A summer night. Bedroom. Dark. Sparsely furnished. A double bed is just discernible, and two bodies half-covered with a sheet. A large window or French window lets in the noises and the lights of the street. The dialogue will be performed like a musical piece, with its pauses and repeated words and phrases (e.g. it matters, it matters not), mainly of the verbs “say”, “understand”, “mean”, “know”. During the dialogue there will be motions and changed postures. The music is necessary, comes from a nearby apartment and keeps changing and going up and down in volume, as if someone is playing with the radio controls. As the scene opens, the man is sitting on the bed, the woman is lying with her eyes closed.

M: Are you sleeping?

W: Not yet.

M: Shall I turn the light on?

W: I don’t want any light. (Brief pause, quiet.) I am not sleepy. (Pause.)

M: (looks for her hand): Where is your hand?

W: You go to sleep.

M: (unworried): Fine. (Pause.) There is not something wrong? (Brief pause.) Is there?

W: (totally calmly): No. Nothing.

M: I don’t know. Something in your voice –

W (quietly): Don’t they look somewhat hurried as they leave?

M: Who?

(Brief pause.)

W: It doesn’t matter.

M: Doesn’t it? It does to me.

W: (always calmly): I don’t believe it.

M: (wondering): Why do you say that?

W: Shall we talk of something else?

M: Yes, but then we won’t talk about this. It matters somewhat.

W: What matters is something that evades me lately.

M: (carelessly): To me everything matters.

W: Everything?

M: (naturally): Yes, Everything. (Pause.) I don’t mean complex things, but it does matter, for instance, how you’re feeling right now.

W: I believe you.

(Pause.)

M: (trying): We didn’t have a bad time tonight.

W: (in a distracted-like voice): When?

M: Tonight. It wasn’t bad.

W: Why do you say that?

M: (simply): Why shouldn’t I say it? Isn’t it so?

W: (tiredly): So what is bad to you?

M: The same, I guess.

W: (uninterested yet puzzled): The same?

M: The same thing you mean, when you say really bad

Author: Μαρία Λαϊνά
Director: Dimitris Oikonomou
Actors: Maria Katsandri, Nikos Alexiou