Fifty-One: Interrogare redux

[Office of Literary Agent.]

AGENT    I’m sorry, but the play just doesn’t work.

AUTHOR    Why not? This is my most important work, Andrea; you liked the other pieces. What’s wrong with this one?

AGENT    Well, it just doesn’t work as a play. It’s like watching paint dry, or having to sit through “My Dinner with Andre” for the fifth time.

AUTHOR    Well, I liked that movie. I am not sure I could sit through it five times, but I have done it three, at least.

AGENT    But this is like a political dialogue, a lot of talking, about Empire and things people don’t care about anymore. And there’s no dramatic action.

AUTHOR    What do you mean? The protagonist gets hanged, and the antagonist is arrested for exposing himself. What more do you need?

AGENT    Well, that would be fine, but they happen at the end, and the build up has nothing dramatic.

AUTHOR    There’s an interrogation of a major historical figure. Isn’t that dramatic?

AGENT    It’s like you and me sitting here chatting; it doesn’t feel like an interrogation.

AUTHOR    Well, I admit the stakes have been raised by Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, and so what we used to think of as dramatic, no longer seems so any more. But, that’s history, these were all gentlemen; they addressed each other in a civil manner, even if the stakes were still great.

AGENT    But, that’s another thing about it. Nobody knows or cares about some obscure Irishman executed during the First World War. It isn’t important history.

AUTHOR    You are so wrong about that. Just because no one knows about it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t important.

AGENT    Well, even if I am wrong, the fact that no one in your audience will have a clue about the significance of what is going on will just mean that they won’t fill the seats.

AUTHOR    This is a play about Ireland. I could just go onto any street in Dublin or Belfast and read the text aloud and I would get an audience.

AGENT    But we aren’t in Dublin. And American audiences don’t know this stuff; they need a kick in the pants to help them digest their history – particularly when it isn’t something that they had spoon fed to them in their high schools.

AUTHOR    But there are a lot of Irish Americans, and even more German Americans. Don’t you think they would be interested in knowing how the British manipulated American society and how they shaped American history? The outcome of this story largely determines the cesspool that the twentieth century would become.

AGENT    Really? I certainly didn’t see that.

AUTHOR    Well it is true nonetheless. If the British hadn’t been able to neutralize Casement, it would have been very difficult for the Americans to support the British in the way that they did. What Thomson does in my play – along with everything else he was doing at the time – essentially wins the war for Britain. This was the most unpopular war ever fought by the Americans, so if Casement had been able to promote an Irish position in opposition to it, Woodrow Wilson would have been in a jam. You know he was the president, right?

AGENT    Don’t get snarky. I still don’t think it works as a play.

AUTHOR    Look, I have some people workshopping it nearby. Could you at least come to see them work over the next couple of days? It may help you to see that the play is more interesting and dramatic, than you think.

AGENT    If I must. I am not confident about its prospects at all.