tHE
pHiLOSOPHER'S
sTONE
sCENARiO
by
Antonin
Artaud (1931)
translated and adapted by
Patrick
Grant
CHARACTERS
Dr. Pale ... science is his only true love.
Isabelle ... his wife, a small town girl, very bored. She can't imagine that love will ever come to her in any other form than that of the cold Doctor - a love that leaves her unsatisfied. Her desires and unconscious longings are made apparent by moans, groans, and heavy sighs.
Harlequin ... a grotesque creation of Dr. Pale who appears handsome and idealized, when seen through lsabelle's eyes.
THE SET
A doorway is cut into a large black frame that fills a corner of the space upstage. In the area behind the doorway hangs a large red curtain falling in ornate folds to the floor.
The curtain and frame are set diagonally from stage-left.
At the front of the stage sits a large table with massive wooden legs and a high wooden chair.
The curtain is brightly lit and from top to bottom has a slit running down the middle through which one can see a red light in the distance.
This is the operating room of Dr. Pale.
A SUMMARY OF THE PLOT
Harlequin
has noticed Isabelle and her desire for him for a long time.
To
be near Isabelle, he has offered to be part of one of the Doctor's, more or less,
sadistic experiments.
He is lead onto stage by Dr. Pale.
Dr. Pale is searching for the philosopher's stone.
Isabelle has a sort of fantasy when Harlequin enters, and idealizes him.
A scene takes place of one of the Doctor's experiments in which, by turns, Harlequin loses his arms and legs before a terrified Isabelle.
Through this horror she feels her first feelings of love for him.
Harlequin and Isabelle, alone in a moment of passion, are making a child, but are surprised by the Doctor in the middle of their erotic act (which strangely parallels the sadistic tests and experiments).
She gives birth to a baby that they produce from underneath lsabelle's dress.
The baby has the same, exact appearance of that of Dr. Pale, who, seeing his likeness reproduced in his wife's child, does not doubt for one second that he is not the father.
THE PLOT
I
The action opens with Isabelle, sitting at the table downstage, restless and heartsick.
In his corner of the stage, Dr. Pale, like a lumberjack or a butcher is in the middle of an experiment, chopping with a hatchet at a veritable massacre of mannequins.
Every resounding "chop" startles Isabelle deeply, rattling her nerves, making her jolt and tremble.
She repeatedly opens her mouth as if to scream but there is no sound.
Even
though Isabelle's actions happen in total silence, once in awhile, out of her
gaping mouth, comes a sort of prolonged hoot from the Offstage Voice, as
if it had escaped from out of her own mouth.
It is creaky, horribly grating,
and rising in pitch.
The doctor instantly jumps into the scene, gesticulating and lip-syncing to the voice:
"Have you finished interrupting my work?"
- and is said with a trembling of exasperation, especially on the last word "work", like a man beside himself, who is heatedly out of control.
The Doctor re-enters his red operating room.
II
His hellish tasks accomplished, the Doctor comes up to the front of the stage with a stump in his hand.
He examines it, checking it to see it if has any pulse.
Finding none, he rejects it, rubbing his hands.
He rouses himself, snorts, dusts off, raises his head, and inhales.
A sort of mechanical smile splits his expression and loosens his face.
He turns toward his wife Isabelle, who, behind him on stage, has been imitating his movements like a vague echo, faraway, with an exquisite difficulty.
The Doctor faces her and she smiles in silent echo, she rises and goes toward him.
III
A lengthy erotic section begins.
She wants nothing to do with the Doctor and holds a grudge against the him, yet she manages a false happiness.
Through this the actress must show in her actions towards him a combination of disgust and resignation.
In these details, like a set of tics, she lets a concealed rage show through: her caresses end in slaps and scratches.
She pulls his moustache in brusque gestures, unexpectedly.
He takes blows in full stomach, crumples to his feet, and tries to raise himself toward her mouth for a kiss.
IV
After the end of this sadistic love scene, a sort of military march of an earlier era bursts forth (haltingly, lame, and hobbling) as played on wind instruments: trombone, clarinet, bagpipes, etc.
From the rear enters a small hunchbacked man, Harlequin, having the air of presenting another but it is only he who appears.
He makes a high-pitched introduction in a voice from the back of his throat, like that of a hoarse eunuch, quivering and emphatic:
"I have come ... to have the philosophers stone ... taken out of me."
- with a freeze on the word "me".
On the surface, he is a monstrous character, the subject of the Doctor's experiments, but this character has an alter ego.
Sometimes he is a sort of bandy-legged monster, limping, hunchbacked, one-eyed and squinting, who walks trembling in all of his limbs.
At other times, he is a beautiful, upright youth who now and then puffs up his chest, when the Doctor is not looking.
V
We see Isabelle's slow detachment from her husband the Doctor and her attachment to Harlequin's alter ego.
The Doctor stretches himself in a grotesque movement of scientific curiosity, like a giraffe or heron, through an exaggerated elongation of the chin as he examines the new arrival.
Isabelle, on the other hand, is dazzled and dizzy by the appearance of Harlequin, as she idealizes him.
She takes the shape and posture of a weeping willow and does a dance of ecstasy and wonder.
Afterwards she is seated again, hands clasped, stretched out in front in a gesture of one timidly charmed and expectancy excited.
VI
This scene will be played in slow motion, in a sudden change of lights.
Harlequin, monstrous and unsteady, trembling (in slow motion) in all of his limbs, and the Doctor (in slow motion) advancing towards him, intoxicated with scientific curiosity.
Dr. Pale puts his hand on his collar, pushing him into the wings toward the operating room.
Isabelle, who in a sudden spasm of feeling all of the wondrousness of true love, faints in slow motion.
VII
Some moments pass after which one sees the Doctor pushing Harlequin onto the scene.
We see him trying to dodge the Doctor who swings his hatchet, cutting off his legs, arms, and head.
Isabelle,
standing up terrified in a corner of the stage, is losing her wits.
Her
limbs give way, but she does not fall.
VIII
Next, the Doctor, deliriously tired, passes out.
He is slouched down at the table and is concealed in part by the curtain, with his head just behind it with his feet swinging.
He snores loudly.
Harlequin, fallen on the ground, pulls together his arms, legs, and head, making himself whole again, and moves forward, creeping to Isabelle.
IX
A scene of violent eroticism begins between Isabelle and Harlequin.
Sitting in the middle of the stage, Harlequin lifts up Isabelle's dress and slides his fingers toward the part of her body referred to in the slang of the day by the Offstage Voice:
"The Muff" (lit. "the mound")
The gesture isn't very ambiguous.
X
At this moment
they begin making a child.
The two actors must indicate a time of panic
and distraction during which they grasp, time and time in rhythm, their heads,
chests, stomachs, and abdomens, taking each other by the shoulders like they will
want to take a proof of one another that they exist - and it makes each other
bounce in the air off of their abdomens like a trampoline and shake in the air
like sieves, in the intimate gesture of someone in love.
The Doctor wakes up, and sees them, from the wings.
He bursts forth with an enormous roar:
"Oomph!"
- a monosyllable that the Doctor says each time he is under the throws of great emotion.
XI
Harlequin and Isabelle are hurrying the making of the child with many gesticulations and with great shaking of one another and -as the fully awakened Doctor approaches - they produce a figurine a child that Isabelle pulls from under her dress.
When the child comes out, a breathy voice cries out from the wings:
"There she is!"
This cry crossfades into an intense hissing, rather resembling the noise of a torpedo trench and finishes in an enormous explosion.
The figurine of the child is an exact likeness of the Doctor.
At first the Doctor doesn't believe his eyes, but because of his resemblance to the child, he eventually accepts his paternity.
Meanwhile, Harlequin cowers behind Isabelle.
The two spouses uncomfortably embrace.
Blackout.
The End.
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