A Piece of Monologue

Background >

Setting The stage directions make no mention of the 'blank wall' (or window) that the character says he 'stands facing.' It will be through the character's imagination that we perceive such a metaphorical 'wall' of his memories.

With only a 'faint diffuse light' permeating the stage darkness, the character gropes around to light his standard lamp, and though 'thirty seconds before end of speech lamplight begins to fail' the character remains, physically, 'barely visible.' Though the dark stage has to

be functionally lit by the standard lamp, there exists for the character a 'further dark' and always that other 'faint diffuse light' which comes from 'whence unknown' because there can be 'no such thing as no light.' The lighting of the lamp can pierce the physical dark but it is the other images of light and dark that the narration confronts.