Hello ? hello

Karen Hines

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781770560949
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro canadese

In the vast, unnamed metropolis of Hello … Hello, art and commerce have finally and completely conjoined; stylish cafés serve up zebra mussels and the air is thick with a gentle rain of sparrows plummeting down from the mirrored office towers. Everywhere, people are falling for an edgy new fashion accessory: a shiny ball filled with poison that hangs from a delicate chain.

In this oddly peaceful world, Cassandra, a salesgirl at a clothing store called the Abyss, meets a charismatic ad man named Ben in the graveyard where she is mourning her lover, the last true artist on earth. They find themselves helplessly attracted to one another. Ben walks Cassandra home and invites her out to dinner, which leads to sex, marriage and a house in Semi-Residentia. Then comes baby. All one and a half inches of her.

Hello … Hello, nominated for several Dora awards, including Best Play and Best Musical, is a tragic, comedic and curiously erotic attack on western society's predilection for escapist consumerism and entertainment. If the boy-meets-girl musical is the shiny happy ball, then the content of the play, and its characters, are the poison held within.

Hello … Hello

Twilight in the Megalopolis

Soft, flattering lights come up on a tall, beautiful woman, the FEMALE CHORUS, wearing a stylish ensemble. She is exquisitely made-up – her lips red, her cheeks pale, her lashes thick. She looks like an angel in Calvin Klein. She speaks directly to the audience.

FEMALE CHORUS: In a sparkling city on a spinning green globe in the centre of the universe, it is nearly twilight. Office buildings, banks and a trillion gleaming billboards thrust high up into the sky. The streets are empty, as everyone is at work in this thriving megalopolis.

Lights up on a tall man, the MALE CHORUS, standing nearby. He is at least as beautiful as the Female Chorus. His outfit is possibly more stylish. He admires the woman for a moment, then speaks directly to the audience.

MALE CHORUS: Though the sun itself has slipped behind the jagged megalopolitan horizon, its reflections still hover in the mirrored windows of the highest office towers.

FEMALE CHORUS: And before night falls, the shimmering reproductions will lure a thousand sparrows and swallows toward pinker, more glimmering skies…

MALE CHORUS: … then surely and swiftly …

BOTH: … take their breath away.

The Chorus looks up. sfx: small birds plummeting through the air. The Chorus watches the fall. They look at each other, then both look at the audience. They sigh.

Music in: ‘Megalopica,’ a pulsing ur-urban theme. The Chorus clears to stage left and right as lights come up on BEN and CASSANDRA draped gorgeously across stairs. They are gazing at one another with open adoration.

BEN: Six o’clock.

CASSANDRA: Sharp.

Ben and Cassandra turn to the audience.

BEN: In a sparkling city on a spinning green globe, office workers, lawyers and switchboard operators spill from the buildings and onto the street, where they mill beneath the glowing sky.

Ben and Cassandra walk down toward the Chorus.

CASSANDRA: Sales clerks, executives and manicurists descend from the towers, rise up from the underground and join the swelling stream of humanity that fills the city streets with living motion.

BOY: The sophistication with which the people navigate their interweaving paths does little to obscure the untamed life force that gushes through their wild hearts and courses through their red and blue and pulsing veins.

All four performers form a line across centre stage, in the manner of Teatro en Atril. Though they remain centre stage as a group, each performer begins to embody the characters he or she describes. They enjoy increasing contact with one another over the course of the scene. The musical pulse quickens. Performers’ gestures are descriptive, economical. Their movements are precise.

MALE CHORUS: In the grand arched doorway of a thriving business firm, a cluster of telemarketers gathers and peers out at the beautiful sky.

BEN (AS TELEMARKETER 1): Look at the sky!

MALE CHORUS (AS TELEMARKETER 2): So blue!

CASSANDRA (AS TELEMARKETER 3): Look at the sky!

BEN (AS TELEMARKETER 1): So green!

MALE CHORUS (AS TELEMARKETER 2): Look at the sky!

CASSANDRA (AS TELEMARKETER 3): So blue!

MALE CHORUS (AS TELEMARKETER 2): So green!

ALL: It’s both at once, it seems!

FEMALE CHORUS (AS TELEMARKETER 4): Has the sun set yet?

ALL: Not quite yet!

FEMALE CHORUS: The telemarketers spill onto the street, whirling and spinning beneath the blue-green sky.

BEN: Some of the people know each other.

MALE CHORUS (AS LENNY): Peggy!

FEMALE CHORUS (AS PEGGY): Lenny!

MALE CHORUS (AS LENNY): Nice to see you!

CASSANDRA: While others swirl around the gentle strangers who cross their paths.

The Female Chorus spins into Ben’s arms. Their lips are very close together.

BEN (AS STRANGER 1): I beg your pardon!

FEMALE CHORUS (AS STRANGER 2): I’m all left feet!

BEN (AS STRANGER 1): Must be something in the air, it seems.

FEMALE CHORUS (AS STRANGER 2): Must be something in the breeze.

MALE CHORUS: In the darkened doorway of another thriving firm, a prideof ceos gazes out at the beautiful sky.

CASSANDRA (AS CEO 1): Look at the sky!

FEMALE CHORUS (AS CEO 2): It’s purple!

BEN (AS CEO 3): Look at the sky!

CASSANDRA (AS CEO 1): It’s lime!

FEMALE CHORUS (AS CEO 2): Look at the sky!

BEN (AS CEO 3): Look at the sky!

ALL: It’s both at the same time!

MALE CHORUS (AS CEO 4): Has the sun set? all: Not quite yet!

CASSANDRA: They scatter and jeté down the street.

FEMALE CHORUS: High up on a scaffolding, two workers are busy erecting a billboard. Emerging from the scattered jigsaw of squares and ziggurats is a fractured image whose truth and beauty are known only to the workers, but whose mystery holds the attention of a thousand eyes for blocks around.

BEN (AS JOHN): (softly, looking down) Look at them, Mike. They want to see the picture.

MALE CHORUS (AS MIKE): Only so fast we can go, John.

JOHN: But look at them. Their faces tilted up like that. I can almost see their eyes! mike: Their eyes? john: Their eyes …

MIKE: (gently) Don’t look down any more, John. It’ll be all right.

JOHN: They long to be what dreams are made of … mike: Come on, John. Don’t look down now. We’ve got work to do.

JOHN: Sorry, Mike. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.

MIKE: That’s all right, John. You’re only being human.

John goes back to work. Mike sneaks a look at their eyes.

BEN: In another darkened doorway, an anguish of accountants gathers. Pale fingers twitch furiously over phantom adding machines, working equations that yet tangle their minds.

CASSANDRA (AS ACCOUNTANT 1): Has the sun set yet?

FEMALE CHORUS, MALE CHORUS AND BEN (AS ACCOUNTANTS 2, 3 AND 4): Shhhh.

MALE CHORUS: There is a magical transformation of the light as the sunset turns to twilight.

Music swells. Lights shift....