LECH HARRIS / 4 CONFUSING PLAYS
CONFUSING PLAY #12. (THE WRONG HOARD)
A procession of village headmen enters from stage left to form a high-five tunnel, out
of which emerges, slapping, the barrister Sir Jhomas. Sirens go off. The wheezing
ghost of Sir Jhomas’s father, clad only in underpants, struggles his way through the
outstretched hands. He clutches a couch cushion shaped like Ohio.
In the next act, Anti-Jhomas has slipped his cuffs and is handing down kill orders at
the post office. Throughout the village, postmen are hurling their packages to the
ground, pulling out hatchets, and hacking the parcels to pieces. The sweating ghost
of Anti-Jhomas’s father, with shaving cream on half his face, drives a school bus full
of crying children.
In the next act, Sir Jhomas and the headmen huddle up in a clapboard chapel in the
belly of a whale. The antique rotary phone is off its cradle. The coatrack is covered
with broad-brimmed black hats. The new guy maneuvers a toothbrush in his mouth
like a stunt driver handling a steering wheel.
This conflict goes on for some time. Sometimes Anti-Jhomas, as we later learn, takes
the form of a mink farm in Holland. Sometimes he takes the form of Clown Jhomas,
all in white, who stands to stage right with an armful of live minks. On the telephone
stand beside him, the rotary phone starts to ring. He shifts the minks but ignores it.
From the bed behind him, the dying ghost of Sir Jhomas’s father looks on, his thick
heart full of what only family knows.
CONFUSING PLAY #14. (SIZZLE, SIZZLE)
Huge rolls of wholesale craft paper sprawl unspooled across the stage, creating a
white wonderland of waves and folds. In this paperscape stand two people in yellow
leopard suits. Their faces are visible between the jaws of the leopard heads. The one
on the left has GENRE written on her chest in red paint, while the one on the right’s
chest says THE BAD ONE.
The leopard suits look like fuzzy footie pajamas covered with black polka dots, only
with oversized spurs on the heels. Through lengthy pantomime, and the exposition
of a narrator, it is made clear that the leopards want horses to ride: but their only
option is to use their keen spurs to cut out a pair of paper horses. This they proceed
to do, hopping from footie to footie and making intricate kicks over the paper.
The narrator is a lacquered Pinocchio in a barrel and suspenders, who introduces
himself as Rudolf. Rudolf’s sidekick is a tiny lifeguard that stands on his shoulder
and refers to him as Sir Drivel. They have a recurring comic bit where the lifeguard
gets very quiet, and then goes, You’re not worth the salt on your saddle, in a harsh
whisper; to which Rudolf just wags his head and says, Unsound.
After this, the story seems to become a parable about technology use, as a third
person, wearing a leopard suit covered with ivy, and whom the narrator refers to
darkly as L’Orange, convinces the first two to just wear elaborate paper headpieces
over their leopard heads that will allow them to communicate psychically with
paper horses, rather than meeting paper horses in real life. Between the jaws of the
third person there is only ivy.
CONFUSING PLAY #15. (FROM THE LAST GREAT SPREE TO SOLDIER ON)
At the lip of the stage, two prunefaced Dadaists fold parachutes. The first has FAITH
stenciled across his sweater, while the second one’s sweater reads REASON. Between
the Dadaists sits a three-eyed police dog. An old TV set shows a tremulous child,
faced with flashcards, reciting the names of mathematical signs: the plus, the minus,
the times, the divide.
As the scene goes on, it becomes gradually apparent, through a relay of glances and
facial tics, that the police dog is keeping tabs on the Dadaists, overseeing them, like
they’re hostages. Every day a man in a motorcycle visor comes to take away the
folded parachutes. At night, Victorian sewer urchins scurry along the back wall on
tiptoe, escaping into the cool air.
Weeks later, it emerges that the child on the TV set is an ex-sewer urchin, trying to
transmit coded messages back to the Dadaists. The police dog hasn’t caught on to
this: she thinks she’s learning math. Along the back wall, on a patch of stage tiled
with linoleum and lit with fluorescent lights, is a big man in a butcher’s apron and a
kind of leather proboscis on his face; the apron reads THIS IS A REFRIGERATOR
TRUCK.
One year later, Reason dies. To represent this fact, he goes to stand on the linoleum,
beside the big man. Meanwhile, Faith continues to fold the parachutes. Then, Faith
dies. Then, the sewer urchins die, one by one. They all have to stand on the linoleum.
It starts getting crowded. Then, a tourist walks in who is apparently just here on
vacation. He goes right to the lip of the stage, laughing, to explain that somebody had
made a wish, that it had nearly been an honor.
CONFUSING PLAY #17. (STING OF THE LION)
Curtain up on a domestic interior. Mounted over the fireplace is a flayed horse head
with naked baby bird heads in the eye sockets instead of eyes. Beside the credenza,
a wedding DJ waits with an expectant air, holding a microphone. He has one record
in his crate, titled THE SOUNDS OF SUCKLING.
Downstage, behind the sofa, is a well made of stones. Painted on the well is the word
DUEL. Sounds of gritted effort start to emanate from the well, louder and louder,
until at last an English cavalier in a long wig and galleon boots hauls himself out, his
nails bleeding. After taking five minutes to catch his breath, he pulls his breeding
gun and levels it at the wedding DJ.
The wedding DJ looks down. He sees that his heart is pounding visibly through his
shirt, and rolls his eyes; he then continues rolling his eyes, demonstratively, for
fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, in the corner, a shellshocked male quartet is crooning,
each gazing fixedly at a different point in space.
Later it turns out that the well is a tunnel, and at the other end is another domestic
interior much like this one, only more justified. But in that interior, there is no horse
head, no baby birds.
Lech Harris teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. He has a short story forthcoming in DIAGRAM.