UNFOLDED TIME
by Gavarre Benjamin
© BENJAMÍN GAVARRE SILVA
Contact this address if you have produced it or wish to do so: gavarreunam@gmail.com
CHARACTERS:
JUNIOR (20 years old): Somnambulist, fragile. He is a painter but wants
to be a philosopher. Represents the potency of desire and the terror of the
void.
SINCLAIR (35 years old): Elegant, cynical, an aesthete of pleasure.
Represents disenchantment and carnal fulfillment as an escape.
ARTHUR (59 years old): Ironic, serene, and "fortunate."
Represents synthesis, forgiveness, and absolute creative freedom.
SCENIC SPACE AND PROPS:
The stage represents the interior of a
whale's belly, a dreamlike painting studio—a scenic metaphor for the real
world.
· The Walls: Curved, with an organic texture suggesting living,
damp tissue. The animal's ribs should be seen as beams of an organic cathedral.
· The Tub: A huge antique claw-foot bathtub, displaced to one
side, releasing a constant mist.
· Canvases: Three easels. The one on the left (Sinclair),
the center one (Junior), and the one on the right (Arthur).
· Props: Paint
cans, discarded brushes, crystal glasses, a wicker laundry basket, and a worn
leather armchair.
SCENE
0: PROLOGUE
(The light opens slowly on JUNIOR. He
is sitting on the floor, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth. The sound
of the whale's heart is a low pulse that makes the furniture vibrate).
JUNIOR: This house doesn’t love me… I know it. (He
stands up and caresses the curved wall, his hand leaving a trail in the
moisture). Damned thing… it won’t let me out, I can’t get out. I’m in its
belly like Jonah inside the whale.
(SINCLAIR emerges from the shadows,
moving with an irritating parsimony. He holds a glass of red wine that looks
like blood under the red light of the walls).
SINCLAIR: (Laughing with an elegant dryness) The
house doesn’t care about you, Junior. You are an insignificant parasite in its
digestive system. And you aren’t inside it as if the house were a physical
whale… You are inside an idea. Or you are the protagonist of a dream—your
dream. Perhaps you are sleepwalking.
JUNIOR: (Turns abruptly) Who let you in? Did the
whale swallow you too? How old are you, thirty-five, forty… You are so old.
SINCLAIR: Thirty-five. And I came to remember how stupid I
was. Yesterday I was in the bathtub... (He points to the tub with his glass).
It remains the most habitable piece of furniture in this house. The water was
so hot I thought my soul was going to seep out through my pores.
JUNIOR: (Blinks rapidly, with a mix of disgust and
fascination) It’s true! I saw you! … I was watching you. I was hidden in
the shadows.
SINCLAIR: (Arches an eyebrow) You were spying on me?
JUNIOR: It was inevitable that I remained attentive. You
weren’t alone. That woman… she had a look that made me hungry, a type of hunger
that isn’t satisfied with bread. Why do you do that? Why do you profane the
silence of this whale with your animal noises?
SINCLAIR: Because I carry out your fantasies, little boy.
You dream of being in the tub, accompanied, feeling the weight of another skin
upon yours; I simply turn on the tap and let it happen. I remember everything
about you, even the way your hands tremble when you try to explain the infinite
and end up crying because it has no edges.
(The whale's heart accelerates slightly. A
slight tremor causes the wine in SINCLAIR’S glass to spill. The light
turns emerald green and the hum becomes a screech of metal. JUNIOR and SINCLAIR
feel dizzy as the shadows lengthen. TOTAL DARKNESS).
SCENE
1: THE AWAKENING OF DESIRE
(When the light returns, the environment has
changed. The walls seem brighter. On the central canvas, a realistic version of
the "Mona Lisa" is depicted, but the figure in the painting is a
dark-haired Spanish woman with green eyes. JUNIOR enters walking with
the rigidity of a somnambulist. He heads to the laundry basket and urinates
with his back to the audience with a sigh of relief).
SINCLAIR: (Sitting in the armchair, watching him with a
mix of weariness and pity) You urinated on my dirty pants, Junior. Look at
that… my favorite jeans, my white silk t-shirts. Everything soaked in your
unconsciousness and your fear.
JUNIOR: (Waking up with a spasm, he shakes his
clothes, disoriented) Time is a poorly sewn fabric, Sinclair. If you pull
the right thread, the weave tightens or unravels. I dreamed that the thread was
in my hand and that if I pulled hard, you disappeared.
SINCLAIR: I’ve already lived this. It’s a circular curse.
I’ll have to throw all my clothes in the trash because of your philosophical
bladder.
JUNIOR: (Points to the painting of the green-eyed
woman with an aggressive confidence) Look at her! She watches you, she
knows… I painted her while my body slept, or it was the Other… And “when I woke
up, the painting was there,” looking at me with that irony of those who know
they will remain in the world after our death. Doesn’t it seem strange to you
that we exist, Sinclair? To exist is absurd, as it was said…
SINCLAIR: (Drinking wine, glancing at the painting)
The Universe was born from nothing. But if "Nothing" is a concept we
can talk about, then it is no longer nothing; it is a presence that suffocates
us. Perhaps God is a sleepwalker like you, who created the world in one of his
nightly crises and now doesn’t know how to wake us up.
JUNIOR: (Approaches Sinclair, defiantly) I saw you
in the tub, Sinclair. That woman… she was a goddess full of flesh. And she had
too much initiative, if I may say so.
SINCLAIR: (Smiles with lubricious satisfaction) She
had the initiative of those who know that time is running out. The water was
boiling because she was alive, and I was willing to stop being a philosopher to
be a man of flesh and sweat. You are afraid of the body because the body cannot
be explained with footnotes. It is bitten, Junior. It is squandered, it hurts,
it screams.
(The whale's heart beats again. The
characters are alert as if waiting for a catastrophe. The light becomes warm
and soft-colored. JUNIOR moves his painting to the left and SINCLAIR
moves his canvas from the left to the center. DARKNESS).
SCENE
2: FRAGMENTATION
(When the light returns, the workshop has
mutated. JUNIOR’S painting is now on the left. In the center is SINCLAIR’S
finished painting, a version of the Spanish Mona Lisa now in a cubist style: a
composition of sharp planes and aggressive angles, but retaining those green
eyes that seem to follow the characters. SINCLAIR is in front of his
canvas, located on the left side of the stage, retouching an edge with almost
surgical coldness. JUNIOR is in front of his own painting, looking up at
the ceiling with a paranoiac expression).
SINCLAIR: (Without stopping painting) Do you see
this canvas, Junior? You think reality is what is touched, but reality is what
is thought. I have decided to break her gaze to understand its structure.
Fragmenting is the only way not to be devoured by beauty. If you keep it whole,
it destroys you.
JUNIOR: (Frosty) You talk about art, Sinclair, but
you hide in the angles to avoid admitting that you are no longer so young.
SINCLAIR: (Stops, observes the color of the wine in his
glass against the light with an irritating calm) Youth is a sketch with too
much moisture, Junior. A poorly fixed drawing that smudges as soon as someone
touches it. I, on the other hand, am the pigment that already knows where to
stay. (He takes a short sip). You think old age is skin that is no
longer so fresh? No. Old age is the excess of information. I have simplified my
life until only the edge, pleasure, and order remained.
(SINCLAIR walks toward the central
canvas—his cubist work. With a silk cloth, he wipes an invisible spot on the
frame. He moves like a gallery owner at his own opening).
SINCLAIR: Look at this woman. You painted her like a virgin
asking permission to exist. I broke her into pieces so she couldn’t escape.
Fragmentation is the only way to possess beauty without it destroying you. (Turns
toward Junior, defiantly). You still suffer for her; I enjoy her as a
structure.
JUNIOR: (Stands up, agitated) You lie! You
fragment her because it terrifies you that she is real. It terrifies you that
time moves outside your damned paintings. (Points to the tub). The mist
from that bathtub... it smells like that voluptuous woman, but you only talk
about "composition." This place is closing in, Sinclair! I feel the
whale's ribs squeezing my lungs.
SINCLAIR: (Walking toward the tub with a predatory
elegance) It’s called "intensity," boy. What you feel is the
world becoming reality, and your mind becoming consciousness; you too have aged
a bit. (He takes a jar of salts from the shelf and drops it into the water
with a metallic clink). I have cleaned your dirty brushes, I have organized
your paint cans. I have made this belly a temple of form. Don’t let your
adolescent panic smudge my afternoon.
JUNIOR: (Fixing his gaze on the third canvas, the
blank one) That canvas... it’s too clean. It’s a provocation. It’s like an
empty eye watching us from what hasn’t happened yet.
SINCLAIR: (With disdain) It’s just space, Junior.
And space is conquered with the will.
(From above comes a melodious
WHISTLE—Mozart—and a dry cough, of someone clearing their throat with
authority).
JUNIOR: (Losing his composure) Now what? Do we
have visitors? It’s him... the intruder from above. Death is coming to claim my
bed and my brushes.
SINCLAIR: (Uneasy) And my tub. It’s our old copy,
Junior. It’s us… old. He’s coming to claim the space that belongs to him. He
has the right to carry out his work.
JUNIOR: No. We can still prevent it. We must destroy his
canvas. He cannot enter here; he must remain suspended in the void forever.
(JUNIOR lunges toward the third canvas
with a knife. SINCLAIR, with unexpected agility, intercepts him, grabs
his wrists, and throws him to the ground. The knife falls, and SINCLAIR
kicks it away from the canvas).
SINCLAIR: (Shouting, over the rising heartbeat)
Stupid! If you destroy his canvas, you erase me too, you erase us. He is
already existing in the future.
JUNIOR: (Struggling on the floor) He is an
intruder! He is Death and decrepitude!
(The whale's heartbeat reaches a deafening
climax. The walls begin to vibrate and dilate. The light intensifies until it
becomes a blinding white, like a cosmic birth. There is a rebirth, a new
"Big Bang" of saturated light).
SCENE
3: ARTHUR’S SYNTHESIS
(The light returns: clear, golden, almost
Mediterranean. The third canvas, now in the center, is an explosion of Jackson
Pollock-style abstraction, full of light, drips, and movement. ARTHUR
(59 years old) stands before it, cleaning a brush with a silk cloth and
whistling Mozart softly. He moves with a grace and calm his younger versions
lack. JUNIOR and SINCLAIR are on the floor, like castaways who
have just been washed up on the beach).
ARTHUR: (Without turning, with a warm and ironic
voice) You know... weapons and knives shouldn’t exist, because there is
always someone who thinks they can use them.
JUNIOR: (Astonished, sitting up) You managed to
get in... Even though I tried to erase you.
ARTHUR: (Turns, smiling with radiant sympathy) I
didn’t enter, Junior. The Universe simply folded over itself so we could greet
each other. (To Junior). You still search for the origin of
consciousness in the ceiling of this whale. I already found it: it’s the moment
when you stop trying to leave and start enjoying the color of the walls. Freedom is not a door, it is a brush.
JUNIOR: An old man who enjoys his confinement—that’s what
I became. (Indignantly, to Sinclair). And you, you animal, did nothing
but have excesses: excesses of flesh, excesses of wine.
SINCLAIR: (Trying to regain his cynical pose) I’m
not to blame for this horrible painting, I swear cubism can still be
understood… These splotches of paint are a gross idea of art. Is that chaos of
stains your great work? It has no structure. It’s an insult to the cubist logic
that cost me so much to build.
ARTHUR: (Laughs warmly) It’s the forgiveness of
logic, Sinclair. Junior is our innocent Spanish Leonardo. You, Sinclair, broke
the world into little cubes to control it; I simply threw the cubes out the
window and kept the vibration. (He approaches the tub and touches it with
nostalgia). And thanks for the tub, really. I close my eyes and I still
feel the weight of that woman on my legs. She had a laugh that sounded like
brutal flesh, like fire, like desire that hurt.
SINCLAIR: (Surprised, lowering his guard) I thought
you’d forgotten the details... amidst all this "abstraction."
ARTHUR: The body has a stubborn memory, Sinclair. Junior
dreamed of her as a dark-haired virgin; you fragmented her so her departure
wouldn’t hurt you; but I... I still keep the moisture of her skin in my old
hands.
JUNIOR: Saying you are old is a pleonasm; you are so old
that when you breathe, white dust and bitterness come out.
ARTHUR: You have to overcome the erroneous idea you have
of me… I managed to transcend you, and the other too. And I also enjoyed my
body, though it may not seem so. Junior, don’t make that face. Sex is the only
philosophy you should have practiced. It’s the only thing that made us feel
real inside this colossal whale. Now my tub is for magnesium salts and
sciatica, but I thank Sinclair for having had the courage to take his body to
the most unexpected registers of pleasure—especially in the case of a... cubist
painter, a strange paradox.
JUNIOR: (Whispering) Is the whale stopping? Are we
dying? You are the culprit.
ARTHUR: (With a shadow of melancholy but without fear)
The whale is diving very deep, Junior. But it’s not the end. It’s the moment
when you must give up so much rage. It’s the moment when the silence is so pure
that we can finally hear what we are painting. (He points to his painting).
Look closely... here are the green eyes of your Spanish woman, Junior. And here
is the red of your wine, Sinclair. I’m not alone if I can see you in every
splash of color. I forgive your fear and your anger, Junior, and I forgive your
arrogance, Sinclair. At the end of the day, we are all the same brushstroke in
the dark. (Arthur extends two clean brushes to them). Paint with me.
There’s no longer anything to run from. We will be part of the great whale.
(JUNIOR and SINCLAIR slowly
stand up, ready to reconcile, trying to overcome their resistances. They
approach the large abstract painting. ARTHUR begins to whistle Mozart
again. He gives the brush to JUNIOR, who takes it with nobility and
humility. SINCLAIR takes his own brush. The three, in a perfect
choreography of different ages, begin to add colors to the canvas. The whale's
hum becomes a soft and rhythmic heartbeat. Mozart's music is heard ironically
elemental and sweet. The light slowly fades to white until only their
silhouettes remain, working together in a single pulse).
CURTAIN
