Gilroy 1

Emily N. Gilroy
ENG-2040 Intro to Drama
Professor John Kulikowski
25 November 2015
Two Playwrights Walk Into a Bar
A One-Act by Emily Gilroy
Characters: (In order of appearance)
Bartender (male or female)
Waiter/Waitress (male or female)
Bertolt Brecht
Luigi Pirandello
(Scene opens on empty pub. There is a bar set a bit up stage, two or three small tables spread out
across the stage *one needs to be center stage*, and a host podium set down stage left. A lone
bartender is standing behind the bar cleaning glasses or taking inventory, directors decision on
bartenders activity. A waiter/waitress walks on from stage right carrying a stack of menus,
crosses stage to the podium, and once there begins to clean and organize them. Both the
bartender and waiter appear to be the only ones there and are extremely bored. The voices of
two men can be heard from off stage right.)
BRECHT: (Offstage) Im telling you Pirandello, this place has the best subs and beer around.
(Two men, Brecht and Pirandello enter from stage right and cross to the waiter. They appear to
be in the middle of a deep conversation. Brecht is an energetic middle-aged man with glasses

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and a slightly receding hairline. Pirandello is an older gentleman with snowy white hair, a short
beard, and mustache; he appears to be more reserved and refined than his companion.)
BRECHT: (To both waiter and bartender) Good evening gentleman! (To waiter) Table for two,
my good man!
WAITER: Do you prefer table or bar seating?
BRECHT: (Turns to Pirandello) Well Pir, where would you like to sit? First-timers get to
choose!
PIRANDELLO: (To waiter) Table, please.
WAITER: Right this way, gentlemen. (Waiter grabs two menus, a pair of napkins from the
inner portion of the podium, and seats the pair to a table set up center stage)
PIRANDELLO: (To waiter) Thank you very much, sir.
(Waiter exits up stage left.)
BRECHT: (Speaking loudly; almost yelling, but not) Mr. Bartender, what have we got on tap
tonight?
BARTENDER: Well weve got just about everything, what are you in the mood for?
BRECHT: Hmm, Ill take a mug of Miller Lite.
(Moves to go fill glass of the drink and takes to Brecht, who thanks the man and beings to drink.)
BARTENDER: (Turns to Pirandello) And you sir, whats your poison?
PIRANDELLO: What kind of wines do you have?

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BRECHT: (In a mocking tone) Mr. Fancy-pants rich boy here only drinks the finest of wines.
BARTENDER: Well, we have Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in stock at the moment.
PIRANDELLO: Ill take a glass of Pinot Noir, please.
(Bartender returns to the bar to find the bottle of wine. The two gentlemen pick up where they
left off in their conversation.)
BRECHT: (He leans back in his chair and acts very nonchalant) Anyway, like I was saying
before we got here, you have really got to lighten up man. Your stuff is just outright
maddening! Youre my pal, mi amigo, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, (He
leans forward, getting very close to Pirandello and speaks very bluntly) you confuse
the living daylights out of people. You even said so yourself, in Six Characters in
Search of an Author when The Manager was having a fit, that they were [] reduced
to putting on Pirandello's works, where nobody understands anything, and where the
author plays the fool with us all (Pirandello). Nobody wants to do stuff they dont
get. When the audience cant understand what were trying to say to them, then whats
the point?
(Bartender brings wine glass over to Pirandello and walks back to the bar. He grabs a tray of
clean glasses and exits up stage left.)
PIRANDELLO: (Sipping lightly on his wine, responds a tad defensively) Ill have you know
Brecht, that there is a method behind the madness. In my opinion, [] uncertainty is
the natural condition that human beings must learn to live with (Nienhuis).

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(The two men are so engrossed in their conversation that they do not notice that the waiter has
walked up beside their table. The waiter should enter at some point in the previous two lines.)
WAITER: (Clears throat) Pardon the interruption gentlemen, but have you decided what it is
youll be having?
(Both men jump and turn to the waiter)
BRECHT: Ill have the Button-Popper sub with fries!
PIRANDELLO: Ill have a Cesar salad with balsamic vinegar dressing on the side, please.
WAITER: All right then, I will have that out shortly.
(Waiter exits up stage left.)
PIRANDELLO: Bertolt, do you remember that time when that criticoh what was their
nameCross! Clare Cross, thats it!
BRECHT: Yes, yes, what about her?
PIRANDELLO: She said that when you wrote The Good Woman of Szechwan that you []
[emphasized] the impossibility of being good if one is to survive in a corrupt world
[] (Cross). Why would you do that? What possessed you to allude to there being no
chance for anyone to be truly be a good person?
BRECHT: Thats rich coming from you, but if you really want to know, (sighs) Ill tell you. I
did it because when you get right down to it no person is truly good; everyone has
some darkness, some negativity, some secret that they dont want anyone else to
discover. Even if it isnt intentional, darkness reaches us all eventually. You brought up
The Good Woman of Szechwan, so lets talk about that. Take Shen Te, a good girl with

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a heart of gold. She couldnt find it in her to turn people away and she hated lying to
them, she was a good person at heart. One of her own guests, who praised her form
how good she was, encouraged her to lie. Ah yes, the good old Man and Woman. What
was it they saidah, I remember now! The Woman told Shen Te that [] if [she
wants] to hang on to [her] shop [shed] better be able to refuse sometimes (Brecht).
The Man proceeded to tell Shen Te to deny all claims to the shop, he told her to [say]
it belongs to relations and he insists on strict accounts (Brecht). The Woman told her
to turn away business and The Man encouraged her to invent a fake relative, how
much more deceitful can you get? Those white lies she began telling about her
cousin were what lead to her eventual demise. No matter how small or how white,
lies are lies and good people do not lie. That was the start of her descent from being
good to joining the rest of us normal folks. The same goes for any person, everybody
has lied at some point and if someone was truly good in heart and soul then they
would not deceive others. In that same direction, it is impossible not to lie about
something. It is impossible for there to be an honest to God good person in the world,
it is just not humanly possible. When you act like a good person all the time it also
leads to expectations. People will grow to expect that behavior from you with
everything. If you stray form the path, your goodness, your reputation, and essentially
everything you are is ruined.
PIRANDELLO: My, my, you certainly are pessimistic about the goodness of humanity, arent
you?
(Waiter brings out the meals. Both men thank him and begin to eat a little. Waiter exits stage left.
After waiter exits, the conversation continues.)

Gilroy 6
BRECHT: (Begins to bark out laughter) HA! Youre joking right? Well hello pot, have you met
my friend kettle?!
PIRANDELLO: (Sarcastic; not amused) Ha ha, you are absolutely hilarious. It is simply so
funny, I forgot to laugh.
BRECHT: (Defensively, almost insulted) You think IM morbid? Me? Look at you Mr. Life is
oh so pointless and the only way to win at anything is to die, you are the one who
believes that everything in life is completely pointless unless they die.
PIRANDELLO: (Huffy, most certainly offended) I will have you know that not all of my works
were about how pointless life is. (He takes a sip of wine) Take Six Characters in
search of an Author; it was more focused on the basics of artistic creation. As Ms.
Bassnet once said in her article on me, [what] [I did] in Six Characters [was]
strip the play down to its bones, offering the audience the basic tools
the Actors, the Characters, a storybut leaving the final
interpretation open. The play thus [became] an investigation of the
processes of artistic creation; it is a play about playing that uses the
device of play-making as its central, structural principle (Bassnet). I
wanted people to have a better understanding and respect for our
art. Theatre is more than just a form of entertainment, it is living art
that takes time and dedication to perfect and create. Writing these
works of art can take years to accomplish; they needed to know that
we dont just sit there and slap words down on paper and magically
have a play put together. Sometimes ideas that you have grown and

Gilroy 7
nurtured for months or even years can become completely useless
with one stray thought of What if? This play is the perfect
example of that kind of situation. These six characters have
obviously been thought out and have been given this elaborate story
line, but why do they have do place? Why do they have no author?
There could have been so many reasons why they ended up in that
state. I wanted people to respect what we do and how we do it; to
know that this is not some little game. They were losing their love
for the theatrical arts, so I wrote this to get them thinking, to get
their imaginations flowing. I didnt give them the ending they
wanted because I wanted them to make their own ending. It is much
like the ending conflict I gave the characters when the boy shoots
himself.
The Manager [pushing the ACTORS aside while THEY lift up
the BOY and carry him off.] Is he really wounded?
Some Actors. He's dead! Dead!
Other Actors. No, no, it's only make believe, it's only pretense!
The Father [with a terrible cry]. Pretense? Reality, sir, reality!
(Pirandello)
Was it reality or was it pretense? Did he die or does he live? It is the
eternal question
Bertolt!

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(During the monologue, Brecht continues to eat his meal, taking an
occasional sip of his drink.)
BRECHT: I get what you were trying to do here, but did you really have to
kill off the boy? He was only a child after all.
PIRANDELLO: (Takes a bite during previous line, finishes chewing, wipes his
mouth and speaks like he knows something the other doesnt) Did I
really kill him off? Was he even a real boy to begin with? It seems
you have more questions than answers, my friend. (Eats salad)
BRECHT: (Exasperated) Honestly, sometimes you are too much Luigi. Some
of the things you say can really make my brain hurt when its trying
to process it all at once.
PIRANDELLO: (Jokingly) I wonder what that says about you
BRECHT: (Offended) Oi! What are you trying to say?!
PIRANDELLO: (Laughing) Nothing, nothing! (Glances at watch) My goodness
would you look at the time! I really must be getting home, I
promised Antonietta that I would put the children to sleep tonight.
This has been fun Bertolt, same time next week?
BRECHT: Yup, sounds good to me! Your turn to pick where we go!
PIRANDELLO: Sounds like a plan! Dinner is on me tonight.
BRECHT: No, Ive got it!

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PIRANDELLO: No, me. I insist.
BRECHT: Whoever gets the bill first pays.
BOTH: (Yelling towards stage left) Check please!
End Scene

Gilroy 10
Works Cited
"Biography of Luigi Pirandello." The Pirandello Lyceum. N.p., 28 June 2014.
Web. 25 Nov. 2015. <http://pirandello.com/biography-of-luigipirandello/>.
Brecht, Bertolt. "The Good Person of Szechwan." Scribd. N.p., 07 Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Nov.
2015. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/115952694/The-Good-Person-of-Szechwan#scribd>.
Cross, Clare. "Overview of 'The Good Woman of Szechwan'." Drama for
Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 9. Detroit: Gale, 2000.Literature
Resource Center. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Pirandello, Luigi. "Six Characters in Search of an Author." Trans. Edward Storer. Eldritch Press,
n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.eldritchpress.org/lp/six.htm>.
Susan Bassnet, review of Six Characters in Search of an Author in
International Dictionary of Theatre 1: Plays, edited by Mark HawkinsDady, St. James Press, 1992, pp. 747- 48.
Terry R. Nienhuis, for Drama for Students, Gale, 1998.