Center stage: A dead tree, with a bench on either side. A bus stop comprised of 9 or 10 chairs in a row. An abandoned building with what used to be side-by-side storefronts, numbers 666 and 668, at one time covered by rolling metal security gates, now each showing a gaping hole. Former business names are recognizable: T. J. Eckleburg, Ophthalmologist over one storefront. Emperor Nero’s All-You-Can-Eat Buffet over the other. Visible behind each metal gate is an elevated cage with bars.
The eight actors enter, carrying laptops, and seat themselves along the bus stop chairs.
ONE
It’s time for a new play.
TWO
It’s always time for a new play, in your book.
THREE
Any ideas? Shakespeare?
ONE
Anybody heard anything new? lately?
THREE
Nope.
TWO
In this place?… Hardly.
THREE
It doesn’t have to be about this place. But, of course, right now, it does.
ONE
Right now it’s time for a play that makes us suffer,
like the loss of someone we love more than ourselves.
FOUR
Well, there has been something troubling me. On my mind. But not that heavy.
FIVE
Hear ye. Hear ye. I do declare this bus stop meeting called to order…. Proceed.
FOUR
There was a couple, recently, who used to encourage their 10-year-old daughter,
and their 6-year-old son, to walk home, alone, a mile through this park … //
SIX
You call this a park?
FOUR
You’ve got it.
SEVEN
Alone? By themselves?
FOUR
That’s the point.
SIX
Shit! And they got killed or something? Right? That’s what you’re going to tell us?
FOUR
No. Nothing like that. It’s just, they got picked up by the police one afternoon.
TWO
What else would you expect? How irresponsible can parents get?
FOUR
Who kept them in their squad car two hours, with no phoning home.
THREE
They must have been about to lose their freaking minds.
ONE
And their parents, too.
FOUR
It didn’t end there.
The police turned the kids over to child protective services,
who didn’t give them back until 11 pm.
After intimating charges of parental neglect would be brought.
TWO
That’s what I said: What else would you expect?
ONE
My parents wouldn’t have expected that.
SEVEN
Welcome to the age of helicoptering.
SIX
Whatever….
Isn’t it better for the police to stop them, than something worse to happen?
THREE
It takes a village, to raise a child.
SEVEN
It takes more than this village, to find something to write a play about.
ONE
Do we want kids to spend their childhood all “bubble wrapped”?
FIVE
Helmets, masks, and pads, before a kid can put a foot on a skateboard?
THREE
Teddy bears, sold without eyes.
EIGHT
They come off, and can get caught in throats. Or haven’t you heard?
SIX
What about teddy bear noses?
EIGHT
Same thing.
SEVEN
The whole thing is Kafkaesque.
FOUR
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.
SIX
Which means what? Exactly? What is Kafkaesque?
EIGHT
Kafkaesque is “non-arrival.”
A parade that starts in the city, but winds up in the country with no explanation.
SIX
Which means what? Exactly?
SEVEN
Like the kids in that cruiser, I guess.
And their parents, giving them too much freedom to walk home.
ONE
The parents certainly went through Hell for it.
TWO
The kids probably had a ball, looking at guns, and bullets, and tasers.
EIGHT
I think it would have been more Kafkaesque if one of them got a finger shot off.
By accident.
SIX
Ew. That’s sick.
It makes no sense.
ONE
Kafkaesque is making no sense. Like government, most of the time.
EIGHT
Kafkaesque is a nightmarish, self-perpetuating bureaucracy,
that unravels every string of what was once a seemingly rational world.
FOUR
There’s a story there to tell. Kafkaesque, the surreal. The bizarre. Our town.
SEVEN
The banal. People mindlessly following habits down blind alleys that make no sense.
ONE
People mindlessly banging their heads against graffiti-ed walls like these.
FOUR
Every main character of his getting trapped in situations beyond their control.
Finding themselves totally confused, frustrated, and feeling helpless.
EIGHT
Kafkaesque is like an actor being trapped on stage, isn’t it?
Forgetting all his lines…. And naked.
SIX
I’m afraid I still don’t get it.
EIGHT
You have to see it, to get it.
FOUR
That’s my point, I guess.
ONE
You’ve got it! The only way to describe Kafkaesque is to show Kafkaesque. Here.
And that’s what we’ll do. Kafkaesque is what Franz Kafka told about.
And we’ll tell the audience about Kafka.
SIX
Kafka in this dead neighborhood? Are you kidding?
Where would we start?
FOUR
There’s one place I can think of: I had a professor say once that one Kafka story was impossible to make into play. Successfully.
EIGHT
Which one is that?
FOUR
The Hunger Artist.
SIX
Which is what? What’s the plot?
FOUR
I don’t remember exactly.
There’s this man who makes a living out of starving himself.
Professionally.
In public.
TWO
Wow! Great start for a play.
FOUR
Attending the funeral of a good man who starved himself to death,
is like starting a play in the middle.
But you get my professor’s point.
Who’s going to want to see a man telling his reasons for going on hunger strikes?
Voluntarily.
Just to make money out of it. For what?
EIGHT
It’s bizarre. It’s truly Kafkaesque.
THREE
What happens to him?
FOUR
People get sick of the sport. They stop coming to watch him.
And he winds up in a circus.
Where he’s left off, by himself, starving to death, until ….
THREE
Until what? What happens?
FOUR
They feed him to a panther.
THREE
What??
FOUR
No. Not really.
I don’t remember what happens to him.
Except … there is a panther in the story. At the end. I just forget why.
ONE
Let’s do it!!