The Books: “Museum” (Tina Howe)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf:

Museum: A Play, by Tina Howe. Tina Howe’s stuff was a big big deal in New York in the late 70s and 80s … I do believe she is still around, and may even have a new production up … but she made her biggest splash in the 80s with Painting Churches and then Coastal Disturbances. I really REALLY like her writing. She’s written some of my favorite actor-ish monologues out there.

Her writing is funny, quirky, with lots and LOTS of interruptions. People barely EVER get out a full sentence in a Tina Howe play. It’s really hard, as an actor, to make Tina Howe’s stuff sound real. She’s deceptively simple. I’ve worked on some of her beautiful monologues, and it’s not as easy as it looks. The writing can suddenly get startlingly beautiful and poetic, too … so that needs to be made real as well.

The play Museum was first done in New York at the NY Shakespeare Festival in 1978.

Here’s an excerpt. Basically, it all takes place in a museum, where a certain controversial modern artist is having a show. People wander through the museum – different characters with different lives, concerns, reactions … we get to know all of them. This excerpt is from when we first meet Liz, Carol, and Blakey – 3 college girls.

EXCERPT FROM Museum: A Play by Tina Howe

LIZ’S VOICE (offstage) Did you hear what happened to Botticelli’s Venus this morning?

CAROL’S VOICE (offstage) No, what?

LIZ’S VOICE. Some maniac shot it with a gun.

LIZ, CAROL AND BLAKEY (Enter, enthusiastic college girls who are taking an art course together)

CAROL. Someone shot it? People don’t shoot paintings. They slash them!

LIZ. I heard it on the radio this morning. A hooded man pumped eighteen bullets into the Venus figure at the Uffizi.

CAROL. I’ve never heard of anyone … shooting a painting.

BLAKEY. You’re right! They usually attack them with knives or axes.

CAROL. There’s something so … alienated … about shooting a painting.

BLAKEY. … and then there was the guy that wrote slogans all over Guernica with a can of spray paint.

LIZ. (laughing) That’s right: spray paint!

BLAKEY. Red spray paint … and he misspelled everything, remember?

LIZ. (leading them to the Moes) Carol, Blakey, guys, YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE HIM!

(They look at his work with reverence)

LIZ. (softly) You know, his parents are deaf mutes … both of them … profoundly deaf …

BLAKE AND CAROL. (Gasp)

LIZ. Can you imagine what it must have been like growing up with parents who couldn’t hear you? I mean, when would you figure out that it was their affliction and not yours? How could a baby realize there was anything unusual about his parents? (Pause) Since he never heard them utter a word, he must have assumed he couldn’t speak either. He could hear his own little baby sounds of course, but he had no idea what they were …

BLAKEY AND CAROL. (Exhale, impressed with the dilemma)

LIZ. When he cried … no one heard him.

(Pause)

BLAKEY. Maybe he never did cry!

LIZ. Of course he cried! All babies cry. Even deaf babies.

CAROL. (Lost) He assumed he couldn’t speak either?

LIZ. Don’t forget, his parents could always see him cry. Sooner or later he must have realized that in order to get their attention he didn’t really have to cry, all he had to do was go through the motions … (She opens her mouth and cries without making a sound)

BLAKEY. (Musing) If a deaf, mute baby had hearing parents … they couldn’t hear him cry either …

(Pause)

CAROL. (still lost) … go through the motions?

LIZ. (to Blakey) The deaf aren’t necessarily mute, you know, some of them can make some sort of residual sound …

CAROL. (she’s got it) WHEN HE CRIED … NO ONE HEARD HIM!

LIZ. … but it’s not the case with Zachary Moe’s parents. They are consigned to absolute and life long silence.

BLAKEY. (her head spinning from it all, turns her back on the Moes, and notices the clothesline) OH MY GOD, WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT? IT’S INCREDIBLE!

LIZ. (reaching for Carol) When Moe finally realized that his meandering attempts at speech fell on deaf ears …

BLAKEY. (pulling Carol with her) THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE! (Touching it gently)

GUARD. (to Blakey) Please don’t handle the art works.

BLAKEY. It’s … fantastic!

THE GUARD. DON’T HANDLE THE ART WORKS!

BLAKEY. Oh, I’m sorry. (To Carol) Imagine thinking of making a clothesline … with the bodies left inside the clothes …

CAROL. (torn between her two friends) Yeah …

BLAKEY. It’s a reality grounded in illusion!

CAROL. (feeling trapped, detaches herself from Balkey) You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been in this museum!

BLAKEY. Oh no! There’s even a little kid wearing a tee shirt!

THE GUARD. DON’T TOUCH.

BLAKEY. I’m not touching, for Christsakes, I’m just looking!

CAROL. (walking around the room) I’ve lived in this city my whole life, and this is the first time I’ve ever been to this museum!

BLAKEY. It’s our bodies that give our clothes meaning, just as without our clothes we …

CAROL. (Looking out the window) You know, you can always tell the quality of a museum by the view out the windows.

BLAKEY. (kneels by the basket of clothespins) Do you see this? He even left out the basket of clothespins?!

THE GUARD. (walks over to her) Please don’t handle the basket of clothespins.

BLAKEY. (Rises) If you’re not supposed to handle the basket of clothespins, how come the artist put them there?

CAROL. (to Blakey) The Tate Gallery has just about the shittiest view of any museum in the world!

BLAKEY. (to the Guard) He put them there so we would touch them!

CAROL. The view from the Del Prado isn’t so hot either.

LIZ. (still enthralled with the Moes) He chose painting as his voice! (Opens her catalogue, stops at a page) Look at his early sketches! The drawings he did of his toys when he was only three! Do you believe his technique? Look at his handling of perspective …