Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays is copyright © 2007 by Richard Foreman
Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty!, Maria del Bosco (A Sound Opera: Sex and Racing Cars), Bad Behavior, Panic! (How to Be Happy!) and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe! are copyright © 2007 by Richard Foreman
Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Gregor Hall, Bookport International, 2104 Albemarle Terrace, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11226.
All photographs are by Paula Court, except those taken for Bad Behavior, which are by Steven Gunther.
This publication is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 1045 Westgate Dr., St. Paul, MN 55114.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foreman, Richard.
Bad boy Nietzsche and other plays / Richard Foreman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN 978-1-55936-824-7
I. Title.
PS3556.O7225B34 2007
812’.54—dc22
2007015452
Cover and book design and composition by Lisa Govan
Cover photo by Paula Court
First Edition, October 2007
Contents
NOW THAT COMMUNISM IS DEAD MY LIFE FEELS EMPTY!
MARIA DEL BOSCO (A Sound Opera: Sex and Racing Cars)
BAD BEHAVIOR
PANIC! (How to Be Happy!)
KING COWBOY RUFUS RULES THE UNIVERSE!
As I do with all my published texts, I urge anyone who stages one of these plays in the future to ignore the elaborate stage directions printed in this book, which provide a historical record of my own productions of each play.
I suggest that each director re-conceive these texts and create a staging that elaborates on his or her own private vision of whatever world these texts seem to suggest.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
Bad Boy Nietzsche! Produced by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at the Ontological at St. Mark’s Theater, New York City. January–April 2000. Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman.
| NIETZSCHE | Gary Wilmes |
| THE CHILD | Sarah Louise Lilley |
| THE DANGEROUS MAN | Kevin Hurley |
| THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN | Juliana Francis Kelly |
| SCHOLARS | Brian Bickerstaff, Marc Lesser, David Lloyd Rabig, Josh Stark |
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The perspective offered by this play—about a philosopher who preached “perspectivism”—is from within the seeds of his own madness, which we choose to hypothesize as having been present not only in later years, when he flew to embrace a horse being beaten on the streets of Turino, but also in healthier years (and may we all productively touch such hidden madness!), fueling the fire of his epoch-shattering philosophy and, in effect, turning everything provocatively upside down (as if he were walking upside down on the other side of the world—in China—as this play fantasizes!).
Nietzsche himself was a kind and gentle man, celibate most of his life, who turned against his friend Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism and, during crucial years, worshipped a wise and powerful woman who esteemed him above all others, while refusing to add him to her long list of lovers. The following lines, included in the play, are taken from Nietzsche’s poems and letters—doodles on the margins of his philosophy—which nevertheless reveal secret fears and obsessions:
My dear friend. After you discover me, you find me. The difficulty is now to lose me.
The divine art is flying—to great heights, from which one throws what is oppressive into the ocean, into the depths of the ocean.
I write on table, write on wall / with foolish heart a foolish scrawl. / You say—the hands of fools deface the table and the wall / erase it all! / I try to help the best I can / I wield a sponge, as you recall / but when the cleaning up is done / let’s see this super sage emit / upon the walls, sagacious shit!
The one thing necessary / is to keep pen in motion, over the paper. / The pen scribbles? / I say to hell with that. / And I say no / to belief systems of all kinds. / Am I condemned to scrawl? / Boldly I dip it into the well / and with thick strokes / my writing flows / so full and broad / So what if it’s illegible / Who reads the stuff I write?
Oh why is she so clever now, and so refined? / On her account a man’s now out of his mind. / His head was good before he took this whirl. / He lost his head to the aforesaid girl!
—I do not love my neighbor near / but wish he / were high up and far away. / How else could he become my guiding star?
—Lest your happiness oppress us / cloak yourself in devilish tresses / Devilish wit and devilish dresses, / all in vain! Her eyes express / her angelic saintliness.
Was I ill? Have I got well? But those are well who have forgotten!
The stage is a large dark room, with faded painted targets covering the walls like wallpaper. In addition, skulls and pillows are tacked up on the walls as decorative motifs. All over the painted walls runs scrawled, illegible writing, in chalk—as if a deteriorating Nietzsche had allowed his scribbling to escape from his notebooks and cover the walls as his feverishly productive mind overpowered his self-control.
Half of the rear wall of the room is missing, replaced by a series of vertical planes lined up one behind the other, each succeeding plane getting higher as they recede into the distance, all painted a reflective black, as if they were the planes of a stylized black ocean. Above