Vieux Carre Read Free

rented an attic room in the late thirties, not as it will be designed, or realized for the stage.
    It is a three-story building. There are a pair of alcoves, facing Toulouse Street. These alcove cubicles are separated by plywood, which provides a minimal separation (spatially) between the writer (myself those many years ago) and an older painter, a terribly wasted man, dying of tuberculosis, but fiercely denying this circumstance to himself.
    A curved staircase ascends from the rear of a dark narrow passageway from the street entrance to the kitchen area. From there it ascends to the third floor, or gabled attic with its mansard roof.
    A narrow hall separates the gabled cubicles from the studio (with skylight) which is occupied by Jane and Tye.
    Obviously the elevations of these acting areas can be only suggested by a few shallow steps: a realistic setting is impossible, and the solution lies mainly in very skillful lighting and minimal furnishings.

PART ONE
    SCENE ONE
    WRITER [
spotlighted downstage
]: Once this house was alive, it was occupied once. In my recollection it still is but by shadowy occupants like ghosts. Now they enter the lighter areas of my memory.
    [
Fade in dimly visible characters of the play, turning about in a stylized manner. The spotlight fades on the writer and is brought up on Mrs. Wire, who assumes her active character in the play
.]
    MRS. WIRE : Nursie! Nursie— where’s my pillows?
    [
Nursie is spotlighted on a slightly higher level, looking up fearfully at something. She screams
.]
    Hey, what the hell is going on in there!
    NURSIE [
running down in a sort of football crouch
]: A bat, a bat’s in the kitchen!
    MRS. WIRE : Bat? I never seen a bat nowhere on these premises, Nursie.
    NURSIE : Why, Mizz Wire, I swear it was a bull bat up there in the kitchen. You tell me no bats, why, they’s a pack of bats that hang upside down from that ole banana tree in the courtyard from dark till daybreak, when they all scream at once and fly up like a— explosion of— damned souls out of a graveyard.
    MRS. WIRE : If such a thing was true—
    NURSIE : As God’s word is true!
    MRS. WIRE : I repeat, if such a thing was true— which it isn’t— an’ you go tawkin’ about it with you big black mouth, why it could ruin the reputation of this rooming house which is the only respectable rooming house in the Quarter. Now where’s my pillows, Nursie?
    NURSIE [sotto voce
as she arranges the pallet
]: Shit . . .
    MRS. WIRE : What you say?
    NURSIE : I said shoot . . . faw shit. You’d see they’re on the cot if you had a light bulb in this hall. [
She is making up the cot
.] What you got against light? First thing God said on the first day of creation was, “Let there be light.”
    MRS. WIRE : You hear him say that?
    NURSIE : You never read the scriptures.
    MRS. WIRE : Why should I bother to read ’em with you quotin’ ’em to me like a female preacher. Book say this, say that, makes me sick of the book. Where’s my flashlight, Nursie?
    NURSIE : ’Sunder the pillows. [
She stumbles on a heavy knapsack
.] Lawd! What that there?
    MRS. WIRE : Some crazy young man come here wantin’ a room. I told him I had no vacancies for Bourbon Street bums. He dropped that sack on the floor and said he’d pick it up tomorrow, which he won’t unless he pays fifty cents for storage . . .
    NURSIE : It’s got something written on it that shines in the dark.
    MRS. WIRE : “Sky”— say that’s his name. Carry it on upstairs with you, Nursie.
    NURSIE : Mizz Wire, I cain’t hardly get myself up them steps no more, you know that.
    MRS. WIRE : Shoot.
    NURSIE : Mizz Wire, I think I oughta inform you I’m thinkin’ of retirin’.
    MRS. WIRE :
Retirin’
to what, Nursie? The banana tree in the courtyard with the bats you got in your head?
    NURSIE : They’s lots of folks my age, black an’