Russia, Freaks and Foreigners

Three Performance Texts

James MacDonald

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781841501864
• eBook ISBN: 9781841502298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Drama

Russia, Freaks and Foreigners is a collection of three thematically linked plays set against the backdrop of a fractured, post-Soviet Russian society. Written by acclaimed playwright James MacDonald, who has cerebral palsy, these performance texts critique accepted notions of normality within authority, offering various models of difference—physical, cultural, and moral—and their stories of dislocation. Their themes, contextualized here by companion essays, expand the boundaries of British drama and connect to the comic grotesque tradition by giving the "abnormal" a broad appeal. Russia, Freaks and Foreigners is a daring portrayal of disability from the inside.

 

PART ONE: TEXTS

BREAD AND CIRCUS FREAKS

A One Act Vaudeville

First performed at the Finborough Theatre, London, on 6 March 2002, under the direction of Martin Harvey and with the following cast:

PANIA ANDREYEVNA	Su Elliott
INNA IGOROVNA	Leah Fells
MARIANNA SELIGMAN	Leslie O’Hara
OSIP PISHCHIK	Michael Bottle
VOLKOV	Stephen Harvey
Design	Kamal Desei
Russia Consultant	Inna Rodina

In the countryside surrounding Petersburg, winter.

Marianna (Leslie O’Hara) and Pania (Su Elliott) struggle for control of Inna (Leah Fells). Bread and Circus Freaks, Finborough Theatre, March 2002. Photo: Marilyn Kingwill.

Settlement No. 7, some 70 kilometres from Petersburg, a village impacted by snow and by circumstance – the remnants of a collective farm. A bread shop immediately after the morning delivery. PANIA ANDREYEVNA, 42 but looking 15 years older and very thin, supports INNA IGOROVNA through the back door. INNA is nearly twenty but looks five years younger. Most distinctively, though, she is heavily spastic from cerebral palsy. PANIA stations INNA on a chair and begins lifting the bread trays from the floor to the counter.

INNA (After watching her for several seconds.) I wish I could help you.

PANIA: You what? (Preoccupied.) No...you can’t do it.

INNA: If we could maybe carry the trays –

PANIA: ...I know. We’d feel like millionaires. I’d feel like a millionaire anyway. I’d feel like I didn’t need to work...and then I wouldn’t employ you...and then you wouldn’t work...You’d be an outcast, for people to take pity on or worse...because pity soon turns to contempt...and then you might starve...they’d look for your footprints in the snow...and then maybe some night – or maybe first light – someone would discover the corpse of an under-fed girl...half-eaten by wolves...and then they’d say, ‘Wasn’t that the waif that used to work for Pania Andreyevna? I’m sure of it.’ And then they’d come looking for me...and charge me with murder after the fact...and all because I let you help me lift the trays. I wouldn’t feel much like a millionaire then, would I? A million’s not much good against a murder rap, is it? Especially if it’s all an illusion. You can’t pay a murder judge with it. ‘If she felt she had a million, she could have showed more compassion to poor Inna Igorovna.’ That’s what they’d say...that’s the verdict they’d bring in on me. It’s worth a little inconvenience to be spared a fate like that, now wouldn’t you say?

She’s been working the while.

INNA: I wish I could help you.

PANIA: Oh-ho, you’re helping me. You think I’m running a charity ward? You’re serving our hungry horde while I put my feet up in back. Maybe I’ll even fall into the third degree of sleep... so that when you have a riot here – when demand far exceeds our supply – you won’t be able to wake me. I won’t know anything about it. What do you reckon to that? I’m throwing you in at the deep end, my Inka. I don’t believe in charity.

INNA: We don’t have wolves here, do we?

PANIA: I didn’t say I was throwing you to the wolves – I said –

INNA: ...half-eaten by wolves...if you let me go. Don’t you remember? Were you just trying to scare me?

PANIA: I was trying to show you the nonsense you’re talking – you could help me lift the trays. I can’t do it – I don’t see how on earth you think you can. (Calculating.) One, two, three...eight, nine...nine. There isn’t going to be enough brown. I told them last time to make it four dozen. They can’t hear straight – they’ve given me four dozen white. Deaf bastards! Well, I thought I was doing you a favour, my darling, but now it looks like –

INNA: You’ve done me lots of favours, Pania Andreyevna. You’ve given me this job, for a start...

PANIA: I mean I put up a notice the delivery was going to be late...just to give us time to ourselves.

INNA: Do people really read notices? I don’t think so.

PANIA: ...well, with four dozen white loaves, and next-to-no brown...you’d better believe they’ll do something constructive. Otherwise, they’ll be taking our blood before midday.

INNA: You’re not serious.

PANIA: How long have I been selling bread? You’d better believe they’ll be asking for bread... and then taking our blood just as soon as we’ve run out. (A beat.) Can you use a hunter?

INNA: What’s a hunter?

PANIA: ...or maybe it’d be all right if you just point.

INNA: I’m sure I can point, but what’s – ?

PANIA: A hunting rifle, of course, are you that naive?

INNA: You mean you...fire on people?

PANIA: Yeah, well, mainly I just point.

INNA: And does it work?

PANIA: If it didn’t, I’d be shooting at them, wouldn’t I? It works, all right. People round here are such cowards.

INNA: So they wouldn’t really take our blood. You were just pretend-

PANIA: What are you talking about? They’d certainly try if the delivery was like it was today, and if I didn’t have my hunter.

INNA: My God...

PANIA (Overlapping.): What do you think I got it for – effect? They’ll try it with you – you’ll see.

INNA: I don’t want to fire on people!

PANIA: I’d better stay awake then.

INNA: You never told me it was going to be dangerous.

PANIA: What’d you think they were, friends? Furry bunny rabbits?

INNA: All right, I admit, I thought one or two thieves, maybe.

PANIA: Oh, you did, did you? There wouldn’t be thieves round here, darling. We’ve grown up together, you know? We’re just crazy, that’s all. Especially when we’re forced to eat white when they haven’t brought brown. Then we’re apt to grow a little irate, you know? And then the only thing that can calm us is a hunter, even if it’s only pointed at us.

INNA: My mother heard...I guess she saw it on television...The President made a big speech.

PANIA: It couldn’t have been on television.

INNA: Oh, you know the one I mean?

PANIA: One what?

INNA: ...speech – the one he just made.

PANIA: It wouldn’t have made any difference, if he made it on television. Your mother couldn’t have seen it.

INNA: What makes you so sure?

PANIA: ...we only have radio here...and the radio said the television tower burnt down.

INNA: I don’t think you –

PANIA: Are you simple as well as naive? I’m telling you straight – the whole place is in cinders. That’s what the radio said.

INNA: Well, yes, I know that...

PANIA: Well, then, what are you – ?

INNA: ...but only one tower. Not enough to stop broadcasting.

PANIA: Your mother must have heard it on the radio, like everybody else.

INNA is vexed.

INNA: Anyway, the President issued the warning that Russia is steadily dying off. What do you say, d’you think it’s true?

PANIA: I know it – there’s not enough brown.

INNA: He means, she said, because older people are dying off faster than babies are being born.

PANIA: Older people, I tell you, aren’t the problem – it’s that people producing the babies are dying off. Older people don’t produce, do they. They’re better dead ... in the ground...as manure.

INNA: But who would you say are the others – soldiers and people like that?

PANIA: Russians aren’t getting their fibre... (Shouting.) …when all they’ll deliver is mouldy white bread.

INNA: It’s not mouldy, is it?

PANIA: It gets mouldy – nobody eats it. (A beat.) You like soldiers, do you? You’d like to be raped by a soldier?

INNA: No, you said...I thought soldiers must be who you meant...they’d all died.

PANIA: Not in my lifetime. There’s not enough of ‘em. In the history books, maybe. Yes, in the history books about wars. Is that your schoolgirl fantasy, is it? Foreign wars with Russian soldiers raping the flesh off you? Sex isn’t that good.

INNA: That’s not my fantasy, Madame Pania.

PANIA: Ha ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Texts
• Part Two: Essays
• Epilogue
• Contributors