Resurrection Blues Read online

  Table of Contents

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  SCENE 1

  SCENE 2

  SCENE 3

  SCENE 4

  SCENE 5

  SCENE 6

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  RESURRECTION BLUES

  ARTHUR MILLER (1915-2005) was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Prince (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), and The American Clock. He as also written a novel, Focus (1945), The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. Other works include Salesman in Beijing (1984); Danger: Memory! (1987); Timebends, a memoir (1988); The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993); and Broken Glass (1994), which won the 1995 Olivier Award for Best Play, and a novella, Homely Girl, a Life (1995). Recent plays include Mr. Peters’ Connections, Resurrection Blues, and his last play Finishing the Picture. He was awarded the Avery Hopwood Award for Playwrighting at University of Michigan in 1936. He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, received two Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards for his plays, as well as a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also won an Obie Award, a BBC Best Play Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, a Gold Medal for Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Literary Lion Award from the New York Public Library, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Algur Meadows Award. He received honorary degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University and was awarded the Prix Moliere of the French theatre, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Lifetime Achievement Award and the Pulitzer Prize, as well as numerous other awards. He was named the Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001. He was awarded the 2002 Prince of Asturias for Letters and the 2003 Jerusalem Prize.

  BY ARTHUR MILLER

  DRAMA

  The Golden Years

  The Man Who Had All the Luck

  All My Sons

  Death of a Salesman

  An Enemy of the People (adaptation

  of the play by Ibsen)

  The Crucible

  A View from the Bridge

  After the Fall

  Incident at Vichy

  The Price

  The American Clock

  The Creation of the World and

  Other Business

  The Archbishop’s Ceiling

  The Ride Down Mt. Morgan

  Broken Glass

  Mr. Peters’ Connections

  Resurrection Blues

  ONE-ACT PLAYS

  A View from the Bridge, one-act

  version, with A Memory of Two

  Mondays

  Elegy for a Lady (in Two-Way

  Mirror)

  Some Kind of Love Story (in Two-Way Mirror)

  I Can’t Remember Anything (in

  Danger: Memory!)

  Clara (in Danger: Memory!)

  The Last Yankee

  OTHER WORKS

  Situation Normal

  The Misfits (a cinema novel)

  Focus (a novel)

  I Don’t Need You Anymore

  (short stories)

  In the Country (reportage with Inge

  Morath photographs)

  Chinese Encounters (reportage with

  Inge Morath photographs)

  In Russia (reportage with Inge Morath

  photographs)

  Salesman in Beijing (a memoir)

  Timebends (autobiography)

  Homely Girl, a Life (novella)

  On Politics and the Art of Acting

  COLLECTIONS

  Arthur Miller’s Collected Plays

  (Volumes I and II)

  The Portable Arthur Miller

  The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller

  (Robert Martin, editor)

  Echoes Down the Corridor:

  Collected Essays, 1944-2000

  VIKING CRITICAL LIBRARY

  EDITIONS

  Death of a Salesman (edited by

  Gerald Weales)

  The Crucible (edited by

  Gerald Weales)

  TELEVISION WORKS

  Playing for Time

  SCREENPLAYS

  The Misfits

  Everybody Wins

  The Crucible

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Penguin Books 2006

  Copyright © The Arthur Miller 2004 Literary and Dramatic Property Trust, 2006

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005

  Resurrection blues : a prologue and two acts / Arthur Miller.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-0-143-03548-0

  1. Politicians—Drama. 2. Power (Social sciences)—Drama. 3. Women motion picture

  producers and directors—Drama. I. Title.

  PS3525.I5156R47 2006

  812’.52—dc22 2005053506

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  C/R TK

  A NOTE ABOUT THE PLAY

  Resurrection Blues received its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, in August 2002 with John Bedford Lloyd as General Felix Barriaux, Jeff Weiss as Henri Schultz, and Laila Robins as Emily Shapiro, directed by David Esbjornson.

  CHARACTERS

  GENERAL FELIX BARRIAUX, chief of state

  HENRI SCHULTZ, his cousin

  EMILY SHAPIRO, a film director

  SKIP L. CHEESEBORO, an account executive

  PHIL, a cameraman

  SARAH, a soundwoman

  POLICE CAPTAIN

  JEANINE, Schultz’s daughter

  STANLEY, a disciple

  SOLDIERS, WAITERS, PASSERSBY, PEASANTS

  PLACE

  Various locations in a far away country

  PROLOGUE

  Dark stage. Light finds Jeanine in wheelchair; she is

  wrapped in bandages, one leg straight out. She addresses

  the audience.

  JEANINE: Nothing to be alarmed about. I finally decided, on
e morning, to jump out my window. In this country even a successful suicide is difficult. I seem to be faintly happy that I failed, although god knows why. But of course you can be happy about the strangest things . . . I did not expect failure in my life. I failed as a revolutionary . . . and come to think of it, even as a dope addict—one day the pleasure simply disappeared, along with my husband. We so badly need a revolution here. But that’s another story. I refuse to lament. Oddly, in fact, I feel rather cheerful about it all, in a remote way, now that I died, or almost, and have my life again. The pain is something else, but you can’t have everything.

  Going out the window was a very interesting experience. I can remember passing the third floor on my way down and the glorious sensation of release. Like when I was a student at Barnard and went to Coney Island one Sunday and took that ride on the loop-the-loop and the big drop when you think it won’t ever come up again. This time it didn’t and I had joined the air, I felt transparent, and I saw so sharply, like a condor, a tiger. I passed our immense jaquaranda tree and there was a young buzzard sitting on a branch, picking his lice. Passing the second floor I saw a cloud over my head the shape of a grand piano. I could almost taste that cloud. Then I saw the cracks in the sidewalk coming up at me and the stick of an Eskimo ice cream bar that had a faint smear of chocolate. And everything I saw seemed superbly precious and for a split second I think I believed in god. Or at least his eye, or an eye seeing everything so exactly.

  Light finds Henri Schultz.

  My father has returned to be of help. I am trying to appreciate his concern after all these years. Like many fools he at times has a certain crazy wisdom. He says now—despite being a philosopher—that I must give up on ideas which only lead to other ideas. Instead I am to think of specific, concrete things. He says the Russians have always had more ideas than any other people in history and ended in the pit. The Americans have no ideas and they have one success after another. I am trying to have no ideas.

  Papa is so like our country, a drifting ship heading for where nobody knows—Norway, maybe, or is it Java or Los Angeles? The one thing we know for sure, our treasure that we secretly kiss and adore—is death—

  Light finds Emily Shapiro and Skip L. Cheeseboro.

  —death and dreams, death and dancing, death and laughter. It is our salt and chile pepper, the flavoring of our lives.

  We have eight feet of topsoil here, plenty of rain, we can grow anything, but especially greed. A lot of our people are nearly starving. And a bullet waits for anyone who seriously complains.

  Light finds Stanley.

  In short—a normal country in this part of the world. A kind of miraculous incompetence, when you look at it.

  I had sixteen in my little brigade, including two girls. We were captured. They shot them all in thirty seconds.

  Light finds Felix Barriaux.

  My uncle Felix, the head of the country, spared me. I still find it hard to forgive him. I think it is one of the contradictions that sent me out my window. Survival can be hard to live with. . . . None of my people was over nineteen.

  Light finds nothing.

  I have a friend now. When I woke on the sidewalk he was lying beside me in my blood, embracing me and howling like a child in pain. He saved me. His love. He comes some nights and brings me honor for having fought.

  The last light brightens.

  Up in the mountains the people think he is the son of god. Neither of us is entirely sure of that. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

  Brightens further still. Slight pause.

  What will happen now, will happen: I am content.

  She rolls into darkness. The last light brightens even

  further, widening its reach until it fully covers the

  stage.

  SCENE 1

  Office of the Chief of State, Felix Barriaux. He is

  seated at a window near his desk, studying a letter

  while filing his nails. Intercom barks.

  FELIX, To intercom: My cousin? Yes, but didn’t he say this afternoon? Well, ask him in. . . . Wait. Tension as he studies the letter again. All right, but interrupt me in fifteen minutes; he can go on and on. You know these intellectuals.—Anything in the afternoon papers? The radio? And the Miami station? Good. . . . Listen, Isabelle . . . are you alone?—I want you to forget last night, agreed? Exactly, and we will, we’ll try again soon. I appreciate your understanding, my dear, you’re a fantastic girl . . .

  You can send in Mr. Schultz. In conflict he restudies the letter, then . . . Oh, fuck all intellectuals! He passionately, defiantly kisses the letter and stashes it in his inside pocket.

  Henri enters. Wears a cotton jacket and a tweed cap.

  Henri! Welcome home! Wonderful to see you; and you look so well!

  HENRI, solemn smile: Felix.

  FELIX, both hands smothering Henri’s:—I understood you to say this afternoon.

  HENRI, confused: Did I? Touching his forehead . . . Well I suppose I could come back if you’re . . .

  FELIX: Out of the question! Sit! Please! Shaking his head, amazed—before Henri can sit. I can’t help it.

  HENRI: What?

  FELIX: I look at you, cousin, and I see the best years of our lives.

  HENRI, embarrassed: Yes, I suppose.

  Now they sit.

  FELIX: You don’t agree.

  HENRI: I have too much on my mind to think about it.

  FELIX, grinning feigns shooting with pistol at Henri: . . . You sound like you’re bringing me trouble . . . I hope not.

  HENRI: The contrary, Felix, I’d like to keep you out of trouble . . .

  FELIX: What does that mean?

  HENRI: I didn’t want to take up your office time, but there was no answer at your house . . . have you moved?

  FELIX: No, but . . . I sleep in different places every night.—No guarantee, but I try to make it a little harder for them.

  HENRI: Then the war is still on? I see hardly anything in the European press . . .

  FELIX: Well, it’s hardly a war anymore; comes and goes now, like a mild diarrhea. What is it, two years?

  HENRI: More like three, I think.

  FELIX: No. There was still major fighting three years ago. You came afterward.

  HENRI: That’s right, isn’t it.—God, my mind is gone.

  FELIX: Listen, I lied to you—you’re not looking good at all. Wait!—I have some new vitamins! Presses intercom. Isabelle! Give my cousin a bottle of my new vitamins when he leaves. To Henri: French.

  HENRI: What?

  FELIX: My vitamins are French.

  HENRI: Your vitamins are French?

  FELIX:—What’s the matter?

  HENRI: I’m . . . very troubled, Felix.

  FELIX: Jeanine.

  HENRI: Partly. . . . It’s that . . . at times nothing seems to follow from anything else.

  FELIX: Oh, well, I wouldn’t worry about a thing like that.

  HENRI: I’ve always envied how you accept life, Felix.

  FELIX: Maybe you read too many books—life is complicated, but underneath the principle has never changed since the Romans—fuck them before they can fuck you. How’s Jeanine now?

  HENRI: What can I say?—I’m with her every day and there are signs that she wants to live . . . but who knows? The whole thing is a catastrophe.

  FELIX: I know her opinion of me, but I still think that girl has a noble heart; she’s a Greek tragedy. . . . You remember my son-in-law, the accountant? He calculates that falling from the third floor—Raises his arm straight up.—she must have hit the sidewalk at sixty-two miles an hour. Slaps his hand loudly on desktop.

  HENRI, pained: Please.

  FELIX: But at least it brought you together. Sorry. Incidentally, where’s your dentist?

  HENRI: My dentist?

  FELIX: I am practically commuting to Miami but my teeth keep falling apart. Where do you go?

  HENRI: It depends. New York, London, Paris . . . wherever I happen to be. Listen, F
elix . . . Breaks off. I don’t know where to begin . . .

  FELIX: . . . I hope it’s not some kind of problem for me because I’ll be frank with you, Henri—I’m not . . . completely myself these days.—I’m all right, you understand, but I’m just . . . not myself.

  HENRI: . . . I didn’t come to antagonize you.