The Ferret wants the script
Dark-blue vapors beset and encumber a small stage in an old performing arts building in Kyiv’s Podil. A clattering contraption backstage is used to evince a storm gathering with great wind, still far, far away. But then, if you were to check, whoever had been working the contraption is gone, nor is the contraption there itself – the wind appears to be gaining strength from somewhere on its own.
As the darkening mist engulfs the stage, Josh Davies waddles out of a wing in partial dress rehearsal gear – a bowler hat, a walking cane, and a long frock coat, which partially covers wide, wrinkled, saggy-ass jeans. Looking up into the sky, with his arms out to either side from the elbows, palms up, he sings:
It’s a sunny day
And the brightest ray
Rots the flesh and bone
Under curling hair
Wafting putrid air
Above the girl who paints alone…
Stop, stop, stop!!! cries a distraught Jim Kickshitz, the play’s author. He twists and wrings the script in his hands, nervously flipping pages, tearing some of them, desperately searching for the place Davies picked up, significantly mangling the words of the song.
Kickshitz is a big, pear-shaped man, aged beyond his years, much as Davies has appeared to be for long stretches before inexplicably gaining some youth back into his wizened cheeks – now and again. Kickshitz, a beer-swilling slob of no known trade or profession, has made claims to being a Kyiv-based writer. Ooooohhh, he says, putting a flabby, banana-fingered hand over his stomach, emitting a large uncontrollable fart that bespeaks his exasperation.
That’s not the words to the song!!!, he screeches at Davies, much like a deranged owl might sound after flying into a tree.
Oh, I don’t know, says Davies. Those seem to be the words in my copy.
No, no, no!!! That’s impossible! For some reason, Kickshitz rushes off backstage, maybe to see where all that eerie noise is coming from, getting louder and louder, and returns, maddened like a loon, wondering what was happening to his art, by what agency, and why.
Nooooo!!! he screams – Nooooo!!!
Oh, no need to get your hackles up, my dear boy. I merely thought there was some room for improvisation.
No! You can interpret the character, certainly, certainly, Mr. Davies, but you can’t improvise the script! Remember, you, the play’s hero, have spontaneously turned one of the Owl Poems in your just-finished great Owl Poetry Series manuscript, which you’re supposed to be carrying in the inside pocket of your frock coat – and which, in the play, is supposed to be the great rival to Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil” – into a song. The song is light, lilting, flittering, ethereal and fluttering, full of the hero’s new life and, like a newborn owlet, brimming over with happiness and hope for better days. Now, please, take it from the top and, I beg you, Mr. Davies… stick – to – the – script!!!
Kickshitz steps to the side and yells, Aaaaand… action!!!
Enter, Josh Davies, stage left:
In the House of Deathy
Below the River Lethe
The sludge flows o’er molten dross
Into the horrid mix
Until the River Styx
Swallows the chit at little loss…
Nooooooooooooo!!!
This is no longer Jim Kickshitz’s play. It is some strange, evil, tenebrous suffocating descent into Hell. The play’s author does not know what has happened to his light and lively impressionist jaunt through a Parisian park of a forlorn lover, who describes himself as an unemployed philosopher, looking for his love, after harrowing experiences in the past, trying to make his way through a strange and at times hostile world – but nothing like this!!! – walking through mirrors, among statues, singing lighthearted ditties he makes up as he goes along, after having come out of an asylum following strained wartime experiences with a clean bill of mental health. He is supposed to meet a woman – who has yet to be cast for this play – who starts painting a picture of the searching lover’s free will against the light, joyous landscape of the park.
As Kickshitz sits on the edge of the stage with his head and its few long stray hairs in his hands, moaning, emitting nervous machine-gun-fire farts, the dark fog now almost completely obscures the stage, while the wind has grown into a near-deafening howl. Oblivious to Kickshitz’s anguish, under the frock coat, Josh Davies begins to absentmindedly fiddle with the latches of his pants, as if looking to take a shit somewhere on the mist-covered stage.
Heh, I’ve been watching you rehearse, The Ferret, who has been sitting obscured in the theater’s back row, says to Kickshitz. It’s not a bad play. I like it, heh-heh-heh. What made you write it? Can I see the script?
Ah, oh, Ferret, says Jim Kickshitz in tears, the play started out as a scathing satire and parody piece of the Kyiv Unedited website, which I wrote especially for me and Mr. Davies in revenge for you not hiring us for your Kyiv Unread website, which, I’m happy to say, turned out a major failure.
Heh-heh, you shouldn’t go spreading rumors, dude. Like the rehearsal of this play, that was just a trial run – full of errors. Because my prize alternative underground anti-Kyiv Unedited website, cleverly named Kyiv Edited, is up and running – heh-heh-heh…
It is?!?
Yeah, and I’m still looking for writers. I’d be willing to take another look at you and Davies as candidates, except – heh, heh…
Aw, except what – hoot, hoot…
Ah, heh, yeah, just give me that script, and…
Seemingly lacking control, Kickshitz wants to pull back the hand holding his play’s script from The Ferret, but some force seems to be urging it forward…
Yeeess, that’s right, heh-heh-heh, that’s the boy, Kickshitz, just give me The Script, and one day, you, and even your friend Davies taking his pants down over there, can work for me… Just give me The Script, that’s right, Jimmy, The Script, just give me The… heh-heh-heh…
Kickshitz is about to deposit the script of his play into The Ferret’s claws, when…
Oh, I think that’ll be enough script-taking for today…
Josh Davies! Heh!
That’s right. I suggest we just retract those claws and remove them from the vicinity of that script, stick them inside our shell, and fly out of here on those little broken batwings of yours…
Yeah, heh… and what if I don’t?
Well, Ferret, it’s as simple as this: I made you, and I can break you…
Filed by Jack Step, July 10, 2013