English-Language Arts Network

Last segment of title scene from THE PERFORMANCE ARTIST

by Marilyn Casselman © 2004

ELIZABETH In media res.

… I knew a big deal was coming up and I told Frank I wanted to be involved—and not just in the vittels department. He tried to nip my aspirations in the bud but I pressed on: "I have a right—after all these drunken boers and smoke-filled rooms. I can make a contribution!" He laughed in my face and said, "Just because you know how it's done doesn't mean you get to do it, stupid!" I slapped him and he threw me into a corner and the back of my head was a right angle for about a year. I lost track of what happened after that. I'd driven Faterlandt Foods into the ground by overstepping my boundaries and figured it was time to get back to wherever it was that I belonged. I couldn't seem to sustain my position. I couldn't even find my camera. But soon it no longer mattered.

She goes behind the banner, singing a few bars of Stand By Your Man in pretend-German and puts on an apron. She reappears and turns the banner around. It is now red with a white circle in the middle.

AUDIENCE

"Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw."

ELIZ.

"Cooking Breakfast for Wolfie!" (pronounced "vool-fee") I'm here in our mountain retreat in Bertesgaden and I'm expecting him to come in for breakfast any minute. I'm Eva and although I don't have a title or anything, I see it as my job to keep things nice around here so that whenever he comes home he can get comfortable and relax. He's quite intense. Most of his lovers—five I think—have already committed suicide so it pays to keep him happy and my emotions in check.

Look here! I have some nice peasant bread that he loves so much. And I always have meat from the village butcher so he doesn't get angry and start killing animals with his own hands. I have to keep things on an even keel around here. He gets so used to blood baths he forgets he doesn't have to act like that at home!! If I'm late with supper? Like I overslept or something? He starts beating the grandfather clock and screaming about trains and the little cuckoo comes out at the wrong time! So yes, I always have plenty of bratwurst and blood sausage in the larder.

Like all men, he brings people home without giving me warning in advance.

FEMALE AUD.

"Never fails to tick me off!" "Bloody inconsiderate."

ELIZ.

Then I have to change my menu because there's always too little of one thing I've planned to serve and I have to have plenty to satisfy their manly appetites. It's quite a roster of professionals! Everything from the man who specializes in enlarging concentration camps to the bankers who handle the loot and everything in between as you can imagine! They're always delighted to come here—to escape the war-torn world for a few hours. Sometimes they bring their girlfriends with them or other asskissers trying to wheedle their way into power. They're always complimenting me on my beauty and I accept graciously—"danke schoen"—delighted in my charms and caring nothing about the millions who are perishing in indescribably vile conditions at that very moment. Sometimes I serve rognons done French style and I always have good coffee for them.

AUD.

"Rognons?" "Organs."

ELIZ.

Wolfie loves omelettes so he annexed the chicken farm across the road—and the rest of the country with it—so we'd always have a supply of fresh eggs.

AUD.

"Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw."

ELIZ.

I love to go and collect the eggs. I put on my dirndl and take my basket and playfully romp through the hen houses, shafts of sunlight beaming through the wall boards lighting up the air thick with mites and parasites and heating up the chicken shit till it makes you gag. It's all part of the role of being a woman and he even locked me in there for 3 weeks because I got drunk and laughed at him because somebody said he had only one ball.

AUD.

"Hell of a thing to get around!"

ELIZ.

Anyway, I want to tell you how I make my special omelettes that he loves so much. I use three eggs which I fluff up nicely with a whisk and I use a special omelette pan in which I've melted a globule of local, of course, butter. Medium heat. Fork, fork, fork, then flip it in half and plop it gently onto his plate without smashing him in the face with the pan.

AUD.

"Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw."

ELIZ.

Then I go over to the big crock in the corner where the Polish dill pickles marinate in their brine and get out a huge one and say, "Here Wolfie, why don't you take this and shove it up your ass——

AUD.

"Arrgh! Gross!

ELIZ.

—you moral reject thrown up out of the quagmire of human failings, you vile mockery of humanity and grim scourge on the face of the earth that you are." "Eva!" he laughs, euphoric because of the omelette, "what a card you are! Where on earth do you get these ideas from, little one!? Now I'm tired. I've had a hard night—it's a jungle out there. Come to bed." And I say, "Don't expect me to suck your cock, you filthy, brutish, violent sexual aberrant." "Come my love," he says, "let's get you strapped back into the machine." And he gives my ass a nice little pat as I get into the harness.

I never did get a picture of Wolfie. But what did it matter? By that time I was a goner anyway.

A big foam swastika falls out of the ceiling and hits her. Blackout. Sound of melee and people shouting … INTERMISSION