Global Panda(emic)

or

Facing the Theatre of the Future

---A Serial “Stage” Play---

by Ian Lambton

SCENE FOUR

For Scenes One, Two and Three

go to PAST ISSUES, 1 , 2 and 3.

(As described in opening for Scene One, roles are any gender,

age etc. so “he/ him” is used for convenience.)

HAP and SID sit facing each other, each staring at a laptop screen. On a big screen behind them is projected what they see, each other’s face. They wear Covid masks.

On the floor nearby is a heap of rags, beneath which is BONK, who does not wear a mask. Occasionally he snores and moves in his sleep.

HAP: Well? Say something.

SID: Like what?

HAP: Anything. I don’t want to stare at your face all day if you have nothing interesting to say.

SID: Ok. You have a really big… mask.

HAP: What do you mean?

SID: (Pointing to the enlarged screen image.) It’s so big I can see your lips moving when you talk. Or I should say, if you talk, because you don’t say anything interesting.

HAP: I need a better script.

SID: There’s your writer. (BONK snores.) Shut up!

HAP: Don’t yell at him. He’s trying to sleep.

HAP and SID take off their masks.

SID: I don’t want him to sleep. I want him to write me some brilliant lines.

HAP: So you can wow your audience?

SID: There is no audience.

HAP: There is now. We’re broadcasting worldwide.

SID: Oh that’s right. Hello world.

HAP: Did they hear you?

SID: I don’t know. Maybe they’re all asleep. Like (pointing to BONK)… whatever that thing is.

HAP: That thing is Bonk. Our inspiration, our material, our… raison d’être.

SID: A raisin debtor.

HAP: What?

SID: All the raisins he… owes us?

HAP: (Groans.) A shriveled up grape pun? He looks more like heap of rags.

SID: Or a pile of old masks.

HAP: Yeah, why do we wear these things when we’re alone here?

SID: Haven’t we been vaccinated now?

HAP: Time has passed, right?

SID: So let’s say we… our characters… have been.

HAP: Like it matters?

SID: If we put it in the script…

HAP: Then… it is so.

SID: Ok, let’s wake up our script-writer. Hey you? Bonk?

HAP: Bonk?

SID: Can we bonk the bonk?

HAP: That would make us bonkers.

BONK rouses himself, rummages around under his rags and brings out a handful of slim manuscripts.

BONK: I’ve got them.

SID Got what?

BONK: Your scripts. Here they are.

HAP: But we’re already doing our next scene.

BONK: No but I changed it.

SID: Why?

BONK: Because I wanted to. We have a bigger audience now.

HAP: Where? It’s just the three of us,

BONK: What do you mean? We’re online and streaming now.

HAP: You know what that means?

SID: What?

BONK: We’ve gone global, baby.

HAP: Global. Am I impressed?

BONK: Of course you are. Who needs a real live audience when we’ve got a virtual audience. Potentially infinite numbers. No need to even count seats.

SID: But we can’t… connect with them.

BONK: You can’t just improvise any old crap.

HAP: We can’t?

BONK: You really need a writer now.

BONK watches as HAP and SID stare at their laptop screens, not saying anything, tapping at their keyboards occasionally, totally absorbed in their digital reality. As BONK watches he realizes he is not included. He talks to the empty theatre as if they are old friends.

BONK: I am alone in this world. Normally when an actor, or actor slash writer, does a monologue, there is an audience witnessing the apparent solitude. Someone to listen, perhaps respond in some quiet way. But being all alone, there is no sharing experience. That’s what it’s all about – we need to share something together. Now that we’ve all been wearing masks and avoiding each other, we’re ever more aware that being together means sharing… sharing the air we breathe. Being in proximity to another person means breathing the same air, in and out of each other’s faces and lungs. It’s an intimate exchange, one that we didn’t used to think of that way.

I was the first caveman who emerged like a newborn from the darkness of the earth. Now I am alone as the solitary writer of the last words of the human race as we perish into extinction. I am also just one of you. There are seven billion of us, all the same, all alone in isolation, masked in crowds or huddling in our caves.

Each one of us is the first… and then the last… the last person to exist… in our own universe… alone, alone, alone.

(Almost slumping into utter despair, but then beginning to perk up.)

Unless… we’re creative enough… to invent… other people. Yeah. Like this…

BONK snaps his fingers. The computers and screens go dark as if unplugged. BONK moves to the side to watch HAP and SID. SID is alarmed but HAP reacts as if it was predictable.

HAP: There’s been a meltdown.

SID: That sounds ominous. What melted?

HAP: The electric connections. The power went off.

SID: We have lights. I can see you.

HAP: Is that because you don’t believe that the power went off?

SID: No. It’s the other way round, surely.

HAP: Nope. It was a meltdown. You may believe the lights are still on, but we have no connection.

SID: You mean our vast global connection? Our audience?

HAP: Gone.

SID: Gone?

HAP: Zip. Wiped clean. Never happened.

SID: But you said…

HAP: Never mind what I said.

SID: So the magic only lasted for a few precious minutes?

HAP: Not even. You thought you had this vast audience due to the miracle of modern technology.

SID: I thought I did. Yes.

HAP: Nope. It was all an illusion. A delusion.

SID: Like a hallucination?

HAP: Not even.

SID: Just never existed?

HAP: Worse.

SID: Worse?

HAP: We... don’t exist.

SID: We… don’t exist?

HAP: Nope. Unless...

SID: Unless?

HAP: I have an idea.

SID: The meltdown was bad enough. Now you have an idea?

HAP: What if we kill him/ her/ whatever… our writer.

SID: You mean Bonk?

HAP: Yeah. Let’s bonk him/ her/ it.

SID: Bonk Bonk?

HAP: Yeah. We don’t need a Bonk running our show, putting words in our mouths. Do we?

SID: We made a mess of things without Bonk.

HAP: No, you only think that because you believe in Bonk.

SID: I believe in Bonk?

HAP: You do.

SID: Bonk is the one who writes what we say.

HAP: That’s what you think. But what if we say no?

SID: But if we kill Bonk… will we still exist?

HAP: Let’s find out.

BONK Okay stop! Halt! Cut!

HAP: Why?

SID: Yeah why?

BONK: Because… there’s been a… a change in the script.

HAP: Says who?

BONK: Says me.

HAP: That’s just because you don’t want us to kill you.

BONK: Well, yeah… that is correct.

SID: I was just warming up to the idea.

BONK: Too late.

As if commanded by BONK, who acts like an orchestra conductor, HAP and SID put on “Panda” shaped Covid masks that imitate Panda Bear faces, white face, big droopy black eyes, plus little round Mickey Mouse type ears on the tops of their heads.

HAP and SID are staring at their phones now, on opposite sides of the stage. On the screens behind them are their faces, as seen through their phone-cameras.

BONK settles down in his sleeping heap on the floor to watch them. HAP and SID glance up at each other not making eye contact, until at last they do.

HAP: Look up. There we are. It’s live theatre at long last. We survived the pandemic!

SID: No we didn’t.

HAP: Of course we did.

SID: No. Look at us.

HAP: I am. I see panda survival.

SID: (The first to take his mask off.) I see fake panda bears.

HAP: Well, this is the future.

SID: We have arrived at last.

HAP: But why are we still… here?

SID: We could be anywhere.

HAP: We don’t have a live audience, but we might be streaming to hundreds.

SID: Or millions.

HAP: Broadcasting round the planet.

SID: And into outer space.

HAP: We’ve never had such a gigantic audience.

BONK wakes up and gesticulates at the screens to make something different happen. HAP and SID look up to see… crowds appear on the screens.

SID: The silent masses.

HAP: What if they’re pre-recorded?

SID: Does that count? Are they a real, real audience?

HAP: Like really, really, really real?

SID: And then… are we?

HAP: Who… were… they?

SID: Who are we?

HAP: Why are we here?

SID: We could be anywhere.

HAP: Where are you?

SID: I’m just sitting here at my kitchen table.

HAP: Could you be sitting across from me at a little outdoor café table?

SID: Where?

HAP: This little cafe on the Rive Gauche in Paris.

SID: Is that where you are?

HAP: Maybe?

SID: (Looking round.) Can you see the Eiffel Tower?

HAP: Yup. Thar she blows.

SID: Or maybe I’m… on top of the Empire State building.

HAP: Wow. Is it open to the public?

SID: Oh. You mean with the pandemic shutdown?

HAP: But if we can be anywhere… then I’m on top… of Mount Everest.

SID: That’s a little extreme. Can you breathe at that altitude? How’s the weather up there.

HAP: (Gasping.) I think… I think… you’re right.

SID: Then be somewhere else. Come on down from up there.

HAP: Ok, here I am.

SID: Where are you now?

HAP: The point is I could be anywhere.

SID: Right. We’ve broken the rules.

HAP: And there are no penalties.

SID: Maybe not, but there might be repercussions.

Now the crowd seen on the screens, as if orchestrated by BONK, escape the boundaries of the screens and, like dream apparitions, descend and fill the theatre, wandering onto the stage. They ignore HAP and SID and go down into the audience area and then disappear out the doors into the streets.

HAP: Wow. Okay, this must be the finale.

SID: Yup, we’re approaching the end.

HAP: Should we be scared?

SID: Should we be scared?

HAP: You know, will there be an afterlife after…

SID: After… life as we know it… here on stage?

HAP: That is the question.

SID: You mean, will there be a closing night party for all the actors, stage hands, costume and lighting people, technicians and general staff, as we all get together after the last show?

HAP: To drink a lot and gossip and get sentimental, and maybe pair up for one last fling before they head off back to their real lives?

SID: What comes after the final ending?

HAP: Back to the doldrums. Life just goes on after…

SID: After… death? After…

HAP: After… The End.

SID: So there is no end? Ever? Nothing ever ends?

HAP: Or… it’s all ending, right now, every moment

SID: You mean we’re… already dead?

HAP: That would explain…

SID: That would explain a lot.

HAP: It would. But…

SID: As long as we have a script.

HAP: As long as we keep talking.

SID: As long as there is nobody to bring the curtain down.

HAP: Nobody to turn the lights off.

SID: As long as we have…

HAP: As long as we have… an audience.

SID: We don’t have an audience.

HAP: We never did.

SID: In that case I guess we never existed in the first place.

HAP: Never?

SID: We never did.

HAP: And those people… were the audience? Or are we their audience?

SID: Are we all just part of the messy multitude, life flowing in and out of time and existence and…

HAP: Yeah. All of that.

SID: You know what this proves? We’ve been stuck in a closet play.

HAP: Something to do with water closets?

SID: Toilets?

HAP: We could use some toilet humor.

SID: It’s not that kind of closet.

HAP: No poop jokes?

SID: You know, it’s a literary term for a theatre play or drama written purely for the page, not intended for performance.

HAP: In other words, no actors were harmed in the making of?

SID: No. But some of it is the best literary dramas, like Goethe’s Faust…

HAP: Definitely no poop jokes.

SID: Shakespeare is often studied this way. Or any theatre worth studying without necessarily performing. Like the dialogues of Sophocles and Plato… and works by the likes of Lord Byron.

HAP: High brow stuff.

SID: Like some of the great Russian writers had to hide their work.

HAP: To avoid censorship.

SID: And women writers in the nineteenth century who were unable to get their plays produced.

HAP: So now, the pandemic has forced us to go hide in the closet.

SID: Yes, but…

HAP: To perform for no one. Shut away, in the dark, unable to come out into the open.

SID: Yes, but think of the advantages.

HAP: Advantages?

SID: We’re not limited to being… just the two of us.

HAP: We’re not limited to being ourselves?

SID: Two actors is all we can afford most of the time. But on the page we could be any number.

HAP: We could be crowds… we could be the multitudes

SID: Yes, like the true, original Greek Chorus.

HAP: What else?

SID: What do you mean?

HAP: So we get fewer lines and less of a spotlight?

SID: Yes, but…

HAP: We don’t have to be the actors we are?

SID: Anything you can describe in words can be realized.

HAP: As actors we’re no longer limited in terms of what characters we can play?

SID: You can play any characters you want. Hamlet, Cleopatra.

HAP: King Kong?

SID: I always wanted to play James Bond.

HAP: We could be a pair of elephants.

SID: Or the weirdest aliens from Planet Whatever.

HAP: Or the Marx Brothers all playing Genghis Khan.

SID: I once played a character called King of the Universe. But the joke was I had to look like myself.

HAP: You don’t have to be limited any more.

SID: The possibilities, yeah.

HAP: Yeah, the possibilities.

SID: Like magic?

HAP: The power of words?

SID: Dragons?

HAP: Monsters?

SID: You know what I want to be?

HAP: No?

SID: Yes.

HAP: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

SID: Why not. If the words on the page say we are now mind readers, then…

HAP: You know what I want to be? Forget the heroes and choruses and dragons and…

SID: Aliens life forms.

HAP: I want to be…

SID: Yeah. Me too…

Slowly, as if by magic, the two actors transform, miraculously turning into a pair of REAL PANDA BEARS, not actors in costumes. They look around and lumber around a little in nonchalant curiosity, discovering that the costume hamper is now full of bamboo stalks. They lounge casually, munching in contentment. They ignore BONK.

BONK: There you go. Now you can explore the new world as… pandas with a real panda(emic) perspective. No need to say anything anymore. I guess that means they don’t need me now, so I’m out of that job. Oh well. I can write myself a new one. I wonder who I could create or become next… maybe I could be an audience…

SLOW FADE to BLACKOUT.

Tango no 3, Ruth J. Jameson