You have all been hearing me rabbit on about this vorticist play, Entropia, I have been trying to write for the last couple of months. Well, it is finally completed and I have published an excerpt below for you all to have a look at. I need to acknowledge my grateful thanks to the wonderful creatives who worked with me to understand Vorticism and then turn it into something performative. My team inlcuded: Scott Knight, Idha Kurniasih, Luke Rogers, Zeynep Incir, Eleanor Lindberg, Elizabeth Paterson, and Odile Gotts. I also have to give a shout out to Ben Rogan, my residency mentor for his support and encouragement:)
CHARACTERS
REPORTER
1
REPORTER
2
REPORTER
3 (Alice)
TONY
ABBOTT
LITTLE
TONY ABBOTT
MOTHER
KING
RICHARD III
JOE
HOCKEY
PROFESSOR
CHORUS
This
is a play for 5 actors or more.
This
play is written in the Vorticist tradition.
The stage can be any configuration (end stage, round, thrust, pros arch,
etc), but the placement and direction of the characters cannot change. All stage directions are from a specific POV
and should be blocked accordingly. The lighting should be angular and sharp,
with a clear understanding of who is the focus of the scene (indicated through
the script as the character having a spot light on them). The sound should be violent and
stacatic. Three hand held radio
microphones are required.
Centre
stage is a lectern with a working microphone. There are two stools and one
armchair (all TV style). There are a set
of steps (at least 4), and a small hillock.
These items can be placed anywhere to begin.
There
are placards littered around the stage. The
placards read ‘Block the budget’, ‘Too many Abbott lies’, ‘We’re marching for a
fairer Australia’, ‘We love our ABC and we vote’, ‘$3 billion for drones, not
enough for Medicare?’, ‘Budget by the fat cats for the fat cats’.
Tony
Abbott stands on the hillock, with a spotlight on him. The rest of the cast sit together in a close
group staring at the audience.
TONY ABBOTT: Politicians should not, should not
say one thing before an election and do the opposite, the opposite
afterwards. This election is about
trust.
A
explosion and everyone falls to the ground, dead. Tony Abbott stands at lectern facing the
audience and Joe Hockey stands behind his left shoulder nodding continuously. Reporter 2 stands close, but not looking at
him, using a microphone, and Reporter 3 upstage of Joe but facing the back wall
and using a microphone. The chorus sit facing Reporter 3. There is a spot light on the two reporters.
REPORTER 2: Mr Abbott was sworn in by Governor-General
Quentin Bryce at Government House today, with wife Margie and daughters Louise,
Bridget and Frances looking on. Mr
Abbott said he would govern
TONY: For all Australians. Including…including those who didn’t vote for
us. We won’t forget those who are often
marginalised, people…people…er…um...and women struggling to combine career and
family.
REPORTER 3: he said.
TONY: We will not spare ourselves, we will not
spare ourselves, in order to deserve the trust placed in us this day.
REPORTER 2: Mr Abbott said it was an honour to serve the
nation.
TONY: We
will do our best not to leave anyone behind.
REPORTER 3: he said. (turns
90 degrees)
TONY: We aim…we aim… to be a calm, measured, steady
and purposeful government that says what it means and does what it says.
REPORTER 2: Mr Abbott is a Rhodes Scholar who briefly
trained as a Catholic priest. Before entering politics in 1994, he worked as a
journalist and liberal advisor and also served as the executive director of
Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
He promises a ‘no surprises’ government that seeks a happy marriage
between liberal and conservative traditions.
TONY: I give you all this assurance: we will not let you down.
REPORTER 3: On the eve of the 2013 federal election Tony
Abbott promised no cuts to education, health, or the ABC and SBS, and no
changes to pensions.
REPORTER 2 & 3: Having run a successful smear campaign whilst
in opposition about the Gillard governments carbon tax ‘lie’, it was a big risk
for Tony Abbott to make such significant promises of his own. Keeping the faith of the Australian people
after such a divisive period will be Mr Abbott’s biggest challenge.
An
explosion and they all fall down dead. The
chorus circle the stage slowly, holding placards chanting loudly and with
passion.
CHORUS: When everyone is under attack, what to we
do? Stand up. Fight back!
One
member of the chorus pulls out of the crowd, places their placard against the
back wall and stands at lectern as a professor. The chorus sit in a line
parallel to the lectern but facing the audience taking notes. The ‘students’
are spotlit.
PROFESSOR: Good morning everyone, welcome to
Oxford. This semester we will be commencing
your studies by discussing the concept of entropy and its socio-political
interpretion. I assume you have all
completed the required reading for this unit.
Mr Abbott, please remind the class what entropy is.
TONY ABBOTT: (standing)
Er, er, Entropy…er… um, that is, entropy is the second. That is to say, er, entropy is, er the
second, the second. Er. Entropy is the second law. It is the second law of, e…of…, er, the
second law of thermo, er,..er…er… of thermodynamics. Entropy is, er, the third – I mean the second
– entropy is the second law of thermo…thermodynamics.
PROFESSOR: Thank you Mr Abbott, you may sit now. Humpty Dumpty has often been used to
demonstrate entropy. Entropy is a measure of the number of specific ways in
which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of
"disorder". The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After
his fall, and subsequent shattering, the inability to put Humpty Dumpty
together again, back to his original state of order, is representative of this
principle.
TONY ABBOTT: Uh, sir... I don’t think I understand.
PROFESSOR: I know you don’t, Mr Abbott. Think of entropy as what happens when you
shake a person. If you hold a poor person
upsided down and shake a poor, no matter how hard you shake, very few coins
will fall out of his pocket. This person
is a low entropy system. Whereas, if you
shake a rich person – a mining mogul, for example - a lot of coins will fall
all over the place causing a system of high entropy, i.e a lot of ways they can
be picked up and rearranged.
TONY ABBOTT: Er...why are we shaking people?
PROFESSOR: You are getting sidetracked Mr Abbott. The important thing to understand is that
nature always organises energy so as to ensure it’s greatest chance of
existence. Entropy is precisely those
number of ways the energy can be organised, and the entropy of an isolated
system never decreases.
TONY ABBOTT: I am confused.
PROFESSOR: That does not surprise me Mr Abbott. Now, in the socio-political arena we have a
whole spectrum of how a society of people can be organised. The best example of the regular reorganisation
of entropic political systems is democracy.
Every time an election is held, the political elements of a community
are reorganised within itself.
A
ricochet of gun fire. Everyone
ducks. Tony sits on the armchair. Little Tony and the reporter sit together on
the stairs. The reporter has a
microphone.
REPORTER 2: Just Following on from what you said, I’ll
play back to you something, you said on ABC radio before the election.
TONY ABBOTT: I’ve...seen...the disaster that this
government has created for itself and...I don’t wanna be like that. I really don’t, and if we do win the election
and...we immediately say “oh...um...we got it all wrong. We’ve now gotta do these different things”,
we will instantly be just as bad as the current government has been and...I
just...refuse to be like that.
REPORTER 2: With
respect, Prime Minister, you are being like that.
LITTLE TONY: Well, that’s for the people to judge! (blows
a raspberry).
An
explosion and everyone falls dead. The chorus
circle the stage with the placards chanting.
CHORUS: You say cut back, we say fight back.
A
reporter steps out, places placard down, then crosses to the edge of the stage
and picks up a microphone. She is in the
way of the protesters and gets jostled about and pushed around in the hubbub.
REPORTER 1: It has not been
a good year for Mr Abbott, with his popularity plummeting in the polls. The austerity budget was recently released
last week, and there is extreme outrage over his wink whilst on talk back radio
and listening to a pensioner with chronic illnesses as she explained having to
undertake phone sex work to make ends meet already – without the proposed
changes. People are saying this is exactly
the lack of empathy and care for the ordinary Australian demonstrated by his
draconian budget. Today we are seeing
mass marches around Australia yesterday, in Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth. The largest attendance is here in Melbourne
with over 10 000 people marching down Swanston street causing traffic
chaos. The nationwide protests demonstrate
the sentiment that the budget burden is not being shared equally at all, but is
being carried by the poorest in our country.
The
sound of an automatic machine gun and everyone falls dead. A mother and Little Tony place placards down
near the audience They sit opposite each other and play with building blocks
together.
MUM: Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the
king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again. (She
repeats the song with little Tony)
King Richard puts placard
down and stands on one side of the lectern, as if standing at it, but offset,
mouthing the following words in synch with a voice over recording (which has
‘Best Budget Ever’ responses mixed in).
There is a spotlight on King Richard.
VOICE
OVER: “Now
is the winter of our discontent
Made
glorious summer by this sun of York;
And
all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In
the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
MOTHER:
Do you know what Humpty Dumpty is,
Tony?
LITTLE
TONY: Yes. Egg.
Picture at kinder.
MOTHER: And how do we know he’s an egg?
LITTLE
TONY: He falls, the horsies and soldiers
come – bam! Bam! – can’t fix. (rifle fire sounds as he says bam, and he
knocks down the wall) Like you drop egg on floor, was all gooey and
smooshie, and shell broken.
MOTHER: (She
starts the game again). That is
right Tony. What do you think this
nursery rhyme means?
LITTLE
TONY: I know! I know!
Can’t cook eggs when fall ‘cause dirty and make you sick!
MOTHER: (Laughing)
Well, yes, that is true Tony, but it means something more important than that.
LITTLE
TONY: No it don’t. You’re fibbing Mum. (giggling)
Richard turns to face in the
direction of the lectern, although still standing beside it, and repeats the
lines after the voice over, line by line.
His voice is now picked up by the lectern microphone.
V/O
& (RICHARD): “What do I fear? Myself?
(What do I
fear? Myself?)
There’s none else by.
(There’s none else by.)
Richard loves Richard, that
is, I and I.
(Tony loves Tony; that is, I and I.)
(Tony loves Tony; that is, I and I.)
(Together) Is
there a liar here? No. Yes, I am.
MOTHER: No Tony, I’m not fibbing. What Humpty Dumpty means is that
sometimes,
when you drop something, or break
something, it can’t be fixed.
LITTLE
TONY: God fix everything!
MOTHER: Er, well, yes, that is to say, uh, yes, God
can fix everything, but, er, only
things…
only things that… only things that go up to heaven. Things like…things
like…
us, and… animals. Not eggs, or toys,
that sort of thing.
LITTLE
TONY: Daddy fixes toys. Ask him, he fix you egg.
MOTHER: Yes son.
I am sure he can. Can you name something that can’t be fixed
once
it is broken?
LITTLE
TONY: (Tony smacks her hands away) Nope. Bored.
Stop now.
MOTHER: Okay, Tony we can stop playing this game
now. The answer, though, is
trust. Trust can’t be fixed once you break it. Never ever lie, Tony.
