Mr. Robinson Crusoe
Scenes after D. Defoe
Cast:
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson’s Inner Voice
Oarsmen, his comrades
Man-Friday
The director’s remarks on the stage version.
The minimum cast for the play is three people. Since the whole novel
could be regarded as a soliloquy which later became a monologue, the next natural step to
take was towards the dialogue. Robinson’s constantly changing inner state when he
turns from complete desperation to patience and hope resulted in his being split into two
beings on the stage played by two actors (girls are welcome). They should not be
obligatory twins or even bear a resemblance to each other but they are dressed similarly
(some plain clothes of the 18th century style). The third necessary person is Man-Friday,
Robinson’s future friend. The same actor performs, together with “two” Robinsons,
the rest of the crew in the beginning.
The staging follows the principles of drama in a sense that costumes and props are drawn
from what you have at hand; the general idea of the circumstances is given through a few
clues only. By way of these scant means of expression the paramount moments are
highlighted. In our case they are a cross (a cardboard one prepared beforehand), a paper
boat (the actor performing Robinson folds it in sight of the audience), and cardboard
oars. Three chairs are enough to show all the rest. Music and sound is a crucial point
for, if chosen carefully, they give the right modality of the action.
Prologue
A melody plays for about 2 minutes. During this time the actors
participating in the play, or those who help, arrange chairs to become the future boat.
When ready they withdraw; the poem (live or recorded) begins.
Robinsonade
A brand-new heaven over outlandish earth
Newborns squall, craving a stork’s attention.
Old men hide their heads under a wing, like ostriches,
Burying their beaks, at that, not in feathers but graying armpits.
One can go blind with this surplus of azure
Innocent of a sail. Agile outriggers
Look like fish gnawed down past entrail to bone.
The rowers stick out of them, betraying
The mystery of motion. A victim of shipwreck,
In twenty years I’ve sufficiently domesticated
This island (though perhaps it’s a continent),
And the lips move all on their own, as while reading, muttering,
“Tropical vegetation, tropical vegetation”
most likely it’s due to the breeze, particularly
in the second half of the day. That is, when the already glazed
eye no longer distinguishes the print of one’s own flat sole
in the sand from Friday’s. This is the real beginning
of ecriture. Or its very end. Especially
from the point of view of the whispering evening ocean.
Joseph Brodsky
SCENE I
Sound of a storm
Crusoe’s comrades are in a boat, oars in hands, rowing desperately. Robinson and
Robinson’s Inner Voice are among them. After a while they stand up in turn and come out
to the proscenium to speak their parts.
Robinson: We knew not where we were, or upon what land it was we
were driven; whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited…
We all saw very plainly, that the sea went so high, that the boat could not remain afloat,
and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none: nor, if we had,
could we have done any thing with it; so we worked at the oars towards the land, like men
going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came nearer the shore, she would be
dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea.
Sound of a storm
Inner Voice: What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether
steep or shoal, we knew not; if we might happen in some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some
river…
But nothing of this appeared; but as we made nearer and nearer the shore, the land looked
more frightful than the sea.
Sound of the storm
Robinson (he is with a paper boat in hand; he shows how it moves
among the raging waves, then turns it upside down and drops; meanwhile the actors staying
in a boat imitate lifeless drowned bodies): Suddenly a raging wave, mountain-like,
came rolling astern of us, and took us with such a fury, that it overturned the boat at
once; we were all swallowed up in a moment…
I was lifted up by the waves and carried forwards…
Sound of a storm Robinson crawls along the stage
Inner Voice (speaking while Robinson mimes): I was now landed,
and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life was saved… I walked
about on the shore, lifting up my hands; making a thousand gestures and motions, which I
cannot describe; reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned.
Robinson: Lord! How was it possible I could get to the shore?
Robinson: I began to look round me, to see what kind of place I
was in, and what was next to be done. I was wet, had no clothes to shift me, nor anything
either to eat or drink, to comfort me. I had nothing about me, but a knife, a
tobacco-pipe, and a little tobacco in a box.
Inner Voice (he pretends to be writing while Robinson moves
on the stage imitating the desperation): If I dared to start my journal that
day, it would have been full of many dull things: for example, I must have said this:
“Sept. 30th. After I got to shore, and had escaped drowning, instead of being thankful
to God for my deliverance, having first vomited the great quantity of salt water which had
gotten into my stomach, and recovering myself a little, I ran about the shore, wringing my
hands, and beating my head and face; exclaiming at my misery, and crying out...”
Robinson: “I was undone, undone!”
Inner Voice: “…till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie
down on the ground to repose; but durst not sleep, for fear of being devoured by wild
beasts”.
Robinson: So in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner
I should end my life…
SCENE II
While Robinson’s Inner Voice is speaking Robinson is constructing
a wooden cross, making it stand vertically at the back of the stage.
Inner Voice: Well, you are in a desolate condition, it is true;
but pray remember, where are the rest of you? Where are the men? Why were they not saved,
and you lost?
And did it not occur to you how well you were furnished for your subsistence? The ship was
driven so near to the shore that you had time to get all things needed out of her.
What would have been your case, if you’d had to live in the condition in which you at
first came on shore, without the necessities of life?
What would you have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools to make
anything, or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?
Robinson (with his gestures he shows what he has done):
Out of the short pieces of boards that I brought on my raft from the ship I made me a
table and a chair, and now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day’s
employment.
There was one more great encouragement to me, and I thanked God to supply me with bread.
After I found a half-peck of seed it might be truly said that now I worked for my bread.
’Tis a little wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought much upon, that is,
the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing, producing, curing,
dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread.
Inner Voice (speaking while Robinson mimes): One
day, yet I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain, and looking out
to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship; then fancy at a long distance, I spied a sail, please
myself with the hopes of it, and then after looking steadily, till I was almost blind,
lose it quite and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly.
Robinson: I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of
all hope of recovery.
Inner Voice: But you are alive; and not drowned, as all your
ship’s company were.
Robinson: I am without any defence, or means to resist any
violence of man or beast.
Inner Voice: But you are cast on an island where you see no wild
beasts to hurt you, as you saw on the coast of Africa; and what if you had been
shipwrecked there?
Robinson: I am separated from all the world, to be miserable. I
have no soul to speak to, or to relieve me.
Inner Voice: But – (the following words should be
pronounced very emotionally): It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat,
I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was
very plain to be seen on the sand!
Robinson: I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an
apparition.
Inner Voice: I listened, I looked round me, but I cold hear
nothing, nor see any thing.
Robinson: I went up to a rising ground, to look farther; I went
up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but
that one.
Inner Voice: Out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not
feeling the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every
two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance
to be a man.
Robinson: Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks
were there of any other footstep? And how was it possible a man should come there?
(The next passage should be followed by a pantomime showing
Man-Friday’s escape from cannibals and his appearance in Robinson’s dwelling. Robinson
himself pretends to be sleeping and, in his sleep, helping Man-Friday to get in.)
Inner Voice: I dreamed that, as I was going out in the morning
as usual, from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and eleven savages, coming to
land, and that they brought with them another savage, whom they were going to kill, in
order to eat him; when, all of a sudden, the savage that they were going to kill, jumped
away, and ran for his life; and I thought, in my sleep, that he came running into my
little thick grove before my fort, to hide himself; and that I, seeing him alone, showed
myself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him; that he kneeled down to me, seeming
to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed him my ladder, made him go up, and carried
him into my cave…
Robinson awakes, stands up and cuts out one more notch on his wooden
cross.
THE END
By Tatyana Surganova
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