Plays

Renzo Cremona

• Publisher: Renzo Cremona
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9788890826559
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

"The life we know can usually be explained only in winter, when it looks like a footprint on the surface and the lake is frozen over. There are times, though, when the ice is thinner in some spots than elsewhere. And suddenly we realize that truth lies on the bottom." "Plays" contains excerpts from the books "Lettere dal mattatoio" ("Letters from the slaughterhouse"), "Cronache dal centro della notte" ("Chronicles from the centre of the night") and "Tutti senza nome" ("All without a name") which have been included in the author's performances for English-speaking audience throughout the country and Europe.
None of this would have been possible without the great and encouraging response by those who attended the performances, which revealed how the power of word is still alive and kicking in a world where everybody seems to think such power is being more and more eroded and underestimated. Long live the word.

MYSTERY PLAY

a one-act work
for mysteries and words

I

in their turmoil and tumult
like shattering mental earthquakes

tearing your breath to pieces

hanging it in the throat

flying

galloping

chasing

in flocks

in swarms

in packs

in hordes

in the dark

they come.

II

when he realized that there were too many people inside of him and that many were the things he had taken from the world along the way, he also saw he had been short of room for a long time now. the books stacked up in the corners of memory, the sealed boxes with all those recollections that had never been unwrapped, the footprints he had left free to walk across the kitchen tiles had all become a map of jammed roads where even one single traveller would be one too many. in order to let the room inside him breathe, he decided then that he would only have relationships with half a person at a time.
and this is what he did on the day he met averageharry: he created him in his own likeness, he spoke with him, he slept with him, he even went on a couple of trips with him, since it was summer and the woods offered a lot of shadow, then he took from him what he thought he liked best. there were things he kept, things he discarded, and even things he amputated. that's how only half of him remained. then he allowed him to enter his life, which was a badly lit house with windows looking outside to the backyard at night and doors that slammed at every single draught.
this is how days and weeks went by for everytom. they went by all different and all the same while he listened to the music coming from the attics of his brain: never deadened, always too close, always too loud, as if he had headphones on. months went by as well, they passed without everytom's realizing the one sleeping next to him wasn't averageharry. he never turned to see that the other was sleeping only on his side, and that the profile he could see was always the same. he had made him leave the other half outside, where the garden started to be covered with snow and the footprints slowly faded away with the passing of time, day after day.
but there are nights when, in his dreams, everytom is free to walk about in the house. it is then, passing through the corridor, that he hears knocking at the door. he knows it is the other half demanding to be let in: that is why he walled up the entrance years ago and now you can still see, if you walk past it, the grass growing all over the place 'til it covers the name on the doorbell. just then the alarm clock generally goes off and everytom wakes up, lying on the only side that isn't too much for him, the side he allowed to stay with him, while the other one has been buried in the cellar for years now. there isn't much room there either, anyway, but it doesn't matter: it's just as dark down there, and nothing can be seen.

III

night has two faces: the other is scraped off and watches us at noon from the clefts and fissures...

Table of contents

• COVER
• COPYRIGHT
• COLOPHON
• PREFACE
• MYSTERY PLAY
• MIRACLE PLAY
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• WORKS