ACT TWO

In darkness, the music ending Act One is heard now as theme of TV show. On screen following graphics are superimposed over a blood-red rising sun:

TO BOLIVIA OR NOT TO BOLIVIA?
A Special Edition Of The Chitley/Chatley Show!

UBI-TV Proudly Presents Its Historymaking

LIVE COVERAGE

Of The Attempted AUTO-APOTHEOSIS Of Major Ernesto
"CHE" GUEVARA!

Camera comes in on fully risen sun to show us letters TNT which, when music climaxes, expand to read:

Tomorrow’s News Tonight

Over appropriate newsreel footage we hear:

ANCHOR MAN: Good evening Mr and Mrs North America and all the ships in outer space. This is Chet Chitley—

ANCHOR WOMAN: And Anita Chatley, reporting that—

ANCHOR MAN: In Ireland, where it is already tomorrow morning, a crowd has gathered at a Dublin cemetery to witness the advertised "resurrection" of Ernie O’ Lynch, the IRA hitman who was executed by the British 72 hours ago in Golgotha Gaol, Belfast—

ANCHOR WOMAN: While the Irish take O’ Lynch’s atavistic aspirations seriously, skeptics in the U.K. remind us that not a week goes by when some amateur actor doesn’t emerge from a freshly dug martyr’s grave exhorting his fellow Emerald Islanders to selfdestruct for the cause of social justice.

ANCHOR MAN: Havana reports the ruins of The People’s Palace of Performing Arts are still smoldering after the riot caused by last night’s premier performance of Ramon Redux—

ANCHOR WOMAN: —that scorching satire on messianic Marxism reputedly written by the disillusioned didacticist Bertolt Brecht as a posthumous gesture of ideological recantation—

ANCHOR MAN: From Tel Aviv comes word that the jury pondering the fate of Karl Emmanuel Schwank, alias Professor Proteus, the former baggypantsed burlesque comic accused of masterminding the pornographic theatrical experiments performed on, by, and for the "benefit" of, the inmates of Dachau concentration camp—

ANCHOR WOMAN: As you may recall, the infamous "Dramaturg of Dachau" was recently captured by Israeli commandos on the stage of a Bolivian cantina in midperformance of a certain Passion Play of The Pampas—

ANCHOR MAN: Bringing us to the $64 question—

ANCHOR WOMAN: To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?

ANCHOR MAN: The inside story of one man’s enigmatic strategy for the Marxianization of all the Americas!

ANCHOR WOMAN: That’s what you will be reading all about tomorrow morning in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—

ANCHOR MAN: Where, under sunny skies, the temperature will be in the upper 60s—

ANCHOR WOMAN: While in Atlantic City, N.J., where a record cold snap continues, delegates to the Mammal’s Convention will awaken to find testicles hanging from the castrated roof line of the Camelot Casino.

IMPRESARIO: After these commercial messages The Chitley Chatley Show will continue its live coverage from the Schoolhouse Cantina in Higuera, Bolivia—and the stage of the Pasadena Playhouse.

During next scene commercials are shown including: paramilitarystyle fashions modeled against a desolate, wartorn Bolivian landscape; windproof cigarette lighters designed to facilitate selfimmolation in adverse weather conditions; guerrilla warfare consumer goods; etc. ANCHOR MAN and ANCHOR WOMAN sit at opposite sides of the stage having make up applied as they read their scripts.

ANCHOR MAN: What the hell was that last item about castrated testicles?

ANCHOR WOMAN: Icicles darling; hanging from the castellated roof line of the Camelot Casino.

ANCHOR MAN: You said "testicles!"

ANCHOR WOMAN: Maybe you thought you heard testicles instead of icicles.

ANCHOR MAN: Millions of people heard you say testicles!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Maybe you’ve got testicles on the brain?

ANCHOR MAN: It wouldn’t be the first time you have done it.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Done what?

ANCHOR MAN: Ejaculated malapropisms into a message meant to be meteorological.

ANCHOR WOMAN: What else can a girl do with a boring old weather foreskin?

ANCHOR MAN: There you go again—dragging foreskins into what should be a perfectly indecent conversation!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Forgive me darling, I didn’t do it on prepuce.

ANCHOR MAN: I’m wise to your cunnilinguistic tricks!

ANCHOR WOMAN: [Dropping fur wrap to flash simulated bare bosom of her plastic bodice.] Twat tricks?

ANCHOR MAN: Am I seeing things, or are your tits playing peekaboo with me under that fur wrap?

ANCHOR WOMAN: You’re seeing things! [Recovers ‘bosom.’]

ANCHOR MAN: Chet Chitley knows when he is looking at a pair of bare boobs, lady!

ANCHOR WOMAN: There are boobs and boobs, darling. What you saw just now was, in reality, a fleshcolored plastic breastplate designed to stimulate the illusion of nudity.

ANCHOR MAN: Goddammit; you’re scheming to upstage me with an act of peripheral titillation!

ANCHOR WOMAN: You mean that old vaudeville scam where some voluptuous young thing disrobes behind a baggypantsed professor’s back while he intercourses on the erotic asspicks of cuntian philosophy?

ANCHOR MAN: You did it again!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Did twat again?

ANCHOR MAN: Erogenously employed the words "intercourse," "asspicks" and "cuntian"—

ANCHOR WOMAN: What I said was: While she strips, he discourses on the esoteric aspects of Kantian philosophy!

ANCHOR MAN: I distinctly heard you use the word "cuntian!"

ANCHOR WOMAN: There is no such word—

WIFE: [As LuLu the computer hereafter:] 10 seconds and cuntian—

MAKEUP PERSONNEL clear the set.

ANCHOR MAN: Thanks old girl, I was beginning to think—

WIFE: [After having imitated series of electronic beeps.] Emergency Alert! All cameras copy! Masterplan Modification one-one-two follows! Curtaintime contretemps Pasadena Playhouse dictates immediate contingency cut from Part One Chitley/Chatley Special Edition Show to file footage "Otto Beorn’s Last Video Tape".

Tape of Otto Beorn’s ‘Elsinore Manifesto’ plays silently on screen.

ANCHOR MAN: Doesn’t that act of divine intervention provide me with the perfect opportunity of covering Guevara’s capture at the ravine after all?

WIFE: Negative Bolivia. Latest poop confirms prior assumptions. Fugitive in quebrada is identified as another Che lookalike. Man On Hot Seat in cantina dressing room pondering his role as Ramon in Passion Play prints out as genuine Guevara.

ANCHOR MAN: [Holding small notebook.] There has been a late breaking development Lulu—

WIFE: Lulu knows all about little black book found taped to thigh of selfconfessed camp follower "Tania"—

ANCHOR MAN: How can you fail to construe this as the penultimate entry of a doomed diarist? Listen to what Guevara writes under yesterday’s dateline in the Quebrada del Yuro [Reading from notebook.] "At the entrance of this eerie place there suddenly appeared an old peasant woman–a nightmarish hag in whose hideous face I saw the finale of my Andean Anabasis. With my last 30 Bolivianas I paid her not to betray me to the enemy. But there is little hope of that. Whether real, or a creature of my imagination, she was the incarnate messenger of doom. So it was always to be here, in this lunar landscape, that Guevara was destined to die and be transfigured! Already I see myself as a corpse! But the process of my apotheosis has also begun, infusing me with an invincible sense of immortality! Thus it is that I calmly prepare myself for tomorrow’s Grand Finale."

WIFE: Literary style not consistent with works by Ernesto "Che" Guevara—

ANCHOR MAN: For Christ’s sake, the man is not writing a treatise on the strategic efficacy of auto-apotheosis—he is staring into the stark face of certain death!

WIFE: All factors considered, black book must be perceived as being fake as false femme fatale to whose thigh it was taped.

ANCHOR MAN: Why would she forge a confession which can only condemn her to the real Tania’s fate before a firing squad?

WIFE: Her salvation scenario predicated on foolproof assumption firing squad will find better use for condemned femme fatale than as target for ballistic fusillade.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Which is precisely what happens night after night; when Tania’s "execution" turns into a G.I. gangbang. Can’t you see Chet, there must be a reason why the Bolivian authorities are always misled into capturing what turns out to be just another counterfeit Che in the quebrada by some dubious document discovered in the underwear of a beautified boobytrap?

ANCHOR MAN: The government concedes that last night’s foulup was another in a series of snafus—and that once again the Ramon in the ravine proved to be only an unemployed actor whose resemblance to Guevara’s leading man looks and aspirations of histrionic grandeur lured him into the theater of an actual war—

ANCHOR WOMAN: But haven’t you put your finger on a fundamental flaw in the army’s counterinsurgency game plan? They are looking for a Che Guevara who hasn’t existed since his swashbuckling days with Fidel in the Cuban Sierra Maestra!

ANCHOR MAN: Not any more. The army’s reanalysis of the situation has reached the same conclusion. That is why they are sure they will hit the jackpot tonight. This time the fugitive in the quebrada is described as being manifestly middleaged and ravaged by the torment of a futile guerrilla campaign—a man whose profound state of physical and spiritual decay could never be portrayed by an actor.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Every night they change the lyrics but the army still sings the same song: the object of their drag net is hiding somewhere on the pampas—when the plain truth is that Che’s strategy has always been to revolutionize North and South America not on the battlefield of the Altiplano but from the stage of a Bolivian cantina!

ANCHOR MAN: If he thinks some crummy floorshow can communize an entire continent, he’s got bats under his beret!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Was Karl Marx any less deranged when, by sitting in the British Museum, he unilaterally predicted the future of world history?

WIFE: Also: consider solitary figure George Washington hypothecating USA as global Superpower in wintry discontent of Valley Forge.

ANCHOR WOMAN: And what about Lenin, sealed inside that Zurich study orchestrating his triumphant return to the Finland Station years before the event!

WIFE: Further factual support for theory of auto-apotheosis: Christ constructing crucifixion scenario while wandering in wilderness.

ANCHOR MAN: History is not made by armchair intellectuals; it is shaped by men who have the cojones to get off their backsides and act!

WIFE: Only intellectual analysis gives rise to deeds of true heroism.

ANCHOR WOMAN: As Che himself wrote in his Strategies For Social Reform: "When it comes to revolutionary action a man’s cojones must be in his head."

ANCHOR MAN: You dames are all alike. If you can’t actually castrate a guy you redefine the nature of his manhood!

WIFE: Use of genital nomenclature this context strictly metaphorical. Term "cojones" denotes particular caste of mind perceiving life as stage for epic drama.

ANCHOR WOMAN: This is where The Che Play becomes so luminescent—with it’s electrifying idea that: by situating one’s self in a room with nothing to do but think, one creates all the chemistry needed for cultural, if not cosmic, regenesis.

ANCHOR MAN: With the fantastic result that we have a play all about someone sitting in a room written by someone else sitting in another room that is seen by yet someone else sitting in yet another room!

ANCHOR WOMAN: How else can we hope to discover why Che selects that desolate, windswept Andean Altiplano as the launching pad for his doomed attempt at revolutionizing the Americas?

ANCHOR MAN: If the fugitive trapped in the quebrada tonight turns out to be Ramon, and Ramon turns out to be Che; then the answer to that question will come straight from the horse’s mouth through the infallible procedures of a military interrogation.

ANCHOR WOMAN: One doesn’t solve such mysteries in a torture chamber, Chet. To fully understand Che’s mysterious motives we must somehow duplicate the analysis by which he decided if it was to Bolivia or not to Bolivia that destiny was calling him.

ANCHOR MAN: The fact of the matter is we are wasting precious primetime with all of this mickeymouse mumbo jumbo!

WIFE: Negative Bolivia. Methodical madness. Show still on schedule. During downtime discussion mass audience is being subliminally enlightened via Beorn’s Last Video Tape.

ANCHOR MAN: What the hell has that Prince of Danish Porn got to do with Guevara’s impending deification?

WIFE: According to marginal note Morales’ Masterplan; "via Beorn tape audience introduced to leitmotif of Che Play."

ANCHOR MAN: Which is what? That to attract an audience for a serious show UBI is willing to get into bed with Otto Beorn’s obscene production of Hamlet!

WIFE: Historical fact: Hamlet legend based on original Danish folk epic, "Amleth"—eroticism being theme of primitive Scandinavian dramaturgy.

ANCHOR MAN: We’re not getting involved with the Amleth/Hamlet riddle, are we?

ANCHOR WOMAN: How can we avoid it when Amleth, Hamlet, and Che are cut from the same ideological cloth?

WIFE: Additional relevant data: analyzing circumstances Beorn’s Fatal Finale leads some scholars to speculate use of stage at Elsinore was launching pad for ideas on which modern Scandinavian welfare state now based. Tape of socalled "Elsinore Manifesto" sets stage for politically motivated production by Che of Passion Play of the Pampas.

ANCHOR MAN: You don’t seriously expect the average audience watching that tape to perceive it as some kind of symphonic fanfare for To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? do you?

WIFE: Negative. No assumption masses appreciate art.

ANCHOR WOMAN: If the average audience was able to think for itself would a play like this one be necessary?

WIFE: Relevant excerpt suicide note attributed anonymous author of Danton Did Not Die!—"Art is the way in which one creates his own universe. As God is to the artist, so the artist is to mass man. Thus the eternal allure of theatergoing as a pseudoreligious act of orgiastic subjugation."

ANCHOR MAN: The idea of art is anathema to all revolutionary socialists. Guevara was seen publicly applauding that Resolution of the Fifth AfroAsian Economic Seminar reconfirming that: Justice for the Third World can only come from the muzzle of an AK-47.

ANCHOR WOMAN: But privately he was becoming infatuated with Otto Beorn’s dramaturgical ideology, as adumbrated in his Fake Fiasco Treatise—

WIFE: Background info re "Otto Beorn’s Onstage Auto-apotheosis at Elsinore: Fatal Flop or Fake Fiasco?"—Treatise coauthored by pseudonymous literary critic "Prof. Proteus" (probably German dramatist Georg Kaiser 1883-1947) and first Soviet Commissar of Culture Vladimir Lunacharsky (1883-1947). Said treatise views Elsinore "debacle" as seminal statement of revolutionary stratagem by which stage literally turns into theater of guerrilla warfare. Subsequent to publication in 1919, co-authorship itself ended with lifelong war of poisoned pens over implications raised by treatise. Proteus arguing medium itself is utopian message. Lunacharsky advocating art as means to materialistic end.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Ultimately, of course, the essential controversy of the Poison Pen War becomes that insoluble paradox at the core of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?. But there is an even more compelling connection between The Elsinore Fiasco and the enigma of Che’s Bolivian escapade. It lies in that fatal force field mutually attracting the Nordic and Latin races. Culturally this is manifested by the South American fascination with the Scandinavian Welfare State and, conversely, the eternal Nordic quest for an institutionalized tropical life style. But under closer scrutiny a more basic energy source for this geopolitical magnetism emerges. It is the basic sexual attraction of opposites functioning in the sphere of a Leniniststyle dialectic on class conflict. This explains not only Che’s obsessive utopianism, but his "battlefield love affair" with Tania; the voluptuous and virginal daughter of a Danish dairyfarmer who enslaves herself to the charismatic tyranny of Che’s Marxist machismo. In the final analysis then, it is Beorn’s Last Video Tape which, if we could see it in its fullest frontality, might provide us with the key to Che’s otherwise inscrutable maneuvers on the pampas.

ANCHOR MAN: Every schoolboy knows that Otto Beorn’s Elsinore Caper is one of the oldest acts in the archeology of showbusiness. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls describe how Mordecai the Mad Messiah hyped his otherwise unappetizing sermons with the eye-appealing antics of an upstage ecdysiast?

WIFE: Footnote: Mad Mordecai mentioned by Marquis de Sade in "Etiology Of Ecclesiastical Eroticism" as First Prophet of Porn. See also: Salvo XXIX, Poison Pen War in which Proteus claims "Meshugenah Messiah" discovered sublimest of all aesthetic principles but failed to foresee his seductive scenario as more enthralling than content of his sermons. Expressed axiomatically by Karl Emmanuel Schwank, Protean Thesis becomes: "The true object d’art is obscurely lodged in the corner of its beholder’s eye." Or, as paraphrased by Dramaturg of Dachau in closing statement to Jerusalem War Crimes Jury: "Pornography is the keyhole through which man glimpses the true nature of his being."

ANCHOR MAN: It’s disgusting to drag a man who’s about to make what he believes is the ultimate sacrifice through the mud of a Freudian analysis. Sex and martyrdom don’t mix very well.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Aren’t you overlooking the Morituri Syndrome?

ANCHOR MAN: [Evasively.] I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

WIFE: "Morituri Syndrome": Term coined by Roman playwright Gratisars in 136 BC describing curious phenomenon of gladiators dying with manhood erected.

ANCHOR MAN: That’s the last straw!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Oh come now darling, surely you saw the Morituri Syndrome rear its ugly head at some of those jailhouse executions you covered as a cub reporter. Beneath the plain brown wrappings of your journalistic outrage lurks the naked fear that, contrary to the "Death Sentence Dickdom," condemned men do always die in a state of aroused sexuality.

WIFE: Death Sentence Dickdom: Oscar Wilde variation on Johnsonian aphorism that threat of extermination concentrates male anatomy into space from neck up.

ANCHOR MAN: Don’t you two dames understand: the subject of saviourism is sacrosanct to all diehard social activists?

ANCHOR WOMAN: I don’t see why we should perpetuate the conspiracy of male silence over the genital aspects of martyrdom. That is what we women find so fascinating about the author of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?—he makes no bones about dealing with the issue of Che’s gonadal animus.

ANCHOR MAN: How can you say such things when this show is being watched by millions of Godfearing Christians!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Nonsense. No one but us is hearing any of this. Our conversation couldn’t be more private.

ANCHOR MAN: Is that gospel?

WIFE: Affirmative. Audience preoccupied with Elsinore Tape.

ANCHOR MAN: Then all of this has been an exercise in futility!

WIFE: Negative Bolivia; nothing totally futile. Falling tree falls no matter where.

ANCHOR MAN: It’s bloody nonsense continuing to play a scene its author has cut!

WIFE: Even cuts contribute to cathedralistic edifice of morales’ unorthodox ideas. Improvisational deviation this juncture could reduce entire structure to pile of theatrical rubble.

ANCHOR MAN: Well I for one resent having someone else’s wasted words put into my mouth!

ANCHOR WOMAN: You sound just like Che does in To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? when he rejects his wife’s theatergoing invitation!

ANCHOR MAN: Not having seen the play I don’t have an opinion on what that is supposed to mean—

ANCHOR WOMAN: Of course you don’t, darling—that’s why the play was written! But try to put yourself in Che’s moral combat boots and ask yourself this question: If, as you hypothecate, all human consciousness can be altered dramaturgically, might not your own intellect be subverted by a play your wife demands being taken to see?

ANCHOR MAN: Being a bachelor I have no practical experience dealing with such questions.

ANCHOR WOMAN: As an abstract proposition then, consider this additional paradox raised by Che’s Theory of Theatrical Insurgency: Since the mass mind can only be revolutionized culturally—is there ever any justification for actual guerrilla warfare?

ANCHOR MAN: I can only tell you this: all the plays ever written can’t eradicate the squalor of a single South American barrio!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Ah, but what is squalor?

ANCHOR MAN: What is it? It’s disease, dirt, pain, ignorance, poverty—all the dehumanizing facts of life you see here in the tin mines and on the pampas of Bolivia.

ANCHOR WOMAN: That’s one definition. But there are others depending on your frame of reference. Spiritually for instance, Stockholm might be more squalid than Calcutta. And I have friends in Beverly Hills who think of childbearing as a "dehumanizing" fact of female life—

ANCHOR MAN: That doesn’t surprise me.

ANCHOR WOMAN: It surprises Che though, and he is a strategist who puts a premium on not being taken by surprise. The ideological ramifications of socialistic materialism’s failure to sophisticate the proletariat has a quite paralyzing effect on him—

ANCHOR MAN: In the play—

ANCHOR WOMAN: Yes.

ANCHOR MAN: But in reality Guevara never sat in some elegant private study agonizing over a "Theory of Theatrical Insurgency"; and his wife never threatened him with cuckoldry if he didn’t capitulate to her playgoing ultimatum. None of that actually happened, did it?

ANCHOR WOMAN: In those precise terms; probably not—

WIFE: Fact. No historical foundation for To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?.

ANCHOR MAN: So—we are only talking about some playwright inventing this business about Guevara waging his guerrilla war from the stage of a Bolivian cantina!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Yes! But isn’t the question of what motivated the playwright to invent such a scenario crucially relevant? Isn’t it uncanny how history seems to be unfolding itself in that Bolivian cantina precisely according to The Che Play’s plot? How else can you explain the aura of dramatic expectancy permeating that "South American" air you are breathing on the other side of this stage?

ANCHOR MAN: There is always tension in the air when the Andean tin miners are waiting for those floor shows to start where—for the price of a beer—one exploited proletarian can watch another exploited proletarian take her clothes off.

ANCHOR WOMAN: That may be true, but it still does not tell us why Warrant Officer Teran has decided not to leave the cantina as he has done night after night upon receiving the Communique from Cochabamba telling him "Ramon" has been trapped in the Quebrada del Yuro.

ANCHOR MAN: You’re wrong about that. I saw Teran leave for the quebrada not 10 minutes ago!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Was it The Executioner, or his understudy you saw?

WIFE: Fact. Person exiting cantina 1940 hours was in reality Executioner’s understudy.

ANCHOR WOMAN: And, if the actor preparing himself to play Ramon in the Passion Play has learned of Teran’s ominous decision not to obey orders, he has good cause to suspect that during the climactic scene tonight, when The Executioner puts the pistol against his temple, it might be loaded with live ammo. This would explain not only his dressing room anxiety, but also your fear that The Che Play will prove to be prophetic. Isn’t it just possible darling, that you, and Che, and all those stripteaseminded tin miners are starting to feel trapped by the obscene machinations of another man’s mind?

ANCHOR MAN: Ideas like that don’t pop out of a woman’s mouth unless they’ve been put there by some literary ventriloquist like Karl Emmanuel Schwank, Otto Beorn—or this damned Morty Morales—

ANCHOR WOMAN: I don’t deny the influence such men have on the genesis of ideas like the one I just expressed—but it’s also true that women intuitively construe playgoing as a fundamentally erotic experience. Why else is it that night after night millions of wives urge their husbands to do it?

ANCHOR MAN: So you see something "smutty" in the fact that perfectly decent housewives attend perfectly decent stagings of perfectly decent plays accompanied by the perfectly decent men to whom they are married!

ANCHOR WOMAN: How else can you explain why all those "perfectly decent" housewives spend their theatergoing afternoons tarting themselves up like high class hookers?

ANCHOR MAN: Now you even find something perverted in their unimpeachable standards of personal cleanliness!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Their playgoing preparations have nothing to do with sexual perversity or personal hygiene; they are just the precautionary measures prudently taken by females who anticipate the possibility of their onstage involvement in one of those orgies arising from a particularly pregnant theatrical imperative—as frequently happens in the subterranean Pleasure Palaces of Copenhagen, Zurich and Paris.

ANCHOR MAN: What could those matronly types in Pasadena possibly know about the underground depravities of European nightlife?

ANCHOR WOMAN: Believe me, darling, they know! From the innermost recesses of their being they sense that somewhere such scandalous scenarios of nocturnal danger actually exist. One need only peer through those two-way trick mirrors in the powder room of this playhouse to find that most of the "matrons" here are wearing the kind of undies that inspired Sternheim to write his bawdy tribute to the looseness of a certain lady’s lingerie. You know what I’m talking about—the sort of stuff a postman only delivers in a plain brown envelope? Although it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the hausfraus in this audience came here wearing just their birthday suits beneath those mink stoles and evening gowns!

ANCHOR MAN: That still doesn’t mean they will enjoy your iconoclastic brand of antiheroic dramaturgy!

ANCHOR WOMAN: I’m only saying what they want to hear. Isn’t that so, ladies? Didn’t you arrive here expecting to be astonished, scandalized horrified and—finally—ravaged by the "unthinkable" ideas I have exposed your minds to just now? Weren’t you warned to avoid this play by those critics who "praised" it as: "The purest type of theatrical filth!" And surely someone at the beauty parlor or the supermarket confided to you her feelings of having been "intellectually raped" the night she and her escort attended a performance of The Che Play?  But still you came—once again overwhelmed by the "magic of a marquee!" Why, oh why, do your hearts flutter at the sight of a proscenium arch; and what is it that makes your love juices flow when the houselights dim? The explanation for all your precoital phenomenology is found, of course, in the lubricious writings of men like Beorn and Schwank—whose plays (thanks to the Obscene Ideas Act) you have been unable to see performed; or even procure from your favorite under-the-counter dealer in banned books.

     Nevertheless, at a tender age you felt the erotic pulling power of theatergoing’s magnetic field. Perhaps it was a "harmless" performance of Our Town—or The Pirates of Penzance—that first aroused your curiosity about the obscene interplay between author and actress, or actor and audience. But, having neither the stomach nor the cojones to pursue your sadomasochistic desires to their darkest destination, you abandoned them to the fantasy realm of day dreams; along with your unanalyzed dread of electrocution. Tonight, however, you aren’t flirting with the nonlethal voltage of high school histrionics! To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? throbs with highest kind of psychosexual tension! The shock you might receive this evening has the potential of permanently repolarizing your personality.

     Oh, I know you think you have been drawn here by the nostalgia of your former infatuation with that charismatic communist whose famous face hung framed on the wall of your adolescent boudoir—or adorned the bosom of your collegiate sweatshirt—but that politically immaculate crush can’t explain away the devious stratagem by which you seduced or swindled the man sitting at your side to escort you here! Can it be, as the author of tonight’s play would have us believe—that your motives emanate from the indecent expectation that you and your escort might become engulfed in the exponentiating dialectics of a triangulated theatrical love affair?

ANCHOR MAN: Holy smoke, are you accusing those poor women of being sex criminals simply because they ask some guy to share a cultural experience with them!

ANCHOR WOMAN: They’re guilty alright—but only of that subconscious conspiracy by which their menfolk are made to sit by their sides while some perverted playwright has his way with them both—

ANCHOR MAN: How can you accuse them of a crime they can’t even comprehend?

ANCHOR WOMAN: That’s one more reason they came here; to have the nature of their criminality illuminated!

ANCHOR MAN: They entice some guy to see a play exposing the secret purpose of their own seduction scenario?

ANCHOR WOMAN: Congratulations darling; you are beginning to use the very grammar of The Che Play in your criticism of it!

ANCHOR MAN: I still don’t see what any of this has to do with the monumental events taking shape at this hour here in Bolivia?

ANCHOR WOMAN: It is only through The Che Play’s attenuation of Guevara’s paralytic reaction to his wife’s theatergoing ultimatum that we begin to perceive the quintessential significance of what "actually" happens in Bolivia. The mere anticipation of seeing such an act of mental virtuosity explains why this playhouse is packed with ordinary housewives brought to a state of curtaintime concupiscence by an opus on the subject of resistance, rebellion and death.

WIFE: Sorry to poop party but time has come for scene shift to stage of South American cantina.

By now ‘Beorn’s Last Video Tape’ has ended with Hamlet’s suicide/execution. On black screen following graphics are typed in white letters: DATELINE (insert present date) HIGUERA, BOLIVIA. THE CURTAIN IS ABOUT TO RISE ON ‘THE PASSION PLAY OF THE PAMPAS’—THAT PART OF AN OTHERWISE PORNOGRAPHIC FLOORSHOW THE AUTHORITIES HAVE CERTIFIED AS BEING ‘SOCIALLY REDEMPTIVE’.

Throughout following scene screen shows live coverage of action on stage. Main stage darkens. Spotlight is on cantina curtain, through which IMPRESARIO ENTERS to mariachi fanfare.

IMPRESARIO: Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to La Cantina Escuela—the nite spot where one needn’t know how to read or write to learn the lessons we teach! In a moment the curtains will open to reveal the mystery you’ve all been waiting to see—but first let me use this opportunity to get acquainted—[Shields eyes from spotlight.] Ah, what a sea of intelligent faces! Already I sense that rapport which exalts the living theatrical experience above the very experience of living! About me you should know that I am not a miracle worker or magician! I have no tricks up my sleeves. Night after night I am myself uncertain what will be revealed when I open these curtains! It might be Ramon resurrected—or it could be just the chair he was martyred upon, standing on an otherwise empty stage. It is, of course, the ambiguity about what lies behind these curtains that has lured you here. On the one hand you are hoping to see the agony of a deceased martyr’s involuntary resurrection—while on the other it is my humiliation you desire should Ramon refuse to return from his grave as advertised. But I warn you, amigos, your own involvement is not without its risks! Witnessing a corpse come back to life is one thing—but breathing the air he exhales is something else! And there is the pollution of your minds to consider, if indeed he reveals those secrets of the grave you might be better off not knowing about! So, ladies and gentlemen, maybe now is the time you should ask yourselves if you have the courage to actually see what you came here to watch! This is your last chance to leave before we plunge headlong into what might be the bottomless abyss of forbidden truth! [Pause, during which TV cameras scan both cantina and theater audiences.] Well then—now that we are all in this thing together, you must join me for the Invocation of Ramon’s Resurrected Remains!

ENTER FEMME FATALE cantina stage dressed as magician’s assistant, with smoldering censer which she keeps, and leather pouch which she gives to Impresario. During invocation IMPRESARIO will take items from pouch and drop them in censer, causing chemical reaction.

IMPRESARIO: Now, repeat after me:

Pinch of Dust
Strand of Hair
Splinter from the Sacred Chair
Drop of Blood
Shard of Bone
From your Grave Arise Ramon!
And tell us Why
It was in Bolivia
You chose to die?

If theater audience is reluctant to participate IMPRESARIO should improvise his exhortation along lines that there must be a demonstration of collective willpower to overcome the inertia of Ramon’s deathsleep. After which, with another brief mariachi fanfare, cantina curtains are quickly drawn apart by FEMME FATALE and IMPRESARIO revealing Hot Seat standing on empty stage. EXIT FEMME FATALE.

IMPRESARIO: As you can plainly see, ladies and gentlemen, Ramon has failed to materialize. But if you will think about this non event for a moment, you will realize it only confirms the authenticity of what we are attempting to do! This is no theatrical illusion we aspire to create. It is nothing less than Ramon’s actual reincarnation we are seeking! So it is understandable if our first effort was not a success. But not to worry. We will try again in a few moments. Perhaps Ramon sensed some cynicism on your part. If so, let us use this "intermission" for the purpose of dedicating ourselves anew to the conjuration of that occult object of our desires!

EXIT IMPRESARIO into cantina stage, pulling curtains closed behind him. Main stage goes dark. On screen ANCHOR WOMAN is shown interviewing theatergoers exiting into street or alley behind playhouse. She first encounters WIFE and BEST FRIEND.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Ah—I was hoping to find a typical couple from the audience who might share their impressions of The Che Play with our millions of viewers out there in television land—

WIFE: We’re having the time of our life!

ANCHOR WOMAN: So you weren’t disappointed by the failed Resurrection Scene just now?

WIFE: We thought it came off brilliantly!

ANCHOR WOMAN: You’re not mystified by it all?

BEST FRIEND: It’s perfectly clear to me—the author is treating this entire Che Guevara business as a variation on the Moreno Affair.

ANCHOR WOMAN: The Moreno Affair?

BEST FRIEND: The sex scandal that rocked Italy in the 20’s—

WIFE: When the sculptor La Vela committed suicide because—

BEST FRIEND: He wasn’t a sculptor, he was an actor—an actor who killed himself on stage because a certain Baron Nuti had defiled his bride-to-be, the celebrated silent screen starlet, Tatiana Moreno, on the eve of their wedding—

WIFE: She was his sister, actually.

BEST FRIEND: Whose sister?

WIFE: Nuti was engaged to La Vela’s sister, but on the eve of their wedding he discovered his future brother-in-law en flagrante with the Moreno woman.

BEST FRIEND: That doesn’t make any sense. Why would La Vela suicide himself over his sister’s defilement? You’re confusing the subsequent dramatization of the scandal with the scandal itself—

WIFE: No, no—it was the dramatization that became a scandal by portraying such a sordid affair so publicly.

BEST FRIEND: You’ve got that backwards. The scandal of the Moreno Affair Play arose from the accidental death of the actor impersonating La Vela during what was supposed to be his suicide "scene." Don’t you remember how the ensuing inquest revealed that the actors playing Nuti, La Vela and the Moreno Woman were themselves participating in a triangular love affair identical to the one involving the three characters they portrayed on stage?

WIFE: I see what you’re doing! You’ve mixed up the original Moreno Affair Play with the later, sanitized version—where an inquest scene is added to the Third Act for socially redemptive purposes—

ENTER EXECUTIONER, also in evening clothes.

EXECUTIONER: Excuse me, but you’re both mistaken. In the first place, La Vela was neither a sculptor nor an actor. He was a revolutionary socialist whose sex life was appropriately puritanical. The socalled "Moreno Affair" was his naive attempt at "theatrical insurgency"—a totally fictitious attack on Fascism and all those who should have been antiMussolini but chose instead to commit intellectual and moral suicide. La Vela’s own act of "selfdestruction" only makes sense when it is viewed in the context of an allegorical scenario—

ENTER WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE with ORNITHOLOGIST.

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: There’s nothing "allegorical" about La Vela’s refusal to compete for the affections of his own wife! It is simply another example of a playwright/husband lacking conjugal cojones!

EXIT WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE and ORNITHOLOGIST. ENTER CHE with FEMME FATALE in evening clothes.

CHE: Obviously the play was a manifesto for Mussolini’s assassination!

EXECUTIONER: Obviously? Then why does the hero assassinate himself!

CHE: The fact is La Vela’s "Suicide Scene" is deliberately ambiguous. It can just as easily be construed as a murder plot; and history tells us that La Vela’s onstage execution was in fact engineered by an actor playing Nuti on Mussolini’s personal orders. Thereafter Il Duce wrote his own theatrical travesty of La Vela’s martyrdom, in which his "heroic" corpse is resurrected as the center piece of a comic sex opera; and Mussolini could brag it was he who had had the last dramaturgical laugh—having victimized La Vela by means of the very art form for which he had martyred himself.

FEMME FATALE: [To EXECUTIONER, as she and CHE head for ‘CAFE INTERLEWD’ located further along the alley.] If you really understood Pirandello you wouldn’t go off halfcocked like that about the politico-ontological dimensions of The Moreno Affair!

EXECUTIONER: Don’t lecture me about Pirandello, whore! [Follows CHE and FEMME FATALE off, shaking fist.]

ANCHOR WOMAN: [Following WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE and BEST FRIEND as they also head for ‘CAFE INTERLEWD’.] Exactly who is this "Pirandello" every one is talking about?

EXECUTIONER: Sorry, no time. The show’s about to start—

ANCHOR WOMAN: But the intermission has only just begun!

FEMME FATALE: [Turning as she is about to enter cafe.] He means the show in here—the one filling that otherwise unbearable void between the acts of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?. Let him explain!

She points to Barker (played by IMPRESARIO) standing under small canvas marquee at entrance to ‘Cafe Interlewd. Flanking doorway are illuminated photos of cafe performers—including Femme Fatale as stripper and Che wearing beret and hooped polo shirt of an Apache dancer.

IMPRESARIO: Hurry, hurry, hurry! The curtain is going up on a whirlwind version of that immoral masterpiece: The Importance of Being, Ernest! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Before the erotic aura evaporates—while you are still intoxicated by the thrill of theatergoing—before reality sobers you up—before the Vice Squad gets wise! See the rare secrets of female pulchritude fully revealed for the price of a single drink! Hear lewd remarks made in flagrant violation of the Obscene Ideas Act! This is the show explaining the other show—the Play To End All Plays! Hurry, hurry, hurry!!!

Camera enters front door for interior shots of cafe (which is stage of ‘Che Play’) with characters of previous scene now seated at cantina tables. ENTER IMPRESARIO through curtains of cantina stage in Master-of-Ceremonies costume.

IMPRESARIO: Greetings all you culture connoisseurs, pornofreaks and dramaturgical dope addicts! Welcome to the Cafe Interlewd; and without further ado or prologuery, let us begin our presentation of The Importance of Being, Ernest with the obligatory invocation of our hero’s corpse!

ENTER FEMME FATALE as magician’s assistant, holding top hat and handing IMPRESARIO sheet of paper from which he will read invocation and, as he reads, tear off pieces and deposit them in hat.

IMPRESARIO: Oh you who was once called Ernest, et cetera et cetera—rise up from that dream-tormented sleep of death, et cetera—so that we the living, et cetera—might profit from your sacrifice, et cetera—resurrect yourself from that eternal solitude of sepulchered isolation, et cetera—reveal to us the secrets of being and not being, et cetera—illuminate our ignorance with the incandescent brilliance of your mind, and so forth and so on—

Curtain is parted by FEMME FATALE and IMPRESARIO, revealing CHE seated on Hot Seat in brightly lit, luxuriously furnished private study set. EXIT FEMME FATALE. Applause from cantina audience, whistling and shouts of ‘Bravo’.

IMPRESARIO: Please control yourselves ladies and gentlemen! The situation is still extremely precarious! What you are seeing now is not some showbusiness scam! This is nothing less than a genuine miracle still in a delicate state of metamorphosis!

Pause, during which IMPRESARIO signals to cantina audience with hands held palms out for silence and immobility. Then, very quietly:

IMPRESARIO: While we are waiting for things to stabilize I will briefly explain this phenomenon you have just seen—the "resurrection effect" as it is known in dramaturgical parlance. In the first place it is essential to understand that from Ernest’s perspective it is we who have miraculously materialized from thin air to suddenly invade the private realm of his consciousness. We, of course, know for a fact that his assumption of our non reality is absurdly erroneous—that he is ignoring the obvious truth he is sitting on a stage whose curtains have just opened on a sea of human faces which can only be construed as a theatrical audience. Were this an actual private study in which an actual Ernest sat thinking, the question would automatically arise as to why he would be sitting with his back to the room’s contents—and, even more compellingly, why the wall he is facing consisted only of a curtain before it turned into this void framed by what is obviously a proscenium arch?

     Naturally these questions do not concern us because we know for a certainty this is not a real room, but a stage set. Hence it is logically comprised of three solid walls and one through which we can magically view its contents. Such are the irrefutable facts of theatrical life! But Ernest would argue that in this case it is our assumptions which are faulty! And maybe he is right. Suppose, for instance, the private study in which he historically sat pondering the importance of his being had in fact been constructed of three actual walls and one nonexistent wall replaced by drapes to provide its occupant with the kind of background he finds conducive to the concentration of his intellectual powers?

     "Preposterous," you say? Well, let us see—as we investigate this "mystery of the missing wall" while waiting for its reality to crystallize! [On screen we might see film illustrating following narrative:] To begin with, this "room" Ernest calls his "Study" was previously the "Private Library" of one Karl Emmanuel Schwank, Minister of Social Justice in the previous, feudal regime of the arch tyrant, Fulgencio Batista. Schwank is—or was—himself a figure shrouded in mystery. Among other things he has been accused of being the infamous "Dramaturg of Dachau." Whether his pornographic peccadilloes went quite that far is not relevant for our purposes—it is sufficient to know he was fanatically devoted to the study and practice of obscene artforms. This very room became a living museum of the world’s most illicit masterworks. Within its confines Schwank spent most of his waking hours collecting and cataloguing the "inspired manifestations of mankind’s universal fascination with the more or less eschatological aspects of sex." As an adjunct to his obsession with the darker side of creativity (and a fact tending to support his concentration camp criminality) Schwank modified the architecture of his library by having its rear wall turned into a proscenium arch identical to one found in the secret office of Dachau’s deranged camp commandant. This he did so his repertory of "forbidden classics" could be "preserved" for the "edification" of his fellow plutocrats. A small wing was added beyond the proscenium wall as an "intimate auditorium" for the local luminaries who were invited to witness his "esoteric entertainments"—most notably the blacklisted plays of Otto Beorn and the Marquis de Sade.

     But as you can well imagine, with the ever increasing demand to see his outrageously prurient productions of such "cultural rarities," Schwank was compelled to enlarge the auditorium annex until it became the dominant structure; and his library its architectural appendage! In other words a complete theater had come to be built around the stage of his once "private library!" And, as a footnote to Cuba’s Revolution, the death sentence pronounced on Schwank by Ernest, his successor at the Ministry of Social Justice, was carried out on the very stage he had managed to make of his little hideaway—before an audience of proletarians who were treated to the truly delicious spectacle of seeing their former persecutor tortured to death during the finale of a Buff & Snuff play he himself had plagiarized from a short story authored by the Argentine esthete, Jorge Luis Borges (and which he shamelessly advertised as his own Magnum Opus)!

     While all of this helps explain Ernest’s erroneous assumption about the nature of the three sided room he sits in, it still leaves unanswered the fundamental question of how, under any set of circumstances, he can rationalize the mysterious parting of those drapes just now—and the "miraculous incarnation" of you, the audience! Initially, if you will remember, we all noticed how his reaction to our presence (no matter how sly or evanescent) manifested what can only be called a definite sense of panic. His attitude toward us was palpably hostile; as if we had interrupting his thoughts just at the point beyond which he expected to finally solve the riddle of his being. So devastatingly real was our invasion of his privacy that even now he is finding it difficult to recall the exact terms of the problem he had been so assiduously analyzing—except that in a general way it had to do with "2s" and "Bs." An algebraic equation perhaps? But now he is forced to abandon the obscured objective of his dialectical desires and concentrate instead on formulating a theoretical basis for our otherwise inexplicable appearance.

     This procedure begins with yet another erroneous assumption that we are all creatures of his imagination—leading him to misconstrue our interruption of his previous train of thought as being the onset of yet another train of thinking. Already he accepts the hypothesis that it was he who masterminded our existence at that magic moment when he seemed on the brink of solving the 2B equation. It is possible—perhaps even probable—he postulates; that this bewildering interruption might in fact encompass the very process it seems to frustrate: that somehow we comprise the element so essential to solving what once seemed an insoluble problem. He further reasons that: since the thought he had just prior to the opening of the drapes might have been leading him to an idea which, by definition, he had not reached—it could be we who represent the answer to the question that has been haunting him! [Entering set gingerly.]

     And, now that Ernest believes he is in complete control of the situation, it has become safe for me to penetrate his Sanctum Sanctorum—to actually tread upon the floor of his skull and explore the innermost recesses of his being. [Touches objects in room, finally putting hand on Ernest’s Hot Seat.]

     As you can see, he is no longer disconcerted by my presence. To him we are all imaginary characters whose only reason for being consists of dramatizing the Grand Finale of his endless ruminations on the 2B problem. He sits here as calmly as you sit there—in accordance with the artistic axiom that: "Thinking is that process by which we become an audience of one within the theater of our minds." For Ernest it is the decision to think itself that leads him inexorably to the formulation of his "climactic idea"—just as your theatergoing decision leads you irresistibly to the final curtain’s falling; and all the while you merely sit there—and he sits here!

      In either case, the end result is made inevitable by that first, seminally decisive act. The notion this play might end ambiguously does not occur to you because it is unthinkable. In the theater one doesn’t expect to find ones’ self floundering in a swamp of uncertainty at the end of Act 3; that only happens in the unstructured chaos of reality! So too, Ernest refuses to even consider the possibility that all his assumptions about us might be erroneous; that one does not sit down to solve a problem without in the end solving it; that this dramatized phase of his interminable meditation cannot fail to be climactic. Therefore he not only tolerates my presence, he raises no objection to these insulting statements I am making about the fundamentally flawed working of his mind!

     His faith in my subservience to his intellectual mastery is so dogmatic that were I to tell him—as I now do—it is we, Ernest, who exploit you for our own analytical purposes; we who have called you from the grave to satisfy our own curiosity about the importance of being! [Pause.] You see? Even when viewed in its fullest frontality—the naked truth has no effect on his composure! So fanatically committed is he to the fatally flawed proposition that I am but a figment of his imagination that, when I suddenly end this speech in mid sentence and leave the stage—

Which he now does by descending stairs of cantina stage right and EXITING via main stage wing. A pause of 10 seconds before he RE-ENTERS.

—Ernest will erroneously assume it was he who authored my "seemingly" improvisational behavior! And, had I not returned to the stage (as it was fully within my power to do) God knows how long the fool might have remained sitting here waiting for the truth to dawn!

     Unfortunately it was your own behavior during my absence that supports Ernest in his misguided analysis of the situation. After all, he saw you sitting there patiently enduring the hiatus created by my surprise exit—with the result that your sedentary paralysis confirmed the validity of his own passive gameplan! What he fails to consider, however, is that your faith in the certainty of my return was predicated on the irrefutable proposition that: No matter how enigmatically this play proceeds, being a play, it must eventually lead to a definitive conclusion. And, in that regard, you were, of course, proved to be quite correct. I was in fact required by theatrical protocol to resume this scene pursuant to a script which is itself compelled to bring your playgoing expectations to a satisfactory climax in—[Checks watch.]—exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds from now.

     Therefore, to a certain extent, you were justified in believing that no matter how urgent my offstage desires were, sooner or later I would be forced to return. But is Ernest entitled to take his comfort from the same set of facts? Is he justified in thinking I would make my return for an audience of one? But, no matter what I say or do it is plain he will never be convinced we are right and he is wrong. It is one of those paradoxes which only the final curtain can resolve—speaking of which, the time has come for the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end!

ENTER WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE through portal in rear of study set on cantina stage wearing only high heeled shoes and a diaphanous pink peignoir which is soiled and tattered from the nightmarish events she describes hereafter.

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Terrified, then elated over sight of audience.] Thank God—Oh, thank God I’m saved! I thought I’d never escape alive! I was on the verge of losing my mind! [Collapses into IMPRESARIO’s arms.]

IMPRESARIO: My dear woman, what on earth do you think you’re doing bursting onto the stage in this shocking state?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Suddenly aware that despite ‘safety’ of audience’s presence she is also compromised by it, she uses hands to hide seminudity.] It’s true! I’m standing in front of all these people practically naked! [To theater audience.] Well don’t just sit there Theo, pretending I’m a total stranger! In spite of your precious "reputation" you have got to come up here and rescue me!!!

IMPRESARIO: Who is this—"Theo" character?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: My husband, Professor Theobold Maske.

IMPRESARIO: Theobold Maske, the tyrannical civil servant and notorious male chauvinist from Frankfurt am Main?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: No. He’s the noted ornithologist from (insert name of local university). [Shielding eyes, peering into theater audience.] He should be in the 12th row on the aisle; unless he’s hiding somewhere to avoid the scandal he predicted would result from attending this play with me tonight!

IMPRESARIO: [Trying to escort her off.] We will make some arrangements backstage to solve your problems, madam; but as you can see, right now we are in the middle of a performance—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Hysterically.] No! I won’t go back there! It’s too horrible! I’d rather die of shame standing here! [Rationally.] Besides, I believe I have the right to explain everything publicly now that the curiosity of the audience has been aroused—and to shame my husband for the cowardly swine he is—

IMPRESARIO: [Consulting watch.] Actually we do have about 15 more seconds to kill, so please be brief.

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Sitting on loveseat cantina stage left.] Do you think I could have a drink—to steady my nerves?

IMPRESARIO: Ah—yes; certainly. [Pours drink from bar disguised as section of bookcase and serves her as:]

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Obviously relishing spotlight.] It all begins when, at long last, I decide to burst into Theo’s den and demand that he take me to this evening’s performance of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?. His reaction is predictably paralytic; he wants time to think over my "proposition." I remind him there are less than 8 hours before the curtain goes up; and he informs me it never takes more than 6 to prepare for an evening at the theater. I accuse him of being an incurable procrastinator. He accuses me of being incapable of distinguishing between procrastination and cogitation. I point out a decision to attend the theater or not to attend the theater shouldn’t need all that much "cogitation"—and he points out that in the light of our previously disastrous experiences, such a decision demands the most assiduous kind of analysis.

     I argue that to become embroiled in a debate on this point would itself constitute an act of procrastination on my part—which I refuse to do! He calls me a sophist. I call him a hairsplitter. He questions my moral fiber. I question his cojones. He labels me as being histrionic, irrational, insatiable, brazen and stupid. I label him as being cowardly, indecisive, morose, effeminate and supercilious.

    Whereupon he becomes comatose, as I knew he would; and I become hysterical as he predicted I would. Eventually I am forced to threaten him with the destruction of our marriage and he finally capitulates. Hurrying to bathe, dress, dine and drive downtown we arrive at the playhouse just in time to enjoy a leisurely preperformance cocktail at the bar. And it is there—while anticipating the excitement of entering the auditorium, locating our seats, seeing the houselights dim and waiting for the curtains to rise for the start of Act One—when the cocktail waitress spills a tray of drinks down the decolletage of my evening gown.

     As she apologizes profusely and offers on the theater manager’s behalf to lead me to the Ladies’ Room where the damage to my dress can be "rectified," I instinctively rise to follow her. But at this point Theo seizes my arm and accuses the waitress of "conspiring" with the manager to involve us in yet another of our theatergoing fiascoes.

     She vehemently denies his "allegation"—hinting he is a victim of some paranoid delusion. A shouting match ensues, during which the other theatergoers stare at us in astonishment. I try to persuade Theo he is creating the very scandal we want to avoid but he cannot be reached. So we argue about whether we can avoid becoming involved in another cause celebre or are already involved in one; until once again I take the bull by the horns and announce to Theo I have decided to place myself at the theater manager’s disposal in the Ladies’ Room regardless of his objections!

     Whereupon the cocktail waitress and I exit from the bar and proceed down a series of labyrinthine passageways and circular stairways until I am delivered into the custody of the Ladies’ Room attendant; who orders me into a mirrored cubicle; telling me to remove every stitch I’m wearing except for my high heels and hosiery —which, without stopping to think, I do. Then she orders me to don this pink peignoir while I wait for the drycleaners to remove the stain from my evening gown which, with any luck, should be accomplished in time for the start of the Second Act.

     Being familiar with the play from having followed its controversial history in those slick magazines one seems only to find at one’s beauty parlor, I tell the ladies’ room attendant that missing Act One is not very significant. The important thing is to be back in my seat for the opening scene of Act Two; which is where the climax really begins to build. Whereupon she makes an ambiguous gesture with her shoulders and locks me in the cubicle "for safe keeping." [Having joined her on love seat and gotten interested in story she is telling, IMPRESARIO offers her cigarette from his gold case. She accepts cigarette and light.] So, there I am with nothing to do but look at my reflection in the full-length mirrors comprising the four walls of my cell. For a moment I panic; recalling girlhood horror stories about nude and seminaked housewives being lured into such situations by pornographers charging dirty old men small fortunes for the privilege of surreptitiously observing their helpless victim through the twoway mirrors forming her cage. I press my ear to the glass thinking I might detect the heavy breathing of a secret audience, but instead I hear the prologue of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? being delivered by that suspicious character with the German—or "Danish"—accent.

     The monotonous sound of his voice and the repetitious vocabulary he uses to introduce the action of the play combine with the mirrored reflections of my near nudity to send me freefalling in a vortex of surreality. Then, just as I am dimly aware that the prologue is ending and the play itself is just about to begin at that point where the suspicious character with the Germanic accent is surprised by a seminaked housewife who is suddenly catapulted onto the stage—at the very instant I am thinking this thought, the mirror against which I am pressed gives way and I find myself being catapulted onto the stage! Blinded by the bright lights I can nevertheless hear an audience gasping in amazement—just as those slick magazines report the audience does night after night when some "waylaid housewife" finds herself standing before them in a state of dishabille. Suddenly I realize the part of the Waylaid Housewife is not played by an actress, but by a member of the audience like myself—who is duped into removing her clothes and appearing in public wearing only high heels and a diaphanous pink peignoir. My immediate concern however is not that I have been victimized by my own theatergoing fantasies—

IMPRESARIO: Ah, I would have thought—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: No, my immediate concern is only to escape the spotlight. But no matter where I turn it follows me until, blinded and dumbfounded, I feel myself being embraced by a pair of muscular arms and I am pushed onto a chair or loveseat. I am surrounded by masculine voices. They want to know the true identity of the man known as "Ramon." They accuse me of being his "sex crazed female cohort," Tania. They are curious about my "subversive activities" in La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. One of the voices is "reasonable"—it urges me to be pragmatic : "In the end they will get what they want so why not cooperate now?" A second voice is whispering in my ear that he is enthralled with my nudity and, with Ramon’s capture under his belt, he will be in a position to offer me a life of opulent serenity as his mistress. A third voice threatens me with the most unspeakable atrocities—and it is he who prevails when, after trying to explain my status as The Waylaid Housewife in To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?, I am in fact tortured, raped, tortured again and raped again until I lose consciousness. And, when I regain my senses it is only to find I am being raped and tortured again!

IMPRESARIO: Another drink?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Nods and continues while IMPRESARIO prepares drink.] I implore the audience to intervene, but they are actually demanding an escalation of my debasement!

IMPRESARIO: Really?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Like sexcrazed savages they heckle my rapists with requests for specific acts of obscenity.

IMPRESARIO: Incredible—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Their behavior can only be explained in terms of my having a nightmare, until I realize they are not the real audience but actors impersonating the onstage audience in the cantina of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia?—whose very reason for being is to encourage the humiliation of The Waylaid Housewife. But while this explains the inhuman behavior of the onstage audience, it does not explain the acquiescence of the other audience—the one actually attending The Che Play. Even in simulation such degrading acts are never tolerated; unless they take place on the stage of some sleazy South American cantina where, now and then, the gullible wife of some "thrillseeking turista" is enticed into becoming the "live victim" of that bizarre sacrificial rite known as The Passion Play of The Pampas—

IMPRESARIO: But you—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Of course! That is precisely the nature of the problem I face now! Such is The Waylaid Housewife’s predicament in To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? that the audience perceives my degradation as being enacted within its pornographic parameters!

IMPRESARIO: [Offering her another cigarette and light which she accepts.] Still, one would think so flagrant a violation of the law would have the effect of—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: You’re forgetting—the question of the audience’s failure to be outraged by the "criminality" of my debasement is complicated by the paradoxical legal status of plays like To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? under the Obscene Ideas Act; in accordance with: "An obscene act performed for the socially redemptive purpose of justifying the need for the Obscene Ideas Act" is (as I understand it) itself exempted from prosecution by the terms of the law whose necessity it seeks to prove!

IMPRESARIO: Quite so—quite so!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: And from my experiences with Theo I know trying to solve that paradox leads one into so many more paradoxes the mind simply surrenders to a kind of enthralled detachment.

IMPRESARIO: Still, for a woman in your desperate situation such a psychological phenomenon might—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: It did! My preoccupation with just such a proliferation of paradoxes kept me from losing my mind!!!

IMPRESARIO: So in that sense, while they may have brutalized you physically—in the final analysis it was you who triumphed over their desired to drive you mad!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Yes! In the end it is they who are exhausted and defeated. They do not "slaughter" me as they have threatened over and over again to do. Instead they eject me from the "stage door" and tell me the frigid wind coming from the snowcapped Andes will soon finish me off! But before that can happen I am again seized by another group of ruffians who begin manhandling me and hurling accusations of Ramon’s betrayal in my face—

IMPRESARIO: So, the guerrillas have you this time; mistakenly construing your survival as—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: "Why else," they ask, "would the authorities have released me?"

IMPRESARIO: To which you need only reply with the eloquent testimony of your bruises—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: There is no time to argue with them or plead for something to conceal my nudity from their eyes and the Andean wind. Immediately I am blindfolded and we set off on a forced march across the rugged terrain of the pampas toward their headquarters where, I am told: "Ramon himself will deal with you." To ameliorate the harsh effects of the wind, the march and my near-nudity, I concentrate my mind on that magical phrase—"Ramon himself will deal with me!"

IMPRESARIO: Confident that Ramon who, from your reading of The Che Play, you know is in reality Ernesto Guevara, will, with his "luminescent intelligence," instantly appreciate your situation for what it truly is: not treachery but a tragical farce?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: That’s what I think—or begin to think; before thinking how absurd it is of me to even think such a thought. After all, Che is in Bolivia, and I am in Pasadena! Although it seems incredible that I am being paraded through the main street of a major suburban metropolis blindfolded and all but stark naked without arousing some reaction on the part of its citizens—

IMPRESARIO: Yet similarly bizarre episodes have been reported now and then—as with the widely witnessed mutilation and murder of Kitty Genovese; not to mention the moral paralysis of all Germany when confronted with the unfolding horrors of the holocaust. It was Freud, I believe, who first put his finger on—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: The Artificial Actuality Effect—that syndrome by which we react like a theatrical audience to the authentic atrocities committed before our eyes!

IMPRESARIO: Consequently—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: It is not unreasonable for me to construct the scenario in which I am being paraded down Colorado Boulevard in my birthday suit by a squad of Marxist guerrillas while from their windows and doorways the citizens of Pasadena gaze dispassionately at my plight!

IMPRESARIO: Perhaps they think they are watching one of those outdoor spectacles we ourselves recently employed to publicize The Importance of Being, Ernest?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Meditatively.] Perhaps—but there is still something about this scenario that bothers me—

IMPRESARIO: Some flaw which, upon reflection becomes—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: There is the nagging fact that, beneath the soles of my high heels, I do not feel the pavement of a city street—

IMPRESARIO: Ah!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: I seem instead to be making my way across the lunarlike terrain—

IMPRESARIO: —of the Andean Altiplano!!!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: And there is the desolating effect of the wind—it seems to be telling me that by some consummate irony I have actually been transported on the wings of my theatergoing decision to the bleak landscape of Che’s Bolivian Anabasis.

IMPRESARIO: [After brief pause.] How do you react to such a nightmarish—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: But before I can fully grasp the nightmarish implications of that scenario, another more frightening possibility occurs to me: Was my expulsion from the "stage door" a real event, or an imaginary one signifying my capitulation to the unendurable horrors of all the torture, rape and brow beating I have undergone?

IMPRESARIO: Are you saying that in spite of your heroic—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: That "stage door" might represent the threshold of my sanity—across which I have been catapulted by the not so depraved intentions of my tormentors!!!

IMPRESARIO: In which case—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: The abduction scenario can be interpreted as a way of rationalizing my betrayal of Ramon’s whereabouts to those who seek his annihilation!!!!!

IMPRESARIO: So; while in the abduction scenario it is you who are being led to Che’s secret headquarters, in reality you are providing the authorities with the information they seek from Tania concerning Ramon’s hideout in The Passion Play of The Pampas!!!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Uncertainly.]—yes—

IMPRESARIO: But does that scenario really make sense when you have no idea where Ramon is hiding? Even your familiarity with the plot of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? would not necessarily—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: No—but during my collegiate days I researched rather extensively into the mysterious circumstances of Che Guevara’s Bolivian misadventure—

IMPRESARIO: As a coed then, you were attracted by his charismatic machismo—perhaps even to the extent of fantasizing yourself as his Nordic sexslave, Tania?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: All of that was years before I met Theo, of course—

IMPRESARIO: But my point is: were you actually to be interrogated you could in fact reveal the location of Che’s secret headquarters as being not in the Quebrada del Yuro but in the backstage dressingroom of the cantina where, night after night, posing as Ramon he prepares himself to perform in The Passion Play of The Pampas!!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Yes! But only if I were actually interrogated—

IMPRESARIO: Scenariowise , however, is it significant whether you are actually tortured, interrogated and raped?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Now that you mention it, I suppose it isn’t—

IMPRESARIO: In any event, you proceed with your "insanity" train of thought until—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: No.

IMPRESARIO: No?

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Barely do I begin building my insanity scenario when the forced march ends in a ravine and I find myself being tortured and raped by yet another group of interrogators!

IMPRESARIO: This time, however, you are being tortured, raped and interrogated by the insurgents rather than the counterinsurgents!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: What difference does that make when, if anything, their treatment of me is even more barbaric and depraved!

IMPRESARIO: Nevertheless somehow you manage to survive their "barbaric depravities"—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: I can’t remember—the next thing I know my blindfold is being removed outside the stage door as one of the guerrillas tells me that I am now about to be cast in the role of a double agent by misinforming my counterinsurgency interrogators that Ramon can be found hiding in a place known as the Quebrada del Yuro. At which point, having whispered the crudest kind of obscenities in my ear while defiling my body with his hands, he shoves me through the stage door whereupon—

IMPRESARIO: you fell into the safe, snug harbor of my embrace!!!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: Yes—but I’m still not sure exactly where that leaves me!

IMPRESARIO: [Looking at watch.] High and dry, I’m afraid. While your story was not uninteresting we are skating on the perilously thin ice of our audience’s limited attention span. You simply can’t remain sitting here—

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: And I can’t leave looking like this!

IMPRESARIO: [Reaching for ornate phone which is part of study set.] Perhaps I can arrange—[Into phone.] —Please inform the wardrobe mistress that I—

Before he can finish WARDROBE MISTRESS ENTERS via portal.

WARDROBE MISTRESS: Why in Christ’s name are you bothering me at a time like this!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: [Cringing against IMPRESARIO.] My God! It’s her! The Ladies’ Room Attendant!

WARDROBE MISTRESS: What’s that bitch howling about now?

IMPRESARIO: She thinks you are responsible for the shape she’s in.

WARDROBE MISTRESS: By the looks of her she hasn’t missed a meal in her entire life!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: A person is more than just the sum of what they’ve eaten—

WARDROBE MISTRESS: Or what they haven’t eaten, gringa! [To IMPRESARIO.] Is that why you called me out here? To argue the dialectics of metabolism! Or is this another of your slimy stratagems to slander my good name—

IMPRESARIO: Exactly what name is that?

WARDROBE MISTRESS: You mealymouthed motherfucker—I’m not taking any more of your showbusiness shit! [Pulls automatic pistol from under skirts.]

IMPRESARIO: Have you gone mad? [Rises to protest.]

WARDROBE MISTRESS: One more move loudmouth and you’ll be walking straight into a .45 caliber vasectomy!

IMPRESARIO: That’s only a prop pistol loaded with blanks—

WARDROBE MISTRESS: Are you willing to bet your cojones on that assumption, amigo?

IMPRESARIO: [Sotto voce.] There’s a paying audience out there, fool!

WARDROBE MISTRESS: I know all about the audience—[At footlights.] I suppose they’ve been telling you all about how I, "poor old Anna," betrayed him—[Indicating Che with pistol.] God’s own gift to the downtrodden—for a lousy 30 Bolivianas? Well, my finefeathered gringo friends, in the first place let it be understood that 30 Bolivianas are not to be sneezed at! Certainly not by a woman in my position with 27 mouths to feed! That’s right—27 of us living under one roof, if you can call that tin sieve a roof! 27 human beings huddled within four walls—if you can call those slabs of cowshit and straw, walls! And by the time I get home tonight—if you can call that pig sty a home, and if I am lucky enough to get from this hellhole to that one—it will be a miracle if my daughter-in-law, that slut, hasn’t delivered yet another Bolivian into this world!

      Not that I’m blaming the poor girl for having a womb. In my own case, I was only nine when some tin miner sowed the seed of my destruction in that innocent little furrow of mine. Little did I realize the fire in his eyes was not for me but for the fatally flawed insurrection he was planning to organize at the tin mines the next morning. So, there I was, a pregnant 9-year-old widow, not 8 hours into my honeymoon!

     After him came the ornithologist whose "eternal adoration" for me lasted an entire weekend; the movie producer from La Paz who turned out to be a bus driver on a 10 minute stopover on the run from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz; the escaped rapist I hid under my skirts while squatting on the pampas scrounging for wild spuds; the pilot-playwright whose mailplane just happened to crash land while I was bathing in a stream one morning—although I have no regrets about Antoine.

     No—he warned me our affair would be short lived; that our "brief interlude" would last only as long as it took to repair his bent propeller. Yes, I was content to reflect the luminescence of his brilliant Gallic mind for the three days it took to fix his bent prop—[Turning, to CHE:] When that goon squad dragged me into the quebrada and I first saw your saintly face, it was really his—Tony’s—charismatic machismo to which I fell victim again, with such tragic consequences!

     Go ahead handsome, tell them; tell them how you seduced me into betraying you! You, who begged me to claim those 30 pieces of silver by telling the authorities where you were hiding! And, when I did what you wanted me to do—what was the result for Old Anna, your little "Bolivian Mother Courage?" While you became a folk hero, I will have to bear the burden of your martyrdom for the rest of my miserable life! Yes! I became cast as "the villainess whose insatiable greed mortgaged South America’s hopes of economic paradise for 30 pieces of silver!" But as always, you just sit there like a sphinx—you rotten deceiving prick!!! [To audience.] Well, I have the proof—the undeniable evidence of my altruism right here, next to my heart!!!!! [From within blouse she produces leather pouch, and out of it pours into her hand 30 silver coins.] Here’s the "blood money" I got! You see? I never spent those coins! All this time I’ve been waiting for a chance to fling them in your face!!! [About to hurl coins at Che she is interrupted by:]

BEST FRIEND: Wait!

WARDROBE MISTRESS: [Turning.] What the—

BEST FRIEND: [Rising from table he shares with WIFE.] I believe you! Those coins are the irrefutable proof of your altruistic motives. I’m prepared to write you a check for 60 Bolivianas in exchange for them—

WARDROBE MISTRESS: A check—

ANCHOR WOMAN: [Rising from table she shares with ANCHOR MAN.] I will give you 120 in cash!

WARDROBE MISTRESS: I don’t understand—

BEST FRIEND: [Offering card across footlights of cantina stage.] My card, madam. I am Alexy Zhigalov, Official Hagiographer of the Lenin Institute, Moscow—

ANCHOR WOMAN: My credentials madam—[Offering document across footlights.] As you can see, I am the Chief Hagiographer for the Proletarian Pantheon of Mexico City—

BEST FRIEND: Mexico City! Do I hear the echo of Trotsky’s death rattle! Madam, you cannot permit such a precious relic of mainstream bolshevism to fall into the clutches of these revisionist charlatans!

ANCHOR WOMAN: Since Guevara’s apotheosis was inspired by the struggle for international social justice, that blood money belongs with Lev Bronstein’s saintly remains—

WARDROBE MISTRESS: Still calling it "his apotheosis" and "my blood money" eh?

BEST FRIEND: If you’re suspicious of my check I have a 100 ruble banknote.

ANCHOR WOMAN: Worthless Soviet paper! And what good are his rubles in Bolivia anyway? I have 10 solid gold Mexican dollars—

BEST FRIEND: The Mexicans don’t coin dollars!

ANCHOR MAN: [Rising from table and offering framed diploma to WARDROBE MISTRESS.] My diploma from Harvard Law School, madam! If I can presume to suggest the services of a skilled attorney for these delicate negotiations—

WIFE: I assure you that Signor Portavoz is a juridical gentleman in the truest sense of the word. His efforts to erase the obscenities scrawled across my good name by a certain Italian playwright have been extremely ardent—which is not to suggest he has ever taken advantage of our attorney-client relationship—and by "relationship" I certainly don’t mean to create the impression that the chemistry of my seductive charms and his charismatic machismo has ever gone—

ANCHOR MAN: I suggest we adjourn these proceedings and continue them in my suite at the (name of hotel near performance venue). [Extends hand to help WARDROBE MISTRESS from cantina stage.]

WARDROBE MISTRESS: [To ANCHOR MAN.] You can’t blame me for being suspicious—

ANCHOR MAN: Certainly not!

WARDROBE MISTRESS: [As she ‘falls’ into ANCHOR MAN’s embrace.] Expensive ring you’re wearing—everything about you exudes an aura of success! Even your aftershave lotion speaks to me of a prosperity that could prove to be contagious!

ANCHOR MAN: [Laughing while escorting WARDROBE MISTRESS from main stage.] How charmingly put! I can see your life of grinding poverty on the pampas has not pulverized your wit!

They chat intimately as BEST FRIEND and ANCHOR WOMAN follow, jostling for priority in ‘entourage.’ WIFE is last to leave, calmly collecting her things and pausing to face CHE just before her exit.

WIFE: [To CHE.] So long—sucker. [EXIT. ]

IMPRESARIO: [Mopping brow.] Thank God that’s over. [Checking watch.] I don’t mind telling you I thought our chronological goose was nearly cooked!

WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE: But what about me? I am left exactly where I was before that "creature" came on!

IMPRESARIO: Ah—

ORNITHOLOGIST: [Rising, with back to audience.] Excuse me, but perhaps I can be of some help. Although for obvious reasons I can’t reveal my true identity—as an ornithologist myself who is not unfamiliar with the brilliant contributions made by this lady’s husband to the study of the South American Fire Bird, I am obliged to offer her my assistance in these rather awkward circumstances—

IMPRESARIO: [Prompting.] Therefore—

ORNITHOLOGIST: Therefore—I—I—am—quite willing to share my table with her until—at some appropriate moment—when the audience is distracted by the action on stage—we can discreetly—vanish from their sight.

IMPRESARIO: A brilliant plan!

IMPRESARIO takes WAYLAID HOUSEWIFE by hand and leads her off cantina stage left where she is received by ORNITHOLOGIST. As they seat themselves main stage left, IMPRESARIO picks up phone and, checking watch, says to himself:

IMPRESARIO: Now if we can just make up those few extra seconds that scene consumed we will be back on the track! [Into phone.] Send the principals on stage at once!

WIFE, EXECUTIONER, BEST FRIEND and FEMME FATALE ENTER immediately via portal in various stages of preperformance dress and makeup—all carrying scripts. While entering they help themselves to liquor and cigars before sitting on loveseats flanking Che’s Hot Seat. During this business following dialogue occurs:

IMPRESARIO [To audience in declamatory style:] At long last, the principal characters decide to make their grand entrance!

WIFE: At long last?

BEST FRIEND: We entered immediately—

FEMME FATALE: We came on as soon as it was humanly possible—

EXECUTIONER: If not sooner!

IMPRESARIO: A precious 10 minutes have been irretrievably lost!

BEST FRIEND: You mean ten seconds, don’t you?

IMPRESARIO: The Waylaid Housewife Scene can not be played in less than ten minutes.

WIFE: What are you talking about—

FEMME FATALE: There is no "Waylaid Housewife Scene" in this play—

EXECUTIONER: As always, you’re confusing this play with the other one—

BEST FRIEND: The play on which this play is based—

IMPRESARIO: Quiet! I’m thinking! [Pacing at footlights; to himself:] The problem is this: We’re running 10 minutes behind in a play that is only 15 minutes long. Consequently—[Pause.] On the other hand—[Pause.] 10 from 15 leaves 5; and 10 divided by 2 is also 5; therefore—[Pause.] That’s it! By combining the scene in which the cast discuss among themselves last night’s disastrous performance, and the scene in which the characters critique this afternoon’s catastrophic dress rehearsal, we can kill two birds with the same stone—thereby making up for the time wasted in the scene between the Waylaid Housewife and the Wardrobe Mistress!

WIFE: Does that mean we’re cutting the scene we were just preparing ourselves to play?

FEMME FATALE: Or the scene following that scene?

IMPRESARIO: What difference does it make when, for all practical purposes, those two scenes are identical? Even our author concedes the distinction between them is so slight as to be almost nearly nonexistent.

BEST FRIEND: Do you want me to start with the line: "I thought this afternoon’s dress rehearsal went rather well"—or the line: "I thought last night’s performance went rather well?"

IMPRESARIO: I said it doesn’t matter! The choice is yours since the outcome of those two scenes hardly differs in any significant degree.

BEST FRIEND: Maybe not in any significant degree—but still, there is a difference—

IMPRESARIO: Good God man, what are you trying to make from this simplest of choices!

BEST FRIEND: Alright. I’ve made my mind up. [Clears throat.] "I thought last night’s performance went rather well."

All actors ‘act’ hereafter:

WIFE: With the single exception of that slight ambiguity at the very end, it was flawless.

IMPRESARIO: But in the theater can one ever justify even the slightest ambiguity at the end of a performance? A play either culminates unambiguously or it does not—and if it does not, the entire edifice we have been building from the curtain’s rise collapses like a house of cards—leaving the audience frustrated at times to the point of taking our climax into their own hands!

EXECUTIONER: You’re exaggerating the ramifications of last night’s little fracas—

WIFE: Even more importantly, your assumptions about what an audience really wants are defective—

BEST FRIEND: If anything lured this crowd here it was the very prospect of seeing a repeat performance of what you describe as last night’s "fiasco"—

FEMME FATALE: They love seeing us do this improvisational highwire act sans safety net!

WIFE: Hoping to see us falter and then plunge into oblivion!

EXECUTIONER: If it’s an unambiguous ending they want, why didn’t they stay home with their boob tubes?

IMPRESARIO: The fact of the matter is—

WIFE: The fact of the matter is your obsessive concern with the unambiguous climax is rooted not only in your sexual anxieties, but in the fatally flawed predicate that playgoing is an act of intellectual cowardice—

FEMME FATALE: When actually no cultural decision could be more heroic!

BEST FRIEND: The theatergoer launches himself into the night air lusting for danger!

EXECUTIONER: Yearning to be mystified—

WIFE: Astonished—

FEMME FATALE: Enthralled!

IMPRESARIO: And perhaps to incinerate the theater if at the final curtain we leave him or her feeling cheated!

WIFE: But doesn’t life itself cheat us all in the end?

IMPRESARIO: That is why the purpose of art is to find the meaning of life, not the nonmeaning of nonlife—

FEMME FATALE: But what if the meaning of life turns out to be its meaninglessness?

EXECUTIONER: In the final analysis aren’t we all faced with the paradox paralyzing Ernest—namely; how does one choose between the perilous absurdity of procrastination and the certain disaster of acting without having first thoroughly analyzed the consequences thereof?

BEST FRIEND: Which leads us back to the problem of whether the ambiguity of an action arises from an erroneous analysis or a lack of assiduity.

IMPRESARIO: Nevertheless, as artistes, we must always distinguish between the appearance of ambiguity and the actual ambiguousness of a performance like last night’s.

FEMME FATALE: I suppose you’re talking about that moment just before the final curtain when Ernest must decide to Bolivia or not to oblivia (sic)—

IMPRESARIO: Exactly! On that point even the faintest reek of uncertainty would be fatal for us, audiencewise.

EXECUTIONER: As to if he deliberately chooses to oblivia (sic) or not to Bolivia?

IMPRESARIO: Not necessarily—it is the question of whether he makes any choice at all that must be made crystal clear.

WIFE: [Bitterly.] Can there be any doubt about that with me left as a widow and his children turned into orphans!!!!

IMPRESARIO: That’s not fair! After all; you behave like a widow while Ernest is still pondering the importance of his being!

WIFE: You can’t blame me for that!

BEST FRIEND: It’s not her fault if she knows, as we all do, what Ernest’s Bolivian fate will turn out to be—

IMPRESARIO: Yes it is her fault! None of these ambiguities would ever surface if only you would all stick to your scripts!

FEMME FATALE: But that’s just the trouble. Our script itself is ambiguous when, right at the climactic moment, it tells us to "fashion our own finale"—

IMPRESARIO: Ah, but does it really do that? What do we actually find when we turn to the last page of the final scene—at that moment when the dialogue deserts you just a heartbeat from the terminal crescendo?

PRINCIPALS turn to designated page in scripts; responding to IMPRESARIO’s questions thereafter as if in acting class.

FEMME FATALE: We find the author’s asterisk—

IMPRESARIO: The author’s asterisk! And what does that tiny mark make us do?

WIFE: It directs us to the footnote at the bottom of the page—

IMPRESARIO: Which in turn—

BEST FRIEND: Commands us to become familiar with Appendix XXXIX before trying to improvise our own ending.

IMPRESARIO: And, turning to the aforementioned Appendix, we behold?

EXECUTIONER: A facsimile of Professor Proteus’ pen and ink essay on "The Categorical Imperatives Of The Dramaturgical Denouement"—

IMPRESARIO: Which our playwright has parenthetically subtitled?

WIFE: "The Blitzkrieg Phenomenon"—

IMPRESARIO: Better known in modern theatrical parlance as?

FEMME FATALE: "The Thunderclap Factor."

IMPRESARIO: For the reason that?

EXECUTIONER: Just as a thunderclap follows from a lightning bolt, so too must the dramatic denouement arise from the scenes preceding it.

IMPRESARIO: Hence the Aesthetic Axiom?

BEST FRIEND: "It is fatally erroneous for a dramatist to dictate the terms of the denouement to the characters of his play."

IMPRESARIO: The corollary of which is?

WIFE: "If the actors sublimate themselves to the playwright’s will until that preclimactic moment when he leaves them to their own devices, they will nevertheless enact the denouement exactly as he would have had them enact it"—

IMPRESARIO: Unless?

EXECUTIONER: "Unless the playwright himself has failed to sufficiently imbue his work with the dynamics of climactic inevitability."

IMPRESARIO: Consequently there can be but two explanations for last night’s fiasco: (1) The author was unable to generate the high voltages needed for a theatrical thunderstorm, or; (2) The enslavement of the actors to their dramatist’s dictatorial desires was not total. However, since we know The Importance of Being, Ernest is universally known as its unknown author’s masterpiece, we can hardly lay the blame for your onstage ambivalence at his doorstep—

EXECUTIONER: Except that the term "masterpiece" is itself ambivalent—especially when applied posthumously to the neglected work of an anonymous playwright—

BEST FRIEND: One man’s L’Oiseau de feu is another man’s cooked goose!

IMPRESARIO: Gott in himmel! We are not going to doubt our author’s credentials as a theatrical mastermind at this stage of the game, are we!

WIFE: Why not?

FEMME FATALE: How can we be expected to "enthrall ourselves" to the willpower of a deceased nonentity?

IMPRESARIO: It should be sufficient for you to know that only a towering intellect could have conceived such a tour de force!

BEST FRIEND: But there have been rumors—

EXECUTIONER: Persistent rumors—

FEMME FATALE: Disturbing rumors—

WIFE: —to the effect that you are our author!

IMPRESARIO: [Coyly.] Oh? Is that so?

WIFE: Naturally we find the idea that you might be the one who is manipulating us profoundly disconcerting—

FEMME FATALE: We’d hate to think our abject enslavement satisfies some sadistic masterplan of yours—

IMPRESARIO: Don’t be silly. I too am only playing a part. Doesn’t our author describe The Impresario as a "ruthless totalitarian with the procrustean instincts of a typical Master-of-Ceremonies?" If I am convincing in that role it is only because I have indeed sublimated my private persona completely to someone else’s dramaturgical desires.

WIFE: It isn’t your public portrayal of The Impresario that disturbs us!

FEMME FATALE: It’s the similarity between your off stage persona and this other character—Karl Emmanuel Schwank—we find so ominous.

IMPRESARIO: But Schwank isn’t a "character" in the play. He never actually appears on the stage—

EXECUTIONER: A fact that only enhances the sinister implications of his ghostly omnipresence—

FEMME FATALE: Like the voluptuary who orchestrates an orgy only to gratify himself in private behind a trick mirror—

WIFE: Or, even more insidiously, actually enters the mise en scene masquerading as one of his own victims!

BEST FRIEND: But not so completely disguised his co-"victims" don’t suspect he might be the mystery man masterminding their fate!

EXECUTIONER: As the Dramaturg of Dachau did by disguising himself as an inmate of his own concentration camp!

IMPRESARIO: Yes, but our author makes no secret about the evil omnipresence of that arch pornographer Schwank—or that Schwank might well have been Dachau’s infamous Dramaturg! And, if indeed he has linked himself to that demonic impresario by way of Schwank’s Teutonic accent, for instance, might that not signify his concession to the seminal influence of Schwank’s concentration camp experiments on his own dramaturgical approach to Ernesto’s decisional constipation?

WIFE: We aren’t so concerned with the linkage of our author to the Dramaturg of Dachau by the anachronism of his Bolivian Impresario’s Teutonic patois, as we are by the way your offstage accent connects you to him—

IMPRESARIO: Ah but my offstage speech is not the North German of Karl Emmanuel Schwank—it is closer to the southern Danish dialect of Otto Beorn!

EXECUTIONER: To us it sounds more northerly than southerly—

IMPRESARIO: It is your ignorance of the complex linguistic history of my native Schleswig/Holstein that prevents you from discerning the dominant Scandinavian flavor in my—

WIFE: We know all about that theory—after all, Schwank also disavows his Teutonic origin—

IMPRESARIO: Not very convincingly, however!

BEST FRIEND: And there is the coincidental enigma of your survival as an inmate of the death camp at Dachau—

IMPRESARIO: As I’ve told you repeatedly—no one survived Dachau. We who were liberated left as only the husks of what we once were before entering that charnel house—

FEMME FATALE: Still, you came out wearing the same skin—

IMPRESARIO: [Pushing sleeve up to reveal numbers tattooed on arm.] Is this the skin you mean? Statistically, numerically; yes, in that sense I was the same!

WIFE: Isn’t it logical then, since you and the Dramaturg were at Dachau together his identity should be no mystery to you?

Lights slowly dim on Principals as IMPRESARIO fully exploits his solo spot. On screen we see file footage of concentration camps.

IMPRESARIO: Logical, you say? What has logic to do with Dachau; unless it is the upsidedown logic of a lunatic asylum! Dachau was a pavilion of empty sound and fury—a nightmarish theater upon whose stage was thrust whole cattlecars full of amateur actors to strut or fret their brief scene in a whirlwind pastiche of Walpurgisnacht, il Purgatorio and Circus Maximus! [Miming following narrative at mainstage footlights—which should suddenly flare.] There you were! Your skull shaved, your face bleached white with delousing powder—holding up your pajama bottoms with one hand while with the other you shielded your eyes from the klieg lights. A blind and befouled jackanapes struggling to recall your lines from some Gothic extravaganza undreamt of in your erstwhile repertory of crowd scenes! Then, from that void out there comes the sound of one woman’s laughter—hysterical and dripping with bloodlust. She confirms your worst fears! You are giving the performance of your life—auditioning for your very survival! So, gladiator, the time has come to act as you have never acted before! But what part will you play for the lady with the lascivious laugh? The page is blank, the slate is clean, and the cupboard of your skull couldn’t be barer! Already your fellow actors who freeze with fear are being hauled away like human logs into the ominous void backstage. The stench of burning corpses fouls the air and cold terror stabs at your heart as real as any SS dagger! You clutch your throat, your heart, your soul—you emulate that painting by Munch to express the horror you feel—and the lady with the lascivious laugh laughs again!

     Is that what she is really after? To see an exhibition of genuine stage fright? Alright, you will give her what she wants! You show her how you tremble—how you quake at death’s doorstep; with what fanatical tenacity you cling to the rim of life’s abyss with just your fingernails! You cower, cringe, cry like a crocodile, claw your cheeks and tear at your nonexistent hair! Oh, that brings a burst of applause from the entire audience! Now the specter of death appalls you, sends you reeling, staggering, pratfalling! Torrents of primeval noise vomit from the depths of your innermost being! Howls, gagging, shrieks and whimpering—enough to set the teeth of the gods on edge! And they like it; they’re lapping it up—you are doing fine, gladiator! [Takes several mock bows.] And now, while you’ve got them eating out of your hand, you reach into your bag of theatrical tricks and give them a Grand Finale they won’t forget! [Turns back to audience; drops pants, exposing naked behind. BLACKOUT. Following scene is shown on screen (or played live by IMPRESARIO, BEST FRIEND and FEMME FATALE on main stage).] So gladiator, you have survived the first call—but how long can you keep your pecker up? Already it is the next night and the madness engulfs you again! This time you find yourself sporting a showerkommando’s cap and surrounded by naked "actresses" imploring you to spare them from the dreaded dousing they have been scheduled to receive in the gas chamber off stage. They beseech you with offers of lifelong love, sexual enslavement, immediate gratification of your wildest peacetime fantasies! Or, if they lack the looks they show you stock certificates, real estate deeds, diamonds; most of them still moist and fragrant from the orifices in which they have been hidden for just such a desperate occasion! If they have neither beauty nor gelt, they plead their "intangible" assets. This one is a concert violinist, that one a budding poetess; here is one with nothing to plead but her motherhood! It’s a fantastic theatrical opportunity—as your feelings of compassion, avarice and lust are all stimulated by this sea of unclothed femininity! But the power you hold is paradoxical. If you save any of them it will be your neck in the noose. As a Showerkommando your tyranny extends only to the enforcement of Sanitary Regulations!!!

     Still, the needle of your fate quivers between the magnetic polarities of death and desire! If only cheating were possible! But the authorities are watching every move you make through their ubiquitous peepholes; and the audience itself is focused on your dilemma: they are curious to see if your Showerkommando will do his duty as they do theirs when, day after day, they submerge themselves in the Fuehrer’s oceanic mystique. [Saluting.] Heil Hitler! [Raising arm still higher, pointing.] See what is written above the Master Control Valve? "No Exceptions Can Be Made!" Yes, kamaraden, it breaks your heart, your back, your cojones; but one must do one’s duty!!!!

     Besides, aren’t all of your "victims" only actresses—sirens singing you onto the rocks of ruination? Isn’t it a question of their seductive skins pitted against your survival instinct? And what proof is there that when you turn this valve it will be Zyklon-B raining down on them and not the cleansing water promised by the Ministry of Health? And is not this valve itself probably a theatrical prop fastened to a fake bulkhead? Still, when the signal sounds—[We hear klaxon, or Impresario himself imitates the horrific noise.]—you pause for just a moment, as if the issue were still in doubt, and then you shove them all in—until the airtight door slides shut with its ominous rumbling; and you reach up to turn that "prop" valve!!! [He pauses in this act, turns to face audience, emitting an anguished sound as he turns ‘valve.’]

     The dreaded deed is done! [Acknowledges ‘applause’ by bowing repeatedly from waist as:] And you realize then—it doesn’t matter what the hissing noise signifies—whether it is water or gas or only a sound effect. It is the gesture of turning that valve which damns you! You did what you did believing the worst was possible! So, gladiator, even if your "victims" turn out to be actors who, like yourself, have survived another audition, you have committed your first atrocity!!!!!! [Sits on chair. In filmed version he will sit on Hot Seat of schoolroom set as Che will later do in Act Three.] After getting your feet wet in the "shower room" of Dachau, your acting career becomes a blur of theatrical triumphs; ranging from premeditated infanticide to accidental genocide. And then one night the sense of impending climax invades your precurtain consciousness. Perhaps it is that thumping noise in the distance—[We hear tympanilike sound of artillery.]—sounding like the heartbeat of some hideous monster.

     And your audience seems strangely subdued this evening; as if chastened by the impending onset of their twilight—these gods and goddesses of the Third Reich. The ambience is almost religious as Dachau is enveloped by the mist of pagan supernaturalism—[Brightening.] But how flattering it is, gladiator, that you should be the stellar attraction for all these celebrities in their final hour! And how characteristically German of them to spend the dawning of their Gotterdaemmerung at a "cultural" event! Only the guest of honor himself is missing; our glorious leader; that charismatic postcardpainter from whose brow sprang those beguiling blitzkriegs of yesteryear! It’s understandable he’s not here tonight, of course—considering his pathological fear of theatergoing!!! Even a Fuehrer must be permitted his eccentricities, his foibles, his streak of intellectual yellow!

     But his female alterego is sitting here front row center; her exposed bosom heaving with expectations of seeing you—the arch victim of her tyrannical paramour, contrive some final, triumphant, rolereversing scheme that might turn our triangulated love affair upsidedown and snatch her from a doom nine hundred and eighty-eight years too soon! But now the curtains open, and you are discovered in your pajamas, sitting on a plain chair on a barren stage, waiting for the mysterious mastermind’s magnum opus to become manifest—

The following narrative should be illustrated on screen with silent film of its pseudo-operatic performance.

IMPRESARIO: The action begins with the entrance of a particularly gruesomelooking character—an aristocratic Wehrmacht Officer who is tormented by a dream in which he alone atones for Germany’s World War II sins with a unilateral act of postmortem procreation performed on the corpse of a pogromized Jewish Princess. [He refers to Count Klaus von Stauffenberg (played by EXECUTIONER) who enters operatic stage as a Teutonic KNIGHT dressed in suit of armor and carrying the corpse of Anne Frank (played by FEMME FATALE). In a baneful Wagnerian aria he sings of his redemptive vision—his wandering through a ruined Reich searching for that dead Jewess in whose virginal womb his seed will magically resurrect the millions of murdered untermenschen who, as if from some "terrible dream," will awaken to find themselves in the bosomy embrace of an old fashioned German granny! Ah, how sweet it will be, he ariaizes: "In that new European Eden when lambs and lions laze beneath fleecy clouds of postwar manna!"

     Now he goes on and on about questing for that mythic vagina in the necropolitan garbage dumps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Buchenwald and Auschwitz—until one day, just before he discovers the mortal coil of his Jewish Princess in the hellhole of Belsen-Bergen, cruel fate intervenes in the form of a failed attempt to assassinate the antiChrist, leaving our hero with only a gory void in the cleft between his legs where once grew that proud root of Teutonic redemption!

During foregoing we have seen footage of failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July, 1944; including trial of Stauffenberg’s co-conspirators, and Stauffenberg himself being arrested with corpse of Anne Frank in his arms as he lifts her from mass grave. There are shots of convicted plotters hanging from meat hooks; an SS Officer firing point blank into Stauffenberg’s groin, producing genital pulp and a spreading blood stain that magically transforms Stauffenberg into a Teutonic Knight. In this state all of his previous war wounds (missing eye, most of one hand) are miraculously erased—but for the crimson stigmata at his groin.

IMPRESARIO: And now, carrying his cadaverous bride he must find some surrogate to administer the nuptial rite his own heroism has made it impossible for him to perform! Once again he sets off across the desolated landscape of his war-torn fatherland, but nowhere in all of Germany is there one man so mad or morbid as to copulate with a corpse like hers—except—Ah ha!—except the one who sits upon the stage at Dachau!!!!!

Whether or not foregoing has been played live, having arrived at this point IMPRESARIOwill be sitting on CHE’s lap on Hot Seat. KNIGHT ENTERS carrying corpse of Anne Frank which he deposits at IMPRESARIO’s feet, where she reposes with hands crossed on her breast—hands in which she holds her diary.

KNIGHT: [Still very much a Wagnerian character, but anachronistically producing Luger from within his suit of armor.] Now is the time to act, knave! Either you do it or you die! [Pause, then sotto voce, actor-to-actor.] What the hell are you doing?

IMPRESARIO: Thinking.

KNIGHT: What?

IMPRESARIO: Mulling over my options—analyzing the diverse factors involved in this obnoxious proposition of yours—the dialectical possibilities—the moral implications—the—

KNIGHT: How can there be any "moral implications" for you when I am threatening to blow your brains out unless you fuck her?

IMPRESARIO: Isn’t there always a "gun" being held to one’s head when one is pondering these "fatal decisions?" So, that Luger you are now pressing against my skull is not altogether unexpected. Besides, it wouldn’t surprise me if, should you pull that trigger, a little red flag saying "Bang" doesn’t pop out of the damned thing!

KNIGHT: [Through clenched teeth.] Are you mad? This is Dachau and we are both expendable!

IMPRESARIO: It wouldn’t be the first time an actor was "executed" on this stage with a water pistol or a rubber dagger—

KNIGHT: Believe me, tonight we are playing with real bullets!

IMPRESARIO: A man in my circumstances must compare the dignity of an heroic death with the ignominy of surviving his failed martyrdom—

KNIGHT: There is no need for dying or dishonor if you will just do what must be done!

IMPRESARIO: Ah—and just what is it that must be done? I keep forgetting.

KNIGHT: You fall, fool, you fall!

IMPRESARIO: Fall on my elbows and knees you mean, like some fornicating beast? Physically fall—or metaphysically fall. In the sense that a failure to fall can be construed as the capitulation of my survival instinct?

KNIGHT: It doesn’t matter! You just fall and the curtains close before your falling can be fully finalized—with the result that the audience never really knows (or cares!) what kind of goddamned fall it is!

IMPRESARIO: Unless the idiot who works the curtain miscues, leaving me belly-to-belly and face-to-face with it—with her. [Gazing at corpse.] Who is she, anyway? I don’t recognize her number.

KNIGHT: No one in particular—

IMPRESARIO: Why is she wearing that mask?

KNIGHT: It’s supposed to be "symbolic"—

IMPRESARIO: Symbolic!!! Of what?

KNIGHT: Who knows; the faces of all the faceless holocaust victims?

IMPRESARIO: [Relieved.] Oh. [Suddenly apprehensive.] And what about that book she’s clutching? It’s not a Bible, is it!!!

KNIGHT: What difference does it make?

IMPRESARIO: I’m not entirely sure; but it might bear looking into.

KNIGHT: [Wearily.] My God, why can’t you just—

IMPRESARIO: It’s not The Diary of Anne Frank, is it!!!!

KNIGHT: How the hell should I know? It’s probably just another of those schoolgirl’s notebooks filled with adolescent angst that keep turning up here.

IMPRESARIO: I’d like to read it—

KNIGHT: Now!!!!!!

IMPRESARIO: I have the right to read it before making my mind up—

KNIGHT: What "rights" have we got? Besides, there isn’t time for anything like that—

IMPRESARIO: We can make the time—

KNIGHT: It’s impossible to "make" time!

IMPRESARIO: Aren’t we doing just that right now?

KNIGHT: Yes, but we shouldn’t be; we should be getting on with the bloody climax of our act!

IMPRESARIO: The climax will take care of itself. The damned thing is supposed to be "inexorable" isn’t it? I thought our job was to hold it off as long as we can—"To expand that magical moment of penultimacy when all of our options are, or seem to be, still operable."

KNIGHT: The audience won’t sit still for much more of this—

IMPRESARIO: Yes they will. They’re loving every one of these splitseconds we spend "struggling to escape the inescapable!"

KNIGHT: There are limits to even their sadistic proclivities.

IMPRESARIO: We’ve got a long way to go before they’re fed up. Remember how Jesus kept that crowd of doubting Jewish Thomases captivated for nearly four long hours while all he did was hang there on his cross?

KNIGHT: You’re not comparing our performance here in Dachau with that of Christ’s at Calvary are you!

IMPRESARIO: What else can an actor in my situation do but aspire to His supreme example of preclimactic prolongation? There he was, faced with the insoluble problem of being damned if he did, and dead if he didn’t!

KNIGHT: I’m not sure I follow that; Damned if he did what?

IMPRESARIO: If he recanted his messianic aspirations he would outlive the crucifix alright, but he’d never survive the shame of his fiascoed attempt at auto-apotheosis—and if he stuck with his scenario of selfsacrifice it would be curtains for him and his career as a crusader. So, what does he do? In the first place he expands the evanescence of that crucial moment on the cross to the absolute breaking point, while wracking his brain for some stratagem of salvation. Then, when the mob starts demanding proof of his immortality or its money back, he gives them that famous one liner: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"—which so astounds his audience with its doctrinal ambiguity they are momentarily unmindful of their "we want our bloody money back" mood. And before they can gather their wits, someone announces that —owing to certain unforeseen circumstances—they will have to wait another three days if they want to see the resurrection they have been waiting all afternoon to witness! Now, if only we could find the same kind of epistemological loophole through which to vanish and leave the world mystified for 2,000 years!

KNIGHT: I’m warning you, I can’t wait any longer. This is it!

IMPRESARIO: Maybe you’re right—the time to act has finally arrived.

KNIGHT: You mean it?

IMPRESARIO: Yes.

KNIGHT: No tricks now. I’ve just about decided to start pulling this trigger!

IMPRESARIO: And I’ve just about decided if it’s better to do or to die—[Pause.]

KNIGHT: Well?!!

IMPRESARIO: [As if constipated.] I’m—on the verge—tottering on the brink—poised on the very threshold—a split second from the fatal choice—it’s coming—COM-ING! [Pause.]

KNIGHT: Is that it then? You’ve decided to sit there and die?

IMPRESARIO: Not quite. A third possibility has just occurred to me—

KNIGHT: Damn you, there are only two possibilities: you either do it or you die!

IMPRESARIO: Exactly what I thought until just now, when I asked myself what the effect would be if, perchance, you and I "happened" to arrive at our fatal decisions simultaneously—at the same time, that is: which is to say that if you decide to fire just as I decide to fall—could the result be any more epistemologically ambiguous?

KNIGHT: The odds on that happening are astronomical!

IMPRESARIO: Astronomical maybe, but nevertheless possible—and in a situation like ours, every possibility deserves at least a cursory analysis. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, doesn’t our predicament remind you of that old vaudeville routine wherein Alphonse and Gaston enter from opposite sides of a stage laden with packages—approaching each other on what seems to be a collision course?

KNIGHT: We’re not bloody vaudevillians! For one of us this could be a matter of real life or death!

IMPRESARIO: Even so, there is a certain flavor of comic absurdity in our dialectical toing and froing; as when Alphonse and Gaston, both sensing the imminence of their collision, simultaneously sidestep each other—but in the wrong direction! Which is to say that: while Alphonse moves to his right, Gaston moves to his left—with the unintended and absurd result that they are again headed for disaster. Whereupon each of them once again repeats the erroneous maneuver, but this time in the opposite direction with the identically ridiculous and counterproductive result; and so on and so forth until, in the middle of the stage, they crash together with the most calamitous consequences; as if, despite all of their machinations to the contrary, they were destined to collide. You see what I’m getting at?

KNIGHT: It’s obvious. You’re stalling for time again!!!!!!

IMPRESARIO: Perhaps—perhaps; but in so doing another thought has just entered my mind. There is a fourth possibility!

KNIGHT: Now you’re really forcing my hand!

IMPRESARIO: Believe me, this could truly be the loophole we’ve been looking for! I really think we can we get out of this bind we’re in by making it appear as if your firing and my falling occurred within the same split second!

KNIGHT: You’re back to the Alphonse and Gaston gambit—

IMPRESARIO: Not really. Although they seem to be the same there is a significant distinction between my third and fourth possibilities. While the audience might perceive our climax in those Alphonse and Gaston terms we just discussed—what actually happens is this: After you pull the trigger and before the bullet leaves the Luger’s muzzle, I will begin falling forward so your slug passes harmlessly behind my head—

KNIGHT: The plan is for you to fall forward after I fire!!!!!

IMPRESARIO: It’s not as tricky as it sounds. If you squeeze the trigger instead of jerking it, I should have just enough time to coordinate my evasive maneuver with the sound of the hammer striking the firing pin—

KNIGHT: You’re seriously proposing to take your cue from the sound of the hammer striking the firing pin?!

IMPRESARIO: You’d be amazed what can be heard when an instrument of death is placed against your temple! That loaded Luger of yours looms like some gigantic engine of doom; its internal parts groaning like the machinery of a monstrous juggernaut. Even as we speak I can detect the stressing and straining of its components to free themselves from the intolerable tension of remaining cocked. In such a supersensitive state my auditory faculties should be able to monitor the sequential operation of the triggering mechanism, to wit: (1) As your finger slowly squeezes the trigger itself; (2) The hammer release pawl is forced to turn on its pivot until; (3) It frees the hammer to fall against; (4) The base of the firing pin which; (5) Is launched through the breechblock to; (6) Strike the cartridgecase primer cap, thereby; (7) Detonating the primer cap, which; (8) Ignites the propellant charge causing; (9) The propulsion chamber in the cartridge case to pressurize with expanding gasses until; (10) The slug itself is hurled on its flight through the barrel, whereupon; (11) It emerges from the muzzle with sufficient velocity at point blank range to literally blow one’s brains from one’s skull. Upon this analysis it is apparent that: No less than six separate and distinct events must occur between the hammer striking the firing pin and the emergence of a lethal projectile from the muzzle—allowing me just enough time to make my evasive maneuver.

KNIGHT: Only the madness of a condemned man makes you think one can actually dodge a speeding bullet—

IMPRESARIO: Of course it’s the plan of a madman—but if it works? If we can somehow manage to pull it off, think of what we will have proved!!!

KNIGHT: Frankly I can’t remember what the hell it is we are trying to prove!

IMPRESARIO: What Christ proved at Calvary and Otto Beorn did at Elsinore—that, in the evanescent transition from preclimax to climax, an actor can sometimes escape the otherwise certain consequences of a fatal decision that fate, in the guise of a demented dramaturg, has thrust upon him. In practical terms it means we might have the opportunity of cheating this crowd of demigods and goddesses out of the orgasmic ecstasy they have been waiting to achieve at our expense!

KNIGHT: Not so loud, they’ll hear you!

IMPRESARIO: I doubt it. Right now they are being distracted by the increasing din of their own doom!

Sound of distant artillery has in fact been growing throughout the scene until now it approaches crescendo proportions with the rattle of small arms fire, grenade bursts and dive bombing all combining with Wagner’s Gotterdaemmerung music.

IMPRESARIO: But if that isn’t the case, fine! Let them hear how we are conspiring to cheat them! That’s the essence of theater, is it not—to let the audience know they aren’t any better off than we, the actors are, when it comes to being victimized by some superior intellect? Don’t you see, amigo, it is we who have them by the cojones now!

     Hey, you out there—Luminaries of the Thousand-year Reich! Listen up all you architects of the New Order! Hear what is being said by those you think are about to do what you would have them do or die! We are planning to turn the tables on our tormentors and teach them a trick or two about tyranny! Did you really think it would be so simple? That by just sitting there this living nightmare of yours would somehow have a happy ending? That by my act of falling (with all its atrocious implications) your sins would be miraculously expiated? Isn’t that what you and your dramaturg are hoping to prove at Dachau—that the will to live surpasses all other considerations of good and evil? That by forcing me to fulfill this idiot’s redemptive fornication fantasy everything you did in the name of blind obedience will be justified? Well, the time has come! Let us see what happens when every aspect of this fascinating problem has been fully analyzed! Don’t blink your eyes or let the noise of your approaching doom distract you as we now attempt to perform that rarest of all theatrical tricks: The Epistemological Vanishing Act!

Lights on cantina stage fade to black as battle sounds and Wagnerian music crescendo. During this hiatus KNIGHT and ANNE FRANK/FEMME FATALE EXIT or conceal themselves under cantina stage while IMPRESARIOremains sitting on CHE’s lap, holding a finger to his (Che’s) temple as if it were a gun. When all of this has been established lights flare to sudden brilliance on cantina stage.

WIFE: [After pause.] Well?

BEST FRIEND: What happened?

EXECUTIONER: Did he pull the trigger?

FEMME FATALE: Did you really dodge that bullet?

IMPRESARIO: [Rising from Che’s lap.] Incredible as it seems, the gods themselves intervened just at that sublime moment of truth masquerading as a battalion of U.S. cavalry. Yes! Dachau was liberated! Our audience was engulfed by the purest kind of panic—and there was I, face-to-face with a smiling G.I.—coaxing me back to life with a Hershey bar!

On screen we have been seeing newsreel of concentration camp liberation, ending with fictitious Hershey bar scene described by Impresario. Groans of disappointment are directed by PRINCIPALS at IMPRESARIO.

WIFE: Would you mind at least telling us what the point of all that was supposed to be?

IMPRESARIO: The point? My dear woman, I have just expressed to all of you the hitherto inexpressible meaning of The Holocaust with a dazzling display of actorial virtuosity—and you want to know what the point of it all was!!! [Phone rings, he answers it.] Yes? You’re certain? No. We heard nothing. [Hangs up and comes downstage to address audience.] Ladies and gentlemen I have just received the most amazing and terrible news. The Pasadena Playhouse is no more. It was destroyed by a cataclysmic explosion only moments ago; perhaps at that exact instant when the Gotterdaemmerung sound effect of our dramatic detour through Dachau reached its own explosive crescendo. What can one say in the aftermath of such a tragedy; when one’s fellow actors and theatergoers have really been blown to bits in the midst of what was supposed to be an evening of makebelieve danger? But, since we remain committed to the principle that every show must go on, the management of the Cafe Interlewd will—after a brief intermission—present Act Three of To Bolivia Or Not To Bolivia? in its unexpurgated entirety—not only as a memorial to all those who perished on its account, but as a benefaction for you who have survived only to find yourselves cheated by the premature demise of your drama!

Curtains close. Houselights come up.

End Act Two

Act Three     Return to Index