The Adjudicators

The Adjudicators by T. Alex Miller A FATHER and SON are on stage, toward the end of the play. Their words are accompanied by ridiculous, interpretive dancelike gestures FATHER I wish you peace, my son. SON Oh, stepfather/uncle! Why are you so good to me? FATHER All fathers must do this thing, this thing called love! SON Oh, I hope some day I can repay this debt to my son! FATHER You will, son/nephew/cousin, although it's more difficult for you because you're, well, you're, you know, what I'm trying to say is ... SON Just say it dad/uncle .. I'm gay! FATHER Well, whatever. And so it sickens my heart to know that you may never have a son to ... SON But father, my company has accepted Bernardo for our company insurance plan .. Really? Yes, well...

FATHER

SON And he's even in our 401k setup, and they'll help pay for an adoption or surrogate mother ... FATHER Wow. They’re doing that now, eh? Yes, well ... SON And that's good, isn't it? I could be suckling, kind of, an heir to Denmark at my manly breast ... FATHER Son/cuz, the times have changed, and I am trying my damndest to change with them. Would that man could accept all that man is, all that man can be, in this world, in this life.

2.

O, reality! O, happy life! (beat) I wish you happiness above all! (They embrace and Curtain. Actors file out on stage and take front row in audience. JOHN enters) JOHN Welcome, all of you, to the first round of the Colorado Community Drama Conglomerate's First Annual Alternative Shakespeare Festival. It's great to be here. Well, thanks to the Heeney Players for opening this round of competition with that piece. Although I have to say that, well, it pretty much sucked. I fail to see, really, how this can be construed, even given the broadest poetic license, to be an interpretation of Hamlet for this Alternative Shakespeare Festival. Ahem. This is an original piece penned by ... is the author here? (raise hand) Ah, yes! Well, thank you for being in attendance. You played the Bernardo character, Bernie, did you not? Yes. Well, above all else, we're here to learn, and what better way to learn than to see what was, essentially, a take on Shakespeare utterly devoid of artistic merit, script-wise, replete with terrible acting, awful direction, a set that might just as well have been constructed by my 4-year-old son and a series of lighting cues that ... where is the lighting director? (hand up) Ahhh ... you're blind, aren't you? (yes) ... a set of lighting cues arranged by a, er, sight-challenged person. How nice. Now, about the set pieces falling on the actors ... who's the set designer (hand up) yes, (ooh, she's not bad looking) well, you're new at this, aren't you (giggles). Well, and have you handled a saw or screw gun before this show? (giggles) Well, and have you ever purchased, say, a piece or two of graph paper? (more giggles) Well, thank you for bringing to us your ingenuous take on a theatrical set ... it was charming in a number of ways. And, well, I'll say more about that later. Actually, if you'd like to grab me after the next round ... Now, as for the piece itself, it's not my job as adjudicator, really, to comment on that. We're here to talk about how the piece was realized, not the piece itself. But in this case, with the playwright present, it's hard not to think just a teensy bit about how well-suited this piece was for competition. Tell me, playwright, what did all of this mean? PLAYWRIGHT Well, actually I was trying to ... JOHN Oh, no, don't answer, we haven't the time. This is MY time, really. But it begs the question, I mean, really, are you trying to torture us? Have you taken so much as a one-day seminar on playwrighting, that made you think your work was truly ready for the stage?

3.

Half day!

PLAYWRIGHT

JOHN Oh, dear! And I might ask: Have you ever even read or seen Hamlet? Maybe you saw the Mel Gibson film? CAST & CREW Oh yeah!/That was great!/I loved it! etc. JOHN Well, I see my time is just about up. I would suggest we can learn a lot from this piece. In short: when you approach theatre, look at "Hamlet & Egos" as an example of everything NOT to do with your piece. Thank you. (applause) (Second adudicator SANDY enters) SANDY Thank you ... thank you! What a ... wow! What a magnificent piece of work! Thank you, thank you! Who's the director (hand). Thank you! Oh, marvellous! Oh, where to start ...? The ... wooden tones you had your actors use! Oh, it must've taken quite a bit of work to elicit such performances. My god! I thought I was looking at mannequins or something, or cyborgs, my god I don't know! (beat) Automatons. I have to tell you, it's not often that I see acting on this level, it was sublime. In between choking and gagging, I was reaching for my Kleenex to sob just a wee bit about the effect you achieved. My god! Thank you! Oh, and the way the sets fell on the actors, and omagod what a performance as they effected this trooper-like aplomb as their world crashed about them! A metaphor - nay, an allegory - as subtle as it was brazen. I could die. When the Claudius character talked of his wife's death to Hamlet, and at that exact moment, the son walked into the proscenium as the door fell on the guard ... omigod. Who staged this thing? As for the piece itself, this is an original piece and do we have the playwright here? (hand up), Ah, you played the Horatio character, did you not? Well, the thing interesting about this particular piece is that, well, it never really left the ground, did it? And I think, and this is just me talking, that the plot s omehow seemed bereft of what we in theatre might call "dramatic tension." Which is interesting, considering how it was based on one of the world's greatest plays, um, movitationally speaking. Hammy was never, he, he didn't really change, did he? Even though his world - and the set - was crumbling around him, he was pretty much the same.

4.

I don't know about you, but I wish I could be so calm and, well, un-dramatic when things like typhoid and car wrecks intrude upon my life. Ahem. Now, normally the absence of dramatic tension is seen as a negative, but in this case, I think the playwright did a, a fine job with what was essentially a metaphor about the meaningless of life, and since theatre is part of life, well, perhaps it, too, can be ... meaningless. Uh ... (digging herself out) Like one of those fabulous post-impressionistic paintings that's just a dot or a line on 40-foot canvas. As for the relationship to the actual Hamlet, well, I think we can chalk that up to a supreme exercise in poetic license. (A TIMEKEEPER gestures) .. Oh, thank you, dear, I see I'm about out of time. Um, good show, and nice job. (Lights change to reveal the two adjudicators.) JOHN How could you, I mean, you know, praise them? All bull shit aside, that was, arguably, one of the worst pieces of theatre I've ever seen! Hamlet & Egos - really! SANDY Don't I know it. But we agreed you'd wear the black hat and me the white. JOHN Yes, but I have to wonder, with comments like that ... I mean, you're encouraging these people to inflict this piece on even more unsuspecting audiences. Although, god knows, it might fly in (insert name of town where performance is being rendered) SANDY Well, it's an altnerative festival after all, and they are from (name of unfortunate area in state or region) What's next?

JOHN

SANDY It's the Stage Theatre of (some backwater hamlet) doing, omagod, another Hamlet. JOHN O lord, What's the take? SANDY Um (consulting paper) ... looks like they're doing Hamlet as, oh dear!

5.

JOHN

What?

SANDY They're doing it as a Star Trek episode. JOHN

No!

SANDY Yes. Lessee ... Kirk is Hamlet, um, Uhura plays Gertrude, Nurse Chappel is Ophelia, Scotty is Polonius and Spock, hmmm, this is interesting, Spock plays Iago. JOHN Iago? But, but Iago's isn't even in ... SANDY Well, I guess you could call it alternative with a twist. JOHN But even then ... Spock? SANDY Actually, it says here he plays it as the Evil Spock from that, (enthusiastically) you know that episode where there's two Enterprises and there's a bad Kirk and a bad Spock with a goatee ...? JOHN I'm not familiar. Well, let me strap on my black hat and away to the balcony! (scene changes to the "bridge" of the Enterprise. Lights down,) (lights and up FLICKERING on CHEKHOV/BERNARDO and) (SULU/HORATIO)

Who's there?

CHEKHOV/BERNARDO (Thick, bad, Russian accent)

SULU/HORATIO Nay, answer me. Turn off your cloaking device! Long live Kirk! Chekhov-Bernardo?

CHEKHOV/BERNARDO SULU/HORATIO

6.

CHEKHOV/BERNARDO Weird stuff is happening. What the hell? Ghosts? SULU/HORATIO I don't believe in ghosts. GHOST (off-stage) I'm a sca-a-ary ghost! Weird stuff is happening! Where's that Hammy dude? (TOGETHER, holding onto one another) Mommy! Mommy!

CHEKHOV/BERNARDO SULU/HORATIO

GHOST The next time someone pours poison in my ear, I'm putting my foot down! SULU/HORATIO Phasers! On stun! (SULU and CHEKHOV fire phasers at GHOST. They wait. A cock crows) CHEKHOV/BERNARDOÉ (Looking disgustedly at phaser) Man, these things never work on anything! Why the hell do we even bother carrying them?! SULU/HORATIO It was about to speak when the cock crew. CHEKHOV/BERNARDO The what? Who? Oh. You mean those guys in engineering with the tight pants? (Lights fade on them and then up on HAMLET, who is dying wonderfully while holding a PAPER COFFEE CUP) HAMLET/KIRK ... absent thee from felicity, Spock you green-blooded ... draw thee tight-assed Vulcan breath in pain ... (KIRK is noticing that SPOCK is not on stage) (SULU pokes his head on stage)

7.

SULU/HORATIO (confused) Uh, Spock's not here. I think he went out for a pizza or something. (Indicates CUP) Hey! Is that a mocha? Can I have a sip of that? HAMLET/KIRK Let go! The funny sound of the transporter beam (PROMPTS Sulu to make noise) invades my conscious. The rest is silence. (He dies magnificently, with a side-to-side movement a la Trek bridge) (in trouble with SULU accompanying. Blackout and lights up to reveal JOHN and CAST/CREW taking seats) JOHN You realize, of course, this wouldn't never fly at the Globe (laughter from cast/crew). Well, I have to thank you for presenting to us what I thought was an excellent take on Hamlet, transposed into a very unique setting. You should all be committed, er, commended. (laughter from CAST/CREW). Here we have another, sort-of, original piece that, in some ways takes up where "The Compleat Works of William ShakesprAbridged" left off, and I must say I thought that play had said all there was to be said about mixing media to present Shakespeare. And I believe there were some Star-Trekian allusions in that other play, were there not? And perhaps that's where you got the idea. Well, never mind. I must say I thought it an extraordinarily clever touch to borrow Iago from Othello and make him the evil Spock. In my mind, Hamlet always provided the internal bad judgment to create the turmoil that makes this play work, and certainly Claudius was pretty evil in the original Hamlet. But not evil enough for this crew, hence the introduction of Spock-Iago and the deletion, interestingly enough, of Claudius altogether. Sort of leaves the arena open to just about anything, doesn't it? And it may not be long before this gang presents to us King Lear done as Willie Loman, Richard II as Clint Eastwood or Romeo as one of the actors from "Friends." (laughter from CAST/CREW) (reading from/flipping notes as he wanders stage) Blah, blah, blah, set was pretty minimal, acting was good, I really believed Nurse Chappel-Ophelia's turmoil, yadda yadda yadda, Kirk's Hamlet was a joy to watch, joke with cast about costuming problems,bullshit a little about the meaning of this play and (looking up), oops, I'm out of time! SANDY Holy cow! What the ...! Did I just see what I thought I just saw?

8.

You should all be commited, er, commended for taking this ancient play and maneuvering it into a setting which, in television time, is equally dated. The effect was something so thoroughly modern and intriguing that, dang, it makes it tough to even comment on. So I just have some nitpicky stuff here ... (REACTION from) (CAST/CREW) The shoes ... did that bother anyone that they were wearing these sort of regular sneakers? It didn't bother me so much that the costumes were, basically, street clothes ... and that was probably just a money issue, since getting fullblown Star Trek costumes and/or Shakespearean dress - or some ungodly combination of the two - was probably beyond the ... And the sound effects - I thought it interesting that the characters provided their own beeps and whirs, and they came across OK, but, well, I'm thinking you might have gotten the real thing or done away with them altogether. You might have, I dunno, spent some time as actors looking in the mirror to see how you looked while doing ... Although I like them a great deal ... (pacing and reading from notes) hedge, hedge, blab a bit about the dichotomy, insert pithy phrases about the show obvious to all, make more niggling comments about the Evil Spock in the role of Iago, praise playwright for unique adaptation and, well, probably shouldn't mention Kirk's cute butt. Oh, time's up, thank you, thank you, et cetera, et cetera. (lights down on her and up on KIRK and SULU) (speaking to one another after the adjudication.) KIRK I thought that was hilarious that that guy adjudicator, you know, the dickhead, thought our phasers were phallic symbols. SULU Oh, man, I nearly choked when that chick judge suggested my ad-lib about the Klingons was an allusion to "American Buffalo" KIRK You just forgot your line, didn't you! SULU Hell yes! I was like, uh, OK, somebody say something! KIRK You'll probably get like Best Actor or something. SULU What was the deal with the shoes, anyway?

9.

KIRK Man, I don't know. Usually, though, it's a good sign if they're looking at little stuff like that. SULU Someone told me if they start out saying anything about "nitpicking," you're top three, no prob. KIRK You watching the next show? SULU Nah. It's some old-people play about death or something. I think we should go drink. Heavily. KIRK I'm with you. Live long (making Vulcan sign) And do shots!

SULU (They EXIT humming the Star Trek fight song. Lights up on two other actors)

ACTRESS 1 I'm sorry but, what the hell did we just see? ACTRESS 2 Whaddaya mean? I like The Tempest. ACTRESS 1 Well, me too, but that was painful. I mean, if you can't do an island scene with trees and shit, you should just do, like, black box, with a bench and that's it. (beat) My bra is killing me; I'm sweating like a ... ACTRESS 2 I thought it was neat that they had the preschoolers paint the backdrop! I'm thinking Pollack. ACTRESS 1 I somehow doubt Mel Gibson would think so. Hey, what did you think of that Hamlet-Star Trek thing last night? ACTRESS 2 I thought the guy who played Kirk was kind of a babe. A babe in bard's clothing, a swarthy embodiment of Tudor-slashstarfighterguy sensibilities and tight, tight, y'know ... ACTRESS 1 I was kind of thinking about the piece itself.

10.

ACTRESS 2 Oh, well, I've always viewed Kirk's exaggerated, swinging dick persona to be a kinda representative, uh, zeitgeist kinda male ego thing that transcended any generation. In some ways, I view him as Nietzches's Superman, or as a sort of befuddled Vonnegutian "everyman" who speaks not so much to say but as a means of fomenting a sort of Dickensian futility that bespeaks the plight of the average Joe as relevant to then as it is to today's byzantine take on the hopelessness of a male-dominated society as ... ACTRESS I Uh, well, how about them phasers? ACTRESS 2 The phasers are merely weapons; they are not phallic symbols as that one crazy bitch adjudicator might imply. Weapons are props in theatre, and they represent a means to an end. When I see weapons emerge, I think of this deux ex machina that is only there to move the plot forward. Violence: Give me a break. ACTRESS I I think, oh damn! I have a rip in my hose! ACTRESS 2 I mean, when it comes right down to it, only guys would think that kind of ribald, existential, archaic, er, antedeluvian "macheesimo" is interesting to anybody. (beat) Give me a Beth Henley play anyday. (lights down on them and up on JOHN) JOHN You know, I was thinking that the "Hamlet & Egos" show that opened our festival was as low as we could go, but I'm going to wear my black hat here and suggest that this production of All's Well That End's Well was a new nadir, er, a new low. I've seen this produced, oh, I dunno, a dozen times, from high school productions to professional ones, and, for the most part, you can find someone to portray the relatively simple caricatures of the flighty Bertram, the aggressive, clever Helena ... but here, you've managed to make all the character so, well, machinistic, stiff, robotic, wrongly turgid and even, dare I say, defyingly lachyrmose and downright lugubrious ... even given the ease of portraying them. Well, all I can think to say is that there should be some sort of congressional mandate to keep people like you from directing shows. I mean, I think ... Fuck you!

DIRECTOR

11.

I beg your pardon ...?

JOHN

DIRECTOR (standing) I said, "Fuck you!" Who the hell do you think you are, insulting me like this in front of all these people! I worked very hard to put this play on, as did my cast and crew. We drove over 400 miles to be here and, and to have you say this shit to us, well, who the hell do you think you are? JOHN Well, madam, I'm the director of theatre at Midland University, I've directed over 300 plays myself, and I've ... DIRECTOR I don't give a fat rat's ass. You don't get up here and tell people working in community theatre that they suck! You know, I've got a business to run and three children, and my theatre is a labor of love; I don't get paid for this. OK, so you didn't like our show. Every other miserable adjudication I've sat through has been couched in euphemism and encouraging words, no matter what. Look, I know we suck, but you should see the people who turn up for auditions. (beat) Dickhead. JOHN Listen (beat) Bitch! I can't address your casting problems, I'm simply responding to what I saw, and it sucked. I mean, how can you expect us to believe Helena could possibly see anything at all in Bertram, or that ... DIRECTOR I couldn't find a decent Bertram! What can I tell you? I don't know. Bob did the best he could, and we thought ... JOHN You thought? You THOUGHT? Madam, (indicating BOB) even with the worst actor imaginable, all you need do is follow the lines as given to us by Shakespeare, and you would have had a perfectly serviceable Alls Well That Ends Well. I fail to see ... oh, dear, it looks like I'm out of time! TIMEKEEPER No, actually you have four minutes left. DIRECTOR Yeah, so why don't you keep going!? Why don't you tell us that our set blew, our costumes sucked and my staging could've been done by your 4-year-old Shih Tzu!? JOHN It did, they did, he could have. Ahhh, I'm sorry. Look, I'm finished.

12.

(DIRECTOR encourages audience to boo/hiss. Lights down and up on ACTOR 1 and ACTRESS 3) ACTRESS 3 I shall slit my wrists. How can that bozo talk to us this way? ACTOR 1 I was only trying to be old. Isn't Lear s'posed to be old? (lights down on them as lights go up on JOHN and SANDY) JOHN A little makeup wouldn't have hurt. A little clown white in the hair, some mascara lines ... SANDY But they tried. I mean, Lear doesn't necessarily HAVE to be old ... JOHN Oh, and Hamlet shouldn't be indecisive, Iago should be nice, Ophelia should be sane ... To portray old, well, walking around clutching a bag of Depends undergarments ... just doesn't work for me! (lights down on them as lights up on TWO ACTORS. Actor 3 is dressed as a hippie werewolf, toking on a joint) ACTOR 3 I'm not sure what I just heard. Did we suck or were we great? ACTOR 2 I was a teen-age werewolf. Didn't those adjudicators ever see that movie? A young Michael Landon, a babe, if I dare say so. ACTOR 3 Sure, but they didn't buy the whole hippie werewolf thing for Richard III. And they say he wasn't a teen-ager. ACTOR 2 Whatever. But I had good shoes. (Lights down on them as lights up on adjudicators together) JOHN I just wish you'd quite it with the shoes. Who the hell cares about their shoes? The winged shoes of Hermes couldn't have salvaged that scene.

13.

SANDY I thought the fuzzy brown slippers were a nice touch. What can I tell you ... I'm into shoes. (a few beats) JOHN (Looking at her) Richard III was not a werewolf. (Lights down on them and up on actors) ACTOR 2 I believe Richard III WAS a werewolf. (Lights down/up) SANDY He could've been a werewolf. Who's to say? (Lights down/up) ACTOR 3 (To audience) Actually, we were originally going to portray Richard III as a more obscure animal, like an echidna, or a hedgehog, or a nauga .... A nauga?

ACTOR 2

ACTOR 3 You know, like nauga-hyde? ACTOR 2 I wanted to do him as a pygmy marmoset that spoke Basque ACTOR 3 But we couldn't find anyone that could translate ACTOR 2 And try finding a pygmy marmoset in (name of obscure town) (Lights down/up) JOHN Actually, to be charitable, I like the whole notion of Richard III helping to sell Girl Scout cookies. It gave him some modicum of humanity, a trait I've often found missing in the play. (Lights change to BAR SCENE,where JOHN and PLAYWRIGHT are at bar nursing drinks) JOHN Say, you wrote this piece we're doing right now, didn't you.

14.

Uh, well, yeah.

PLAYWRIGHT

JOHN You think this is pretty funny, don't you? PLAYWRIGHT Well, I guess that's the idea. Is it bothering you? JOHN You know, we don't sweat through all this theatre for fun. To us, it's serious business. And I can't help but think that you're poisoning the people at this festival to the whole notion of the adjudication. PLAYWRIGHT O, untrue! But adjudication is stressful to people, and I was just trying to ... JOHN Lighten things up? Make us seem more human? PLAYWRIGHT Yeah, that's it! Everyone knows you guys have to watch bad theatre and say nice things about it. I mean, staging an alternative Shakespeare festival for community theatre ... what'd you expect? JOHN Well, I really think, and this is just me speaking, that this really cheapens the process. I think you should have put in some stuff about how we adjudicators wrestle over things, really try to ... PLAYWRIGHT Whoa, hold on. Are you trying to adjudicate THIS show? Here, now, in the (name of theater)? Remember, you're just an actor PLAYING an adjudicator, (name of actor). You don't have to do this. (pause) Although this does seem to me, what we're doing, to be groundbreaking work. Have you got a pen? (begins making notes on a cocktail napkin). JOHN Oh, OK, so you're making notes about a play - and I use the term loosely - that we're right in the midst of? Oh, this is precious. PLAYWRIGHT It's just art imitating art, eh? Kind of like a dog licking its own ...

15.

JOHN I, don't know what's going on here. I don't know who I am! PLAYWRIGHT Do you think the audience understands this? JOHN Yes, and that scares me. PLAYWRIGHT They're laughing, aren't they? (prompts for reaction if none) JOHN Yes, but people laugh at cheap schtick and crotch-shots. Is that good theatre? PLAYWRIGHT Well, can be. Not on its own, mind you; it has to be couched in, y'know, all that other stuff like plot and subtext and denooment and all that. (beat) I'm just learning that stuff. JOHN (disgusted) Indeed. Well, what do I do in the next scene? PLAYWRIGHT Nothing. Have a smoke. It's a bit between two of the actors you said sucked, and how they're planning to knife you in a bar. (Two KILLERS enter and knife adjudicator, who dies fabulously) PLAYWRIGHT Nice job. That guy was an asshole. Who are you?

KILLER 1

PLAYWRIGHT Oh, nobody. Just a guy in a bar. KILLER 2 No, I know you. You're the, hey! You're the guy who wrote this thing! Well, yes.

PLAYWRIGHT

KILLER 1 So you put all those awful things about our acting ... you told those adjudicators to say all that stuff!

16.

Well, yes.

Get him!

PLAYWRIGHT KILLER 2 (brandishing knife) (playwright scribbles on napkin and two actors, instead, fall on themselves, killing one another)

PLAYWRIGHT Playing god, it's not easy. BLACKOUT