director, but do they know what I went through?

SECOND
We’re all working on overdrive. For the holiest of our ideas, or our careers – which might as well be one and the same.

FIRST
What do you mean ‘one and the same’? It’s either this or that. I’m always burning up idealistically. I want to make good theatre. Every time and everywhere. Let’s go. Or wait, you go by yourself, and let’s meet at the coffee house in half an hour.

SECOND
Good b… (Cuts it.)

FIRST
(Alone on stage, shuffles through his papers and various items hidden in his suitcase.) I need to organize this suitcase. I need to do that by myself and I don’t have the time.

THIRD
I’m not making a happening! That is, I am making a happening, but differently. I’m making theatre. I take a group of people – the photographer; former prompter; Waldo, the painter; you know all of them – and I’m making theatre. Intellectual, and fuck, yes, metaphysical theatre. I have a couple of ideas, directorial ideas. They’re just too good to pass up. I don’t feel like painting anymore, what am I supposed to paint?

FIRST
Paintings.

THIRD
What paintings? No. Theatre. I feel I have a gift! You have the education, you’ve been trained and all that, but I, I have a gift. In my theatre, there won’t be any decorations, no sets. What for? Actors are decorative enough.

FIRST
What actors? Where are you gonna get those actors from?

THIRD
My actors, fifteen of them, that’s enough, I have them. Oh, how I’ll be envied! Nothing like that has ever been done before.

FIRST
And isn’t done yet.

THIRD
What ‘isn’t done yet’? It’s done already. We signed a contract for three tours. I don’t know yet what I’ll do, but it will be marvelous, nothing short of marvelous. They do adaptations of everything these days: Kafka, no, not Kafka, poetry, prose, drama, everything. I’ll do an adaptation of horoscopes. Get it? Nobody will be allowed to leave the theatre until his sign, be it Aries or Taurus, appears to him.

FIRST
What Aries or Taurus?

THIRD
(Looking at him with condescension.) Bro, use your brain, if you h...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Scenario for a Non-Existing, but Possible Instrumental Actor
• Quartet for Four Actors
• Scenario for Three Actors