Carta abierta de Richard Stack

(publicada el 7-jun-2005 en j-joyce@lists.utha.edu)

Dear Joyceans Everywhere,

To wish you all a Happy Bloomsday I am making my Molly play (described below) available to any Joyceans who might like to use it to celebrate Bloomsday and don't have anything much else already lined up. Just write to me at richardstack2002@yahoo.com and I will send it right off. All you must promise to do is to give me a report of how it went off. 

I recommend a concert peformance (i.e. reading from a music stand) rather than any fully theatrical performance. We had a wrapped-up sleeping figure on one side on the floor to represent Poldy, a flower in a glass to represent Boylan on the other, a pitcher and glass to do the sound-effects for Molly's epic menstrual piss, and some bells for George's clock. A was sitting in the middle, B (the sentimentalist) on stage right, and C on stage left. It is a dense, plotless text and, though very funny, it comes too thick and fast to allow time for much laughter. It was well received when we first put it onin Charleston, Jeff Skoblow has put it on very successfully in St Louis/Edwardsville, and it has also been played in Buenos Aires, and, I think Tim may have put it on in New Zealand (translated into Maori, no doubt). Perhaps elsewhere. 

I know it's very late to be doing this, but I couldn't find a digital copy until Tim kindly sent me one from New Zealand. In any case, I don't think it would take more than two or three (highly enjoyable!) rehearsals to get it into reasonably good shape, provided the performers were fairly hip. Although some folks at the peformance in Charleston didn't realize that it had been cut, in fact a couple of hours have gone, leaving about an hour and a half, which we figured was about what an audience could take on with pleasure. I played the part of A - indeed one of my motivations for doing the whole thing was because I wanted the chance to say onstage "of course a man couldnt know...". It was not a drag performance, and it was certainly greatly enhanced by my elderly self being flanked with two very beautiful young women! I would, in fact, encourage a man to play the part of A. (in the play, Molly is divided into three "characters": sentimental, superstitious Molly; angry, vindictive, sexy Molly; and Old Female Wisdom (my part!). 

One virtue of the play is that it puts paid to the inevitably sentimentalized business of the yes yes ending, if taken alone, as it usually is. In fact, my two young (unmarried) fellow actors were both agreed that Molly should leave Bloom, despite all my assurances that she would not! 

What follows is the introduction, which could also serve as a program note. Note that it was performed on Mollyday!

yours,

Richard Stack

Molly An Arrangement for three voices of the final chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses

As performed in Charleston, S.C., June 17th 1999 

For the Millenial Joyce Conference

Arranged by Richard Stack

Original cast: Luisa Battista, Lesley Scammell,

Richard Stack

Director: Bill Coyle

PREFATORY NOTE

This playtext is the result of a joyful yearlong collaboration between the three performers and director mentioned on the title page. The performance which resulted was a recital of the text, given for the Joyceans assembled at Charleston for a "Millennial" Joyce conference. In some respects a recital format suits a text as dense as this. In any case, we are confident that the text is as polished and finished as several hundred hours of focussed work can make it. The play, however, still awaits a full dramatic production. A word about the principles involved in this arrangement. No words are spoken which are not in the original. It has been cut, for length and for comprehension, from three and a half hours to an hour and a half. However Joyce's text remains intact; no local cuts for our own convenience have been made. 

Since it a play without a plot for the audience to hang onto, we thought that an hour and a half was the outside maximum. The resulting play focusses on the main characters with whom Molly's ruminations are concerned: her somewhat wayward Odyssean husband, Leopold Bloom (whom she calls "Poldy"); "Blazes" Boylan, the cad who has, with astonishing manly vigour, made her his mistress this very day; Harry Mulvey, the sweetheart of her girlhood in Gibraltar, and possibly her one true love; Hester, a girlfriend from the same period as Mulvey; Josie, a possible rival for Bloom's affections, both before her marriage and, she thinks, possibly now; Gardner, her only other adult lover, a British army officer subsequently killed in the Boer War, and Stephen Dedalus, the brilliant and precocious young poet whom her husband has rescued and brought home with him, but who has refused, inexplicably, the offer of a bed for the rest of the night. 

Those familiar with the chapter may regret the disappearance of certain minor characters, such as Molly Driscoll, the maid who Bloom may have attempted to seduce, or Dr Collins, the gynecologist. For those who would like to see exactly what has been cut, I have included, as an appendix, the complete text of the chapter with the parts cut marked in red italics. My footnotes are aimed at the actor attempting to understand the lines. Anyone wishing a full annotation may refer to Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated (University of California Press), the standard reference work on the book. 

The playtext is taken, with his generous permission, from the magisterial edition of Professor John Kidd, an edition which uses as copytext the original Paris (Shakespeare and Co) edition of 1922. 

Finally, it may be a cause of some surprise to see a male name (mine, in the part of "A") as one of the actors. I didn't play the part in drag; I just took it to be a human text available to any human actor or audience. At the beginning of the play, Bloom has gone off to sleep after offering his wife a diplomatically edited version of his day's doings, and Molly is left alone with her thoughts. Knowing him to be, like his famous Greek (or was he really a semitic trader ? a Phoenician?) avatar, a born liar, she worries....