www.scene4.com

August 2022

Man With A Shoe In His Hand

Altenir Silva

 

 

SCENE ONE

 

We open on a darkened stage. Then, we hear the voice over of Antonin Artaud.

 

ANTONIN (V.O.)

I can't die, I can't keep living, I can't want to die or live.

 

(Beat.)

 

ANTONIN (V.O.)

I'm an abyss… an absolute abyss.

 

(Beat.)

 

ANTONIN (V.O.)

You must be ready, as I am, to burn whatever imitates life.

 

(Lights up on Antonin Artaud. He's sitting on his bed in a psychiatric hospital. He's glancing up at the ceiling.)

 

(A moment.)

 

(Doctor enters.)

 

DOCTOR.

Artaud, I think, you have worsened this time, huh? We need to change the treatment.

 

ANTONIN

I beg you, please; I beg you to remember your true soul and understand that another series of electroshocks will annihilate me.

 

DOCTOR

Well, I'm thinking about your recuperation.

 

ANTONIN

I always wanted to take you inside my poetry. But unfortunately, you don't believe it.

 

DOCTOR

I never denied your poetry.

 

ANTONIN

Something from my inner world escapes you, and you get mad at me for confronting other people.

 

DOCTOR

You're pissing me off with that crap.

 

ANTONIN

The poet's mystical states are not a manifestation of delirium, sir, they are the basis of his poetry.

 

DOCTOR

Don't say that, Artaud. You are destroying your reason!

 

ANTONIN

You've see me as a hallucinating man… you do that because you refuse yourself to get my poetic worth. I've been suffering since I was five years old because of the wonderful world that exists inside me.

 

DOCTOR

Your mind is disturbed. Open your eyes, Artaud. I'm sick of your craziness. You have no sense. I shouldn't be talkin' to you. I'm a doctor! I define who's mad and who's not.

 

ANTONIN

A madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.

 

(The doctor cries out for someone. Two nurses enter. They prepare Artaud for another series of electroshocks.)

 

DOCTOR

I'm sorry, Artaud. Unfortunately, I need to intensify the treatment. You are tormented by reason and being a poet, perhaps you can lose your sensitivity.

 

(They start the electroshock session on Artaud. He yells in despair.)

 

ANTONIN

It's from this admirable suffering of being that I draw my poems and my songs

 

DOCTOR

You're a dangerous man for society, but, I believe, you're the most dangerous for me. I hate to say this, but you're a man of honor. An admirable man of the purest concept.

 

ANTONIN

Every poet is a seer!

 

(He gets more electroshocks.)

 

ANTONIN

How's it that what you like about my work doesn't make you like the same thing that exists in me as characters that I am?

 

DOCTOR

I'm sorry for me, and for you.

 

(More electroshocks. Artaud screams.)

 

DOCTOR

I'm really sorry for everything that separates us.

 

ANTONIN

(Moaning in pain.)

I believe in heaven, Doctor, even though I don't believe in hell!

 

DOCTOR

Give up and die full of unhappiness.

 

ANTONIN

I'm not sure you want that.

 

DOCTOR

I just wanted to help you.

 

ANTONIN

(Crying a lot)

I believe in heaven! I don't believe in hell!

 

(Doctor stops the electroshock.)

 

(There's a long pause.)

 

DOCTOR

I gotta go, Artaud.

 

(Doctor packs his things.)

 

DOCTOR

You're a radical man. You don't realize that you can't bring art to life without transforming it. That's the reason you're here.

 

ANTONIN

This is why a tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.

 

DOCTOR

You have no choice. You doomed yourself! Goodbye, Antonin Artaud!

 

(Doctor waves to nurses.)

 

DOCTOR

Let's go.

 

(Doctor and the nurses leave.)

 

(Artaud, with some difficulty, gets up from his bed, picks up a shoe, sits down on the bed, and places the shoe on his lap.)

 

ANTONIN

If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.

 

(Artaud rises to his feet on the bed, holding his shoe before him. He gets the shoe upward as if it is a trophy.)

 

ANTONIN

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.

 

(Artaud falls down on the bed, holding his shoe in his hand.)

 

Blackout.

 

A sentence is projected onto a screen:
"4 March 1948 in a psychiatric hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris, Antonin Artaud was found dead in his bed with a shoe in his hand."

 

END

 

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Altenir Silva | Scene4 Magazine

Altenir Silva is a Brazilian playwright and screenwriter. In 2019, he won the Best Feature Screenplay at Prisma International Film Awards in Rome with The Sunrise Man (co-written with Ben Fiore, based on a story by director Werner Schumann). This screenplay was also nominated as a Top Finalist, 2017, Hollywood Hills Screenplay Awards, CA, US. In 2017 his short-play "Friendship" was published in "One Minute Plays: A Practical Guide to Tiny Theatre" (Routledge UK). In 2014 he received the Award of Excellence from Shakespeare at The Burg Theatre Festival (Middleburg, VA) for the play "The Idea". In Brazil, he worked as a scriptwriter for several TV shows at Globo TV, Record TV, CNT TV. He also wrote the feature films "Belarmino & Gabriela" (2007), "The Salt of the Earth" (2008), "Japan Connection" (2008), "Curitiba Zero Degrees" (2010) and "Moses and The Ten Commandments" (2015). For more of his writings in Scene4, check the Archives.

©2022 Altenir Silva
©2022 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

 

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