Night is a Room (TCG Edition)

Naomi Wallace

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781559365185
• eBook ISBN: 9781559368445
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

"Naomi Wallace commits the unpardonable sin of being partisan, and, the darkness and harshness of her work notwithstanding, outrageously optimistic. She seems to believe that the world can change. She certainly writes as if she intends to set it on fire."—Tony Kushner

"Wallace is that unfashionable thing - a deeply political US playwright who unashamedly writes about ideas rather than feelings."—The Guardian

Lauded for her topical, searing explorations of the intricate and pressing issues that affect humanity, Naomi Wallace's new work Night is a Room centers around the timeless subject of love and relationships, specifically in their tenuousness. This story of a seemingly ideal married couple is torn apart when the husband's previously unknown birth mother makes a surprise visit for his fortieth birthday. In Night is a Room, Wallace examines the heart of human connections, and the intimate challenges love can create, romantic or otherwise.

Naomi Wallace's plays—which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East—include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Short Visions of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party, and The Liquid Plain. She has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, an Obie Award, and the 2012 Horton Foote Award for most promising new American play.

ACT TWO

Three weeks later. Sunday afternoon.

The living room space of Marcus and Liana’s home. The residence is upper middle class. The room is sparse. The few pieces of furniture are mostly covered; redecorating is making its slow progress. A low coffee table and three nice chairs have been partly uncovered for the occasion, for afternoon tea and cake. Marcus is dressed comfortably but still smart. He has Liana pinned in a chair. They are both laughing and struggling with each other.

LIANA: No. No! Quit. Quit it.

MARCUS: We’ve got twenty minutes.

LIANA: That’s not enough time!

MARCUS: But we skipped our last few dates.

LIANA: Redecorating always slows us down.

(They struggle.)

MARCUS: Do you really want to stop me?

(Marcus manages to thrust his hand into Liana’s trousers. She resists again, but not enough to dislodge him. He touches her. She grips his arm to try and stop him, but then, after some moments, she is helping him.)

Know what I love about you? Steven. Who teaches chemistry? He says it takes his wife four full minutes to get really wet. He’s timed it. But you . . .

LIANA: Shut up . . .

(Liana begins to make small sounds of pleasure. Marcus is behind the chair now, leaning over her.)

MARCUS: Extraordinary. With one finger I can turn on the taps.

(Liana slaps his face, quite hard.)

LIANA: You bragging bastard.

MARCUS: A grateful, bragging bastard. You’re gorgeous.

LIANA (Breathless): Let me touch you.

MARCUS: Not now.

LIANA: But I want to touch you.

(Liana reaches to touch him but he won’t let her touch him.)

MARCUS: Just for you this time. You’re so very beautiful, darling . . .

(Marcus’s fingers move deeper inside her.)

LIANA: My God you’re romantic today . . . Did you get a raise? . . . A bonus?

MARCUS: You’re a celestial sphere inside . . .

LIANA: Ah . . . Teaching the Renaissance again . . . Always gets you spunky . . .

(Liana gets closer to cumming.)

MARCUS: Louder. I want to hear you.

(The phone rings, loudly, just as Liana cums. On the fourth ring Liana picks it up, composing herself quickly.)

LIANA: Hello? (Beat) Oh, hello darling . . . No. Not at all. We were just. Redecorating. (Beat) Everything all right? (Beat) Oh. The bank said it went out Thursday. (Beat) Well it’s not like it used to be. All those security checks on transfers slow things down. Wires can take up to three days now, at least.

(As Liana talks, Marcus takes a napkin from the table and, with relish, carefully dries his hand, his fingers, as he watches Liana, who shoes him away. Liana arranges herself as she speaks. Marcus hands her the napkin and she quickly wipes herself.)

Yes. I got that one yesterday. No. I didn’t get the nude. Send it again. You might have to compress the file.

(Liana throws the used napkin playfully at Marcus.)

I do love the charcoal drawing of those woods. They look so. Black and dead. (Beat) I didn’t mean that in a negative way. Of course there’s life to it! I just mean dead things can be so . . . lively, don’t you think? (Beat) Exactly. (Beat) All right. We’ll call you in a few. Be safe. Act like you know the streets.

MARCUS: Tell Dom I love her. Very much.

(Marcus looks to throw the napkin in the bin but there’s no bin in sight, so he pockets it.)

LIANA: Your father says he loves you very much.

MARCUS (A bit too seriously): He says: the verys never end.

LIANA: He says, “The verys never end.” (Beat) Yes, you too. Love you. Bye.

(Liana hangs up. Silence a moment.)

Dom’s truly happy there. So far from us and so happy.

MARCUS: She can forget all about us. That’s how secure she is. We did a good job, didn’t we?

LIANA: I miss her.

MARCUS: So do I. Sometimes my chest literally aches for her.

(Liana just looks at Marcus. For a moment she’s concerned.)

LIANA: Are you all right? Something like that could be medical.

MARCUS: No, it’s just a. I’m fine.

(Liana nods.)

The head at school has suggested I apply for deputy.

LIANA: But Marcus, that’s wonder /

MARCUS: Yes. But it means more admin, and less teaching.

LIANA: But also a raise. Congratulations. You deserve it.

MARCUS: But it’s the teaching that keeps me going: all those small, eager faces—

LIANA: You’re very good.

MARCUS: —imploring me, begging me to feed them the facts, to give them the answers, no questions asked, just the answers; it doesn’t matter to them if they can use what I give them because they don’t want to think or take a position: Please sir, just give us the facts. So I tell these young ladies that statistically one in ten of them, or something like that, will die over the coming holidays; which one of you will it be, I ask? How’s that for a fact?

LIANA: That’s cruel, darling.

MARCUS: I want to see their faces crumple with doubt, with misgiving, disbelief, outrage; I want them to feel something other than recording the facts about medicine through time or the Holocaust, the American West, Hiroshima; to get behind the notes, to sense on their skin that the facts are as ali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Production History
• Characters
• A Note on Dialogue
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three
• About the Author