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Murdered Man in Uniform Crawling Man NOTE: The composite imagery used to conjure an impression of the stage is intended only as a suggestion of what each play should look like during a performance. Not all of the details described in the stage notes are precisely or realistically reproduced by the images accompanying the plays. These images are meant to provide a visual blueprint or shorthand for the stage and the action. Stopping On One’s Ways—Stage Image  While curtain is closed, there is very loud machine gun fire together with a man screams. The machine gun noise and the screaming should last approximately thirty-seconds. They should both be uncomfortably loud. Immediately after the screaming stops, the curtain opens to reveal the man’s corpse. It is positioned at the left wing, as close as possible to the edge of the stage (an ideal stage for this piece would be one where wings/curtain edge and end of stage are close together). The head is concealed behind the curtain, remaining offstage. The man is dressed in some kind of obscure official or military uniform; nothing that can be easily recognized. A painted backdrop, depicting an expanse of desert, fills the back of the stage. At the center of this scene is a passenger car in flames. A curved and clearly paved road leads from the car (which should occupy the mid-ground of the backdrop) to the stage floor (i.e., the foreground or bottom of the backdrop). The stage is also dressed as a desert scene but there is no physical or visual connection between the road extending through the backdrop scene and the on-stage desert set. It must be clear that this “road” is terminated by the bottom of the backdrop and remains pictorially disconnected from the stage. The backdrop is flooded by harsh white spotlights. The front of the stage, the entire line of vision begun by the corpse, is kept in relief: not total shadow but enough dimness to compare distinctly with the rest of the stage. A soft white spotlight (haze as opposed to harshness), in a beam no larger than a silver dollar, blinks on and off (in intervals of five seconds), illuminating the feet of the body. The spotlight begins blinking only after the curtain is fully parted. Fifteen seconds after the blinking of the light (i.e., after it has blinked four times), a man enters from the upper right wing. He is on his hands and knees, crawling very slowly and moaning softly as he moves. His clothing is burnt and scorched, hanging from his body in shreds. After advancing several feet in this fashion, his moans become louder and more agonized, and he speaks the following words (his head remains lowered, thus he speaks facing the ground, so it must be clear that he is speaking to himself): CRAWLING MAN My wife! My children and my wife! My wife and my children are dead! Are cut up! Are dead and cut up! O this grief! My grief and my body and their bodies! I know! I know their bodies and this grief! They are gone! The flesh is ripped! Gone! Ripped! Grief! No Wife! Suzy dead! Yes! Johnny dead! Yes! Dead! Yes! Dead! Yes! He stops speaking and resumes moaning, softly, as before. Fifteen seconds after the moaning begins, he painfully and slowly raises his head, in great surprise notices the corpse, stops moaning, and with unexpected exhilaration and agility, hurriedly crawls towards the body, stopping just in front of the feet. CRAWLING MAN Sir! O Sir! I am assured that you will listen! I can assure myself that you will listen to my grief! I am assured that I finally can express my grief! O Sir! Sir! I will tell my story! You must listen! All of us: myself, my wife, and my children, we were going on vacation, we were going to be happy, on our vacation, on our vacation in the mountains, we were going to enjoy ourselves! We placed our bodies in the car, as we had done hundreds of times! There was nothing unusual about that! The car brought us to so many beautiful places, so many miles, so much beauty! O Sir, you should have seen the beauty! I drove continuously for two straight days when it started to rain and the wind blew and the road became indistinct but I continued to drive because we had placed our bodies in the car as always in order to travel many miles and see beauty and enjoy ourselves on vacation in the mountains! On the third night, a bus came racing towards us! It collided with the car! Sir! I could not avert the catastrophe! That you must understand! I could not avert the catastrophe! You must understand that! The car was swept off the highway and rolled down the entire length of a very steep hill! But I was thrown through the door and watched as the car rolled down the hill! And I was dazed as I watched the flames! The flames! The flames! My wife! My children! Their bodies were in the car and consumed by flames! In the car and ripped by the shattered glass! In the car and endlessly bleeding as if their bodies were hundreds of slowly squeezed tomatoes! Yes! Yes! I watched and my lips quivered and my face contorted into a harlequin’s mad wild smile! Yes! Yes! My face! My face! I saw! I saw! All the ripped burning flesh! All the ripped burning flesh! He stops speaking but does not resume moaning, remaining silent instead, and continuing after fifteen seconds. CRAWLING MAN I have seen no one for years. I have been gone. Away. Crawling. Away. All concerned parties assumed I was incinerated along with my family because the mass of charred flesh could not be identified. But I was not. I have been crawling. I have been away. I have been gone. I have had a terrible experience, don’t you think? Yes, it was terrible for me...for them...for me...for them...for me...for them... for me...for them... He continues repeating these phrases, less and less intelligibly, until they become a
murmur that slowly evolves into the soft moaning, as before. Now moaning, he turns around and slowly crawls towards the upper right wing. His movements are slower and more labored than during his entrance. He reaches the wing and exits, although the moaning, now faint, is still audible. Fifteen seconds after the CRAWLING MAN leaves the stage, the spotlight stops blinking, with the moaning still just barely audible. Curtain (with moaning at faintest level). Peter Dellolio was born 1956 in New York City. Went to Nazareth High School and New York University. Graduated 1978: BA Cinema Studies; BFA Film Production. Poetry, prose-poems, fiction, short plays, art work, and critical essays published in over 80 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. Poetry collections “A Box Of Crazy Toys” published 2018 by Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions; “Bloodstream Is An Illusion Of Rubies Counting Fireplaces” published February 2023 and “Roller Coasters Made Of Dream Space” published November 2023 by Cyberwit/Rochak Publishing. Chapters from his critical study of Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s Cinematic World: Shocks of Perception and the Collapse of the Rational) published in The Midwest Quarterly Literature/Film Quarterly, Kinema, Flickhead, and North Dakota Quarterly since 2006. Dramatika Press published a volume of his one-act plays in 1983. From this collection, The Seeker appeared in an issue of Collages & Bricolages and Stopping On One’s Way was recently published in Synchronized Chaos Journal. Contributing editor for NYArts Magazine, writing art and film reviews; also wrote monographs on several new artists. Co- Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of Artscape2000, a prestigious, award-winning, art e-zine. Taught poetry and art for LEAP. He is an artist himself: https://www.saatchiart.com/peterdellolio.com. His paintings and 3D works offer abstract images of famous people in all walks of life who have died tragically at a young age. He lives in Brooklyn. Comments are closed.
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