Caroline, or Change

Tony Kushner

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781559366052
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Dramaturgie

“There are moments in the history of theatre when stagecraft takes a new turn. I like to think that this happened for the American musical last week, when Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change (at the Public), a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori and the director George C. Wolfe, bushwhacked a path beyond the narrative end of the deconstructed, overfreighted musicals of the past thirty years.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker

Louisiana, 1963: A nation reeling from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination. Caroline, a black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for, struggle to find an identity for their friendship. Through their intimate story, this beautiful new musical portrays the changing rhythms of a nation. Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori have created a story that addresses contemporary questions of culture, community, race and class through the lens and musical pulse of the 1960s.

Tony Kushner is best known for the two-part masterwork, Angels in America, recently produced by HBO as a six-hour television event, directed by Mike Nichols to universal acclaim. His other plays include Homebody/Kabul, A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille’s The Illusion, Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan and Goethe’s Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery and St. Cecilia or The Power of Music. He recently collaborated with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children’s opera, Brundibar. He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.

Jeanine Tesori wrote the score for Thoroughly Modern Millie, which won the 2002 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Musical and the multiple-award-winning Violet.

1.

WASHER/DRYER

Caroline, a maid, in the basement of the Gellmans’ house. She’s doing the laundry, sorting the clothes.

CAROLINE

Nothing ever happen under ground
in Louisiana
cause they ain’t no under ground
in Louisiana.
There is only
under water.

(Caroline opens the lid of the Washing Machine, and begins to load it with clothes.)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Consequences unforeseen.
Consequences unforeseen.
Put your faith and clothes in me,
a brand-new Nineteen-Sixty-Three
seven-cycle wash machine.

dp n="30" folio="12" ?

(Caroline switches the Washing Machine on.)

CAROLINE

Sixteen feet below sea level!
Torn tween the Devil
and the muddy brown sea.
Sixteen soggy feet below
the Gulf of Mexico.

(She switches on the Radio.)

THE RADIO (a trio of women)

Tough and dreary and all disshevel,
sixteen feet below sea level.
Baby,
gonna drown.
All day long
you wear a frown.
Dressed in white and
feelin low,
talkin to washer and the
radio!
Doin laundry, full of woe,
neath the Gulf of Mexico.
Sixteen feet
sixteen feet
sixteen feet beneath the sea!
Sixteen feet
sixteen feet
sixteen feet beneath the—

CAROLINE

Nothing happens under ground
in Louisiana. Cept in this house,
cept here, cept here:
At nine-thirteen Saint Anthony Street
in Lake Charles Louisiana:
This house got
a basement.

THE WASHING MACHINE

This house got
a basement.
True.
No other house round here gots one.
This one
this one
this one
do.

CAROLINE

Ain’t very deep for a basement but still
it planted in the swampy soil,
sunk in the mud and the marsh and the mire,
down with the snakes and the snails and the bracken,
root to the bayou,
root to the ooze . . .

THE RADIO

. . . singing them sediment topsoil blues,
alluvial delta-silt saltwater ooze.

THE WASHING MACHINE

Hum hum hum hum
round and round I agitates
while them what does the clothes awaits,
they contemplates and speculates,
in the peace my one-horsepower
lectric motor’s hum creates:

THE RADIO AND THE WASHING MACHINE

What shall be? What lies in store
in Nineteen-Sixty-Three? or -Four?
(Noah, a little boy, stands at the entrance to the basement.)

NOAH

Every day she stands between
the radio and the washing machine:
Caroline, our maid.
All day long I’ve been gone
at school. When I get home, they’re on!
Washing machine and radio!
Down the basement steps I go!
Caroline our maid!
Caroline our maid!
Caroline! Caroline! Caroline
the President of the United States!
Caroline who’s always mad,
Caroline who runs everything,
Caroline who’s stronger than my dad.
In our basement, where she’ll let
me light her daily cigarette.

(Caroline hands Noah one cigarette and a book of matches.)

CAROLINE

Light me up.

(Noah puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it.)

CAROLINE

(Severely:)
Don’t suck in!

(She takes the cigarette from him.)

CAROLINE

Shouldn’t let you do that. Boy
when you grow up don’t smoke these things.

NOAH

Blow me smoke rings, smoke rings smoke rings!

CAROLINE

Not today, I got to work.

NOAH

Caroline never tells me so but
I know Daddy mustn’t know.
A secret her and me can share:
Our daily cigarette . . .

CAROLINE

Now muse yourself,
I got no use for you.
This basement too darn hot for two.

(Noah leaves.)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Hum hum hum hum.
Smoke you daily cigarette.

CAROLINE

Only ever smoke but one.

(A timer bell rings!)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Washin finish! Sweet and wet!
And cool! My daily task is done!

THE RADIO

Time’s come to perspire!
Turn on the electric dryer!
Sucking moisture out the air,
melt the hairspray in your hair!
Turn it on, turn on despair!

THE DRYER

Caroline! Caroline!
Crank my little timer be...