Короткие пьесы - [58]
MISHA: How did you guess?
XENIA: I knew your dirty tricks… After you finished playing… you put your head up and asked me: They… They are gone?
MISHA: But I played heart attack very well… All the dorm students actually believed that I could die…
XENIA (sadly): You didn’t die then, but you’re dying now…
MISHA: What do you say?
XENIA: You are dying as a theatre actor here in Hollywood. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”
MISHA (hands up): Stop! It is hard for me… Yes, now I can only promote… motivate my students here. But I was a great actor!
XENIA: Did you really come here to teach Hollywood actors, to make them better? To make movie bosses richer? Why are you here?
MISHA: I am here… helping people to grow spiritually…
XENIA: (laughs): You are calling Yul because… because in order to help Merilyn grow spiritually… Misha, I keep reminding you why you came to America… You had a dream to make a theater like Stanislavsky in Moscow… You are working very hard, creating a group of talented actors, and all in vain… Where is your King Lear, Don Quixote, Pickwick Papers?
MISHA: (seriously, slowly, sadly) I don’t know… I think about how it happened. I analyze…
XENIA: You came to conquer America with our art and in the end America conquered you…
MISHA: So it seems… I arrived in America, where I didn’t understand anything or anyone… It was an unbelievable, astonishing country… And I with my Russian mentality dreamed of accomplishing something new, to astonish all country. Later I understood that it could not be any different…
(Pause)
Remember! When we come to America, whole world went crazy. In Germany fascism, in Russia communism… I wanted to warn the American people that the same thing could happen here… Maybe didn’t understand anything…
XENIA: You don’t understand a lot of things…
MISHA: But I always believed in the great mission of theater… And I believe now…
XENIA: Misha, there is no mission…
Misha (surprised): Do you really think that?
XENIA (confidently): Yes…
MISHA (confused): Then why did I become an actor? You think only because for to make the audience relax and laugh, instead of getting any emotional experience?
XENIA: Of course! The people work all day. They are tired. They come to theater to forget about their real life… They want to laugh…
MISHA (very intensely, sadly, showing his emotions by, standing, sitting, etc): Xenia, often I have the same dream… I’m sitting in my theater dressing room in Moscow, make up all over my face. I’m playing “Hamlet”… wait nervously… and then the warning bell rings. I walk out on stage. In front of me this dark silent auditorium and I speak into this empty darkness the first words of Hamlet’s monolog, “To be, or not to be”… Then I wake up… and recognize where I am and I am filled with such melancholy… I know I will never get to play Hamlet… not ever… not ever in America. It’s not like Russia…
(Misha slumps from exhaustion. His eyes fill with tears. He takes a cigarette… He lights it… takes a hungry drag. Xenia doesn’t stop him)
MISHA (seriously intensely): Now I have come to the conclusion that it was a complete mistake to leave our native land…
XENIA (upset): Oh Misha! Stop! Stalin was crazy. He was arresting actors right and left…
MISHA(still intense, distressed, another brief but relaxed drag on the cigarette): I toed the line. Stalin respected… my uncle…
XENIA (tensely): Don’t be silly… Misha dear, don’t break down. We are alive here, in America!
(Pause)
You have accomplished so much here…
MISHA (intensely, enjoying each cigarette drag): What have I accomplished in your opinion? Except I’m alive?
XENIA (hasty): Your books are selling well… You have taught many famous actors, and friends…
MISHA(smiling infectiously): And now I know what they will write about me in obituary: “Died: Michael Chekhov, nephew of famous Russian writer Anton Chekhov. A teacher of Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brunner”
XENIA: Also Gary Cooper… and James Dean, and Gregory Peck…
MISHA: M-m.-m… Marilyn Monroe…
XENIA(Laughs): You go on so!
(She turns as if to exit)
MISHA: Xenia, I love you…
XENIA: I love you too Misha, despite all your craziness…
MISHA: We have been so long together, that we seldom try to bare our souls to each other… I’m very obliged to you…
(Misha takes a last long pleasurable drag on his cigarette and promptly snuffs it out).
XENIA: For my frankness?
MISHA (with a vague smirk, and twinkle in eye): You let me peacefully smoke my cigarette… at last…
THE END
NIGHT WORK
MIKLE: Thirty-five year old. He is driving a car.
ANNA: Thirty-five years old.
Mikle is driving home after working all night. He keeps yawning, falling asleep at the wheel, and catching himself. He sees Anna trying to hitch a lift. She is dressed in nurse’s “scrubs”… Mikle stops and opens the door:
ANNA: Thanks… I’m late for work.
MIKLE: Get in.
ANNA (sitting in car): My car won’t start. (Beat) Maybe you’ll take me as far as you’re going on route 18. (Beat) I work at South Shore Hospital.
MIKLE: I had a little trouble starting too…..dampness……
(Pause)
ANNA: I know it’s unusual to hitch hike in “scrubs”.