Valparaiso A Play in Two Acts

From Act One Michael MajeskiLivia MajeskiDelfina TreadwellTeddy HodellThe InterviewersThe Camera CrewThe ChorusTwo actors, one male, one female, play all the Interviewers in Act One.The three members of the Camera Crew double as Chorus.Act OneLiving room of the Majeski house. A large uncluttered space, bare-walled except for a large TV set in a wall unit upstage. The room is largely achromatic but not stylishly so. It is a representation of a living room, more or less anyone's.In several scenes a sector of this playing area functions as office space or as interview space in a broadcast studio.Scene 1The living room in half-light. Livia sits on an exercise bike, facing downstage. She looks into the middle distance, pedaling steadily.Lights slowly down.There is a deep pulse of image and sound. A videotape is projected on the back wall and adjacent furniture. It shows a single image, a high-angle shot of a man in a tightly confined space. There is a plastic bag on his head, fastened about the neck. He is seated, a forearm braced against the wall to either side of him. The plastic is thick and frosted, obscuring the man's features.The tape is crude and marked by visual static. A digital display is inset in a lower corner of the tape. It records the hour and minute, the fleeting seconds and tenths of seconds.Livia rides her bike, visible in the flickering light.After the tape has run for twelve seconds, there is an interval of agitation caused either by an unsteady camera or some larger disturbance.The sound throughout is intense and electronic, a synthesized roaring wind.Slowly the man on the tape raises his head toward the camera. The shaking becomes more pronounced and the tape abruptly ends.The projection lasts twenty seconds. Livia is barely visible, pedaling. Then darkness. Copyright copy; 1999 by Don DeLilloDeLillo, Don is the author of 'Valparaiso A Play in Two Acts', published 2000 under ISBN 9780684865683 and ISBN 0684865688.