Korridorium

♫ Pathos and the Mono­logue ♫

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“I enter the cor­ri­dor from which there is no return”—these are the pow­er­ful words that begin my great stage mono­logue. I stand in front of a door that, to the audi­ence, seems to open onto a long, per­haps even end­less cor­ri­dor, I imag­ine, and I turn my head back to the other actors on the set. Then I deliver my mov­ing farewell speech, and, in the end, I make my announce­ment come true and fear­lessly enter the dark cor­ri­dor of no return, the door slams shut behind me, and that will be the last thing that can be seen of me. At least until the final applause.

The play is going to make a splash; I can feel it. Granted, the direc­tor seems to have passed his peak, and it is only a small inde­pen­dent the­ater where we per­form. But I can sense the power that the text holds and I am cer­tain tthat we will sig­nif­i­cantly shake up the cur­rent, rather staid the­ater scene.

It is noth­ing new, actu­ally: as a patch­work of text frag­ments from the The­ater of the Absurd, it brings authors such as Piran­dello, Artaud, Cocteau, Beck­ett, Ionesco, Sartre, and Camus into dia­logue with one another—a remix! To be hon­est, I still haven’t fig­ured out exactly which play and which drama­tist this mono­logue stems from. But isn’t that ulti­mately irrel­e­vant?

Finally, I’ll be back on stage! The project does not boast any stars, but relies on skilled sec­ond or third-tier actors in order to be con­vinc­ing with the force of its story. At a bois­ter­ous meet-and-greet fueled by plenty of Chablis, the direc­tor explained his vision to us. It’s not about whether the The­atre of the Absurd imi­tates the absurd or, rather, turns what it imi­tates into the absurd. No, it con­cerns the defin­i­tive myth for our era, the myth­i­cal the­ater of post­mod­ernism, and the only fit­ting depic­tion of the human con­di­tion: absur­dity itself.

On stage, I rep­re­sent all of humanity—the indi­vid­ual who crosses the point of no return. Con­fronted with a sense­less world, they know­ingly and vol­un­tar­ily choose the path of mad­ness and loss of real­ity, not with­out com­ment­ing on this with pow­er­ful, pro­foundly exis­ten­tial words that are sure to res­onate with the audi­ence. At least that is what my gut feel­ing tells me. It gives me chills just read­ing it.

“For­get me!” I shout at the end, or per­haps I’ll just whis­per it with fer­vent pas­sion: “I am lost to your world of feigned order and decency, and what is more, I am a dan­ger to the chil­dren and fools who still have eyes and ears and could dis­cover that there is a way behind the scenes you have erected, the Potemkin vil­lages, the beau­ti­ful facades and shams with which you inad­e­quately cover up and dis­guise the mael­strom of mean­ing­less­ness. Bet­ter if you just for­get me, erase me from your mem­ory and your church books, destroy every­thing that could remind you of me, deny and repress me as thor­oughly as you negate the actual essence of being. Root me out, lock, stock, and bar­rel! I am leav­ing, and there is noth­ing left that con­nects you and me. All bridges behind me are burned. Adieu!”

I believe that the “defin­i­tive myth for our era” that the direc­tor wants to bring to the stage lies in pre­cisely these words that pen­e­trate deep into the heart of human exis­tence, affect it, stir it up, and per­haps never truly let go of it again. I am proud to be allowed to embody and inhabit this role, and I can feel that this mono­logue will be the cul­mi­na­tion of my pro­fes­sional career, maybe even my life’s work.

Adden­dum: Dur­ing rehearsals for the play, the direc­tor came to the con­clu­sion that some nec­es­sary text cuts had to be made. Ulti­mately, he retained only the open­ing words of my grand mono­logue. I should, he says, incor­po­rate the rest emo­tion­ally as I exit the quite min­i­mal­ist stage setting—without a door, with­out a corridor—off to the side, with the few but mem­o­rable words “I enter the cor­ri­dor.”

Mael­strom: