Shoppers

Two Plays by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780060934408
• eBook ISBN: 9780061869266
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: American Drama

"Perfection is not the basis of what I'm talking about," says a member of the Cassandra family, which forms the center of Denis Johnson's plays, Hellhound on My Trail and Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames. The character could be speaking for his creator, because human imperfection is one of Denis Johnson's specialties -- in his critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and nonfiction, and, now, in two brilliant new plays.

These two works present a dramatized field guide to some of the more dysfunctional and dysphoric inhabitants of the American West: a sexual-misconduct investigator who misconducts herself sexually; a renegade Jehovah's Witness who supports his splinter Jehovean group by dealing drugs; the Cassandra Brothers and their father and their grandmother, thrown together at a family reunion/wedding/melee at their shabby homestead in Ukiah, California.

When Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames was performed in San Francisco in 2001, the Chronicle said, "There's an enormous appeal in Johnson's bleak-comic vision of a semi-mythic American West." That appeal derives from the author's perfect vision of imperfection, embodied with such energy and courage in these marvelous pieces of theatre.

SHOPPERS CARRIED BY ESCALATORS INTO THE FLAMES

A DRAMA IN TWO ACTS

Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames was written for Campo Santo + Intersection and premiered at Intersection for the Arts (Deborah Cullinan, executive director) in San Francisco, California, on August 8, 2001.

Produced by Campo Santo (James Faerron, Margo Hall, Sean San Jose, Luis Saguar, Michael Torres, Drew Yerys; Denis Johnson: playwright in residence)

Cast

GRANDMA: Helen Shumaker

CASS: Sean San Jose

DAD: Michael Torres

TV: Brian Keith Russell

BRO: Luis Saguar

SUZANNE: Lisa Joffrey

GIB: John Polak

MARIGOLD: Alexis Lezin

PASTOR ROCK: Brian Keith Russell

MARCY: Catherine Castellanos

(The role of MARIGOLD was understudied and also performed by Gabriela Barragan)

Original musical score by Marcus Shelby

Additional music by Jim Roll

Designed by Suzanne Castillo, James Faerron, and Drew Yerys

Directed by Nancy Benjamin

Look, I am living. On What? Neither childhood
nor future grows any smaller…

—RAINER MARIA RILKE, NINTH DUINO ELEGY

GRANDMA: Around eighty

DAD: Around sixty

MARIGOLD: His daughter, late twenties

CASS: His youngest son; around thirty

BRO: The middle brother; mid-thirties

SUZANNE: Around thirty

GIB: Around thirty

PASTOR ROCK

MARCY: Mid-thirties

TV: A box full of voices

Scene: A lower-middle-income apartment in Ukiah, California, at the start of the third millennium

Set consists of two levels, separately lighted: the upper, DAD’s bedroom; the lower, the kitchen/living room.

Players exit right, out the apartment’s front door (which opens directly onto the outdoors), or left, into a hallway (which leads to GRANDMA’s room and also to the stairs up to DAD’s bedroom).

Sets and lighting should be simple and true-to-life; no music except as indicated. Let TV be realistically rendered and inhabited by a live actor.

Act I

SCENE 1

Downstairs at the Cassandra residence: kitchen-dining area; living area with a hide-a-bed couch, a recliner, a large TV with its face turned upstage.

GRANDMA at the stove, the sink. Because she doesn’t know where else to be. Making tea, washing dishes.

In the living room sits her grandson MARK CASSANDRA, called CASS: around thirty, in a Hawaiian shirt with a bullet hole in it; threadbare jeans; warped cowboy boots. Unshaven, unwashed.

Both look down at a little barking dog we can’t see but we sure can hear—indicated maybe just by one of those fifties-Disney-type elongated shadows on the wall. The dog is a Chihuahua. The bark is a yip.

DOG: Bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark!

GRANDMA: Lord, look at her dribble. I don’t like old people or old dogs or anything old like that.

CASS jumps up and herds the tiny decrepit animal away from him with his toe.

CASS: Dang! Ain’t it housebroke yet?

GRANDMA: That dog is twenty years old. It should be killed…I’m going to make you some biscuits!

CASS: Grandma, I don’t wanna stand in dog piss and hear about biscuits.

GRANDMA: Do you know what? Do you know what piss is? Urine.

She turns toward stove.

…With good white gravy! I’ll make your mouth water, boy.

She opens and closes cupboards.

DOG (outside): Bark! bark! bark! bark!

CASS adjusts a laminated Johnny Carson clock on the wall:

CASS (to Johnny Carson): Sure, it’s crazy. Did I say it wasn’t? It’s absurd. You’re absurd.

GRANDMA: And popcorn!

She tosses a bag in the microwave.

Sporadic barking just outside the door.

CASS: Popcorn is absurd. (Shifting to rapid:) Okay, okay, okay, number one: I drank and I used and I’m like a (shouting toward the barking) DOG BEEN KICKED IN THE HEAD. Second I’m broke, number three I’m stuck here at Dad’s house with Grandma, not to mention Dad himself, not to mention SHUT UP OR I WILL GODDAMN I PROMISE STEP ON YOUR HEAD ONE TIME.

Barking ceases.

GRANDMA: Boy, Jesus will forgive you that you talked to your grandmother thataway. But I believe I never will find it in my heart.

CASS: Have you got a cigarette?

GRANDMA: I don’t smoke.

CASS snags a butt from an ashtray.

CASS: Would you have a match?

GRANDMA: Your ass and my face!…I mean my face, I mean, and your ass!

CASS finds a lighter in a kitchen drawer.

GRANDMA: I meant it the other way. Your face.

The popcorn takes off. The dog joins in. CASS drags deep on his abbreviated smoke and steps out the front door.

DOG: Bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! bark! YOWP!

GRANDMA putters around, forgets herself, moves slowly to the recliner and eases herself into it, starts to speak, realizes she’s al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Hellhound on My Trail
• Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames
• About the Author
• Other Books by Denis Johnson
• Copyright
• About the Publisher