AN EXTRACT FROM THE PLAY

Hi Everybody,

Thanks once again for all the interest, both home and abroad, in reading the script.  Our advisors have requested that we do not float the script on the internet until after the play’s first run at Theatre Works, St Kilda, Victoria, July 8-25, 2010.

However, due to the amount of requests received, we’ve decided to publish a few extracts leading up to the first run. 

Here's the first extract...

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Wally Stern, 48, Australian wholesale fridge salesman, has found a box of old 16mm films and a projector in his warehouse. He mounts one of the reels and watches with great curiosity.

SPX - FILM PROJECTED AND THE INDIAN STORYTELLER

The INDIAN STORYTELLER holds some chain and rope and gestures with the rope and chain as he recites the verse of “The Baby Elephant”.

STORYTELLER: Child Elephant of Indostan

Our Babe from Gods descended!

When small and curious will wander far

As nature has intended,

So with mighty chain and sturdy tree

Baby Elephant is apprehended.

Small Elephant is the friend of Man

And to Man the Gods did say, 

To chain the Baby’s foot to tree

For Baby runs away,

But soon he learns by chain and tree

That Elephant by man must stay.

The Elephant grows huge and strong

With memory stronger still, 

Could flimsy rope hold so strong a beast 

Against its mighty will? 

For rope cannot but memory can

Memory of chain and tree,

Forget he can’t - The Elephant

Therefore never shall be free! 

WALLY switches off the projector and flicks on the main light.

The personal line rings and WALLY answers promptly.

WALLY: Hello, Wally’s Ware… Howyadoin’ Alan again... Kelvin, Lord William Kelvin, hence Kelvinator. British thermodynamic physicist invented the Kelvin scale of temperature… Ooohh, sometime late 1800s I think. 1870? or thereabouts… No, Fahrenheit was a German and he invented the mercury thermometer… Centigrade is the freezing point of water at zero and the boiling point at 100… “Cent” after Latin centum, hundredth, easy one… (Laughs) H’mmm no worries mate… Nah, it’s good to have a yak… Yep, they’ll go out this afternoon, that’s if I ever get off the phone... See ya mate.

WALLY does a few dance steps across the floor. Whistling and singing...

* * *

Above picture: Blind Men and the Elephant, cover detail, (1972)  

Lillian Quigley, illustrated by Janice Holland