How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Opening of 1985 full-length play, a favorite

THE SADNESS OF EINSTEIN

by Charles Deemer

THE CAST:

Robert Manfield, an amateur physicist, 20s
 Henry Bruno, his companion, an amateur physicist, 20s
 Leonora, a college student and prostitute, 20s
 Oskar Gold, a businessman
 Hermann, a businessman
 Albert Einstein, the physicist (Oskar, Hermann and Einstein are played by the same actor)

THE TIME:

Autumn, 1927

THE PLACE:

Brussels, Belgium

THE SET:

A hotel room in Brussels. Entrance is stage left. A bed is stage right. Upstage, a window
looking down on the street. The bathroom is shared and located in the hall (exit stage left).

----

                                                                ACT ONE


1/

(AT RISE: ROBERT and LEONORA are in bed, making love, Leonora on top with her
back to the audience and a sheet around her. She frantically rides Robert below her.
HENRY is at the window, looking across the street with a pair of binoculars. Leonora's
sexual frenzy will increase to the orgasm indicated below.)

   HENRY:   The paper this morning called it The Copenhagen Interpretation. Niels
     Bohr debated Einstein and won. Poor Einstein, nobody believes him any more. The
     city fathers welcome him as a hero, the greatest genius of his time, they celebrate
     Einstein Day, but his peers prefer to listen to an unknown from Denmark. The
     Copenhagen Interpretation.


                                                                                                                                                I-2.


(Henry turns to the bed.)

   HENRY:   For God's sake, woman, aren't you finished yet?

   ROBERT:   I think she's close


This was supposed to open a new play festival in Seattle but the theater lost its funding at the last minute. It still has never been produced. It was supposed to be the first of a Quantum Quartet but I got sidetracked with hyperdrama, the real "quantum" drama of our times.

My late friend Ger was a great fan of this script, which I sent to him in draft in Arizona, where he was living with a painter lady. He went ape for it, made some good suggestions. We were going to go up to Seattle for the opening together, the opening that never happened.