Wednesday, 29 September 2010

The Hatter.

[White.  Minimalist].

[Two characters; one wanders; back-stage left towards front stage-right.  Speech is generally unhinged; out of lucid disorientation rather than malice though.

Other stands at front-stage right.  Dressed unusually, but perfectly [social] normal; intently gazing at something inconsequential; 'furrowed brow'].

X: 'Hi'
Y:'[delight] Hello'
X:'-- How are you'.
Y:'Very good'
X:  'Cool.  Where are we'
Y: 'Have you seen this?  Have a look at it'
[prop handed over].  It doesn't belong here'.
X: [interest] ...Where is here?
Y:  Where is it not?
X:  It doesn't have a name?
Y: I'm afraid I don't understand.
X:  Here.  What's this place called.
Y: To whom?
X [stumped] - Generally.
Y:  I'm not sure what that means...
X:  Ok.  [Y begins getting out a cloth; makes to put in on the floor].
X: [four seconds]  Then who are you?
Y: [amused at question; happy] Who am I not?
X:  Do you have a name?
Y: -Not particularly one that matters.
X:  What matters then?
Y:  -I'm not sure.
X: -- So you don't know.
Y:  [quick] -Haven't the faintest idea.
X:  Ok. [subject change] I don't know where I am.
Y:  Does anyone?
X:  [pensive pause; four seconds] You're called the hatter.
Y:  I am.
X:  And why is that?
Y:  Why what?
X:  [patient]  Why are you called the hatter.
Y: 'The Hatter'?  'The hatter'?  Profitless chatter.
X:  -Profit to whom though.
Y: [pleased] Exactly!
X:  So.  We are nowhere.
Y:  Yes.
X:  And you are no one?
Y:  [gaily; at the irony] I am no one!
X: [remembering, but analytical] ..I thought you were always called the Mad hatter.
Y: [pregnant]; Ah. 
X:  Yet you say that you are just 'the hatter'.
Y:  [following lines of thought] Yes..
X: Perhaps it would be polite to give your full name.
Y: [teaching] Ah, yes but then everyone would not understand it would they!
X:  'What is mad'?
Y: Precisely.
X: ....well what is mad then.
Y: Existence.
X: 'Existence'?
Y: Subjective perception.
X: Is this play mad.
Y: Probably.  Though its more a dialogue than a play.
X:  Maybe its mad based on the assumption that it isn't?  In the first place?
Y:  Maybe.  Though people are more mad generally.
X:  How?
Y: [assesses X; is satisfied] The world cannot exist without you who is there to see it.
X:  Ok...
Y:  If one world is perceived one way, then that is the way of that world.  If another does so different, it is  matter of different worlds.
X:  Different worlds..
Y:  Yes.  Different as opposed to deviant.  So it becomes more about each's simultaneous totality.  And how each fundamental in itself.
X:  'Deviant'.  So the idea of 'norm' is unstable?
Y:  Incredibly.
X:  What makes it unstable.
Y: Normal is a judgement; people make judgements; people are raised differently; ideas of normal follow differently.  One cannot view the world without superimposing one's own existential paradigm on it.
X:  Existential paradigm.
Y: Yes.
X:  Bit of a mouthful.
Y: Yes it is.
X:..... are you going to clarify?
Y: Do you wish me to?
X: Well yes!
Y: Well; you live.  You have your world; I live, I have mine.  Our fundamental personalities are shaped by our individual experiences.  This set unique experiences, I suppose, becomes your own paradigm, based on subjective experience, which you filter the world through; eventually.
X:  But what is the world?  Just perceptual?
Y:  I think so.   Essentially, you are quite awful.
X: [amused] I am?
Y:  Yes.  Because you put your own paradigm on everything.  It's so self-important.
X:  Ok.  So what do you do then?
Y:  I?  I occupy no conceptual space.
X:  [probing] Why.
Y:  Because I do not know what conceptual space is.

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