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Vanya introduces himself as Uncle Vanya, noting the negative connotations of the word "uncle". He describes different archetypes at a restaurant - the schlemiel who spills soup, the schlimazel it gets spilled on, and the "schmo", an uncomfortable outsider. Vanya says he's not the schmo, but rather "Yet Another Other Guy" who isn't even at the restaurant but obsessively thinks about it. The Professor, Pickles, Sonia and Ella return from a walk, with the Professor praising Sonia's garden, though noting it's not as beautiful as the Swiss Alps.

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LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 1 LIFE SUCKS Or THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS By Aaron Posner Sort of Adapted from UNCLE VANYA by Anton Chekhov Draft 3.3 January, 2015
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 2 THE CAST Vanya—45. An ruminator. Not attractive. A smart, passionate, insightful, wound-tight failure. Sonia— 24. Kind, caring and quirky. A Good Person. Not attractive or comfortable in her body. Ella—36. Searching, frustrated, hopeful and sad. Very attractive and rampantly desirable. Babs— 64. Vibrant, but understated. Ironic. No nonsense. Good soul, scrappy wit. Savvy… The Professor—62. Big mind, big ego, big vocabulary, small soul. Selfish. Well-meaning. Dr. Aster—52. Broken, beautiful, dissatisfied, savvy and sad. He cares deeply and oddly. Pickles— 40ish. An odd, sweet duck. A relentlessly positive utopian woman. SETTING The world should be a fairly simple, flexible space with multiple areas so that more than one thing can be happening at the same time. There should be space for actors to be when they are not "on stage" or the center of attention but where they can still be (at least partially) seen. The space should feel open, practical, and yet theatrical and even Chekhovian in some way. Since the play is about Love and Longing, that could be reflected in the setting somehow. TRANSITIONS There may well be a group dance of some kind between each of the four acts. NOTES • An / indicates that the next person starts speaking there… • Two names next to each other, without a space, means these lines are simultaneous. • An option N symbol-- ˜-- means it should be tailored to the real actors…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 3 SCENES PROLOGUE Love & Longing! ACT I • ALL THE PEOPLE Scene 1.0 Work Scene 1.1 Uncle Scene 1.2 Topsy-Turvy Scene 1.3 Ridiculous Scene 1.4 3 Things I Love Scene 1.5 Dance Card Scene 1.6 Repudiate ACT II • THE MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Scene 2.0 My Wife Scene 2.1 Change! Scene 2.2 Grey Nose Hairs Scene 2.3 Pre-Abstract Scene 2.4 Lost & Drunk Scene 2.5 Oh. Hello. Scene 2.6 Friends INTERMISSION ACT III • NEEDS Scene 3.0 Incomprehensible Scene 3.1 The Gavotte Scene 3.2 A Way Scene 3.3 Don't Say A Word Scene 3.4 3 Things I Hate Scene 3.5 A Conundrum ACT IV • AFTERMATH Scene 4.0 The Gratitudes Scene 4.1 Not the Answer… Scene 4.2 Gone Scene 4.3 What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Scene 4.4 What I Want
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 4 PROLOGUE • LOVE & LONGING! [The cast comes on. They come straight down and talk to the audience…] VANYA Okay, so… SONIA Here we go! BABS [Not without irony…] More art! PICK [Alla Fantasy Island…] Look boss! The play! The play! VANYA [Already mildly annoyed by her…] C'mon, / please… ASTER So, yeah, right, well…. ELLA Thanks for coming. BABS We're the actors. And you, of course, are the audience. PICK We couldn't do this without you. I mean, think about it. Without you, we'd have a kind of… "one hand clapping" situation. VANYA I don't even know / what that PICK Or, I guess, more like NO hands clapping. I mean, without you it's like we don't / even exist VANYA [To PICKLES, gently, but seriously…] Shhhh…. ASTER Right, so... Cell phones off. Exits there and there, no photography or recording, blah blah blah. You all know these things, right? BABS And if you won't suck on hard candies which you unwrap really slowly thinking that we'll hear them less that way, then we promise that we won't either. I don't know what it is about us old Jewish ladies and our hard candies in uncannily loud wrappers, but it's… something… so, if we can just save those till intermission or after the show that would be awesome. SONIA Shakespeare calls his plays our "two hours traffic on the stage…", and while we might / not be able-- ELLA This one might be more like two hours stuck in traffic…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 5 SONIA That's not / what I was-- VANYA [Blurting, cutting her off…] Most of it is going to be about love and longing. Yep. That's right. Love. And Longing... SONIA That's not all it's about. VANYA Pretty much. So you can't say you weren’t / warned. ASTER Well, this is off to a lovely start… PROF It's also about the protean nature of the obstreperous and feckless human heart. PICK [Amazed by his pretentiousness…] Oh, wow… SONIA It's also about… not getting what you want. ELLA Yes. Or getting what you thought you wanted but then… you know… PICK Or the opposite of all that. BABS Or the inverse. PROF Or the contra positive… VANYA What does that / even mean? ASTER It's also about how disastrously, irretrievably fucked up the world is and the insanity of the choices we humans have made for the last four hundred years. SONIA Right VANYA Right. That too… BABS And about loss. [Beat] VANYA Yeah, well, so if you aren't interested in love and longing and loss… ASTER: …uhh…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 6 VANYA …and how fucked up the world is… then you may have, you know… chosen your nights entertainment badly… and you can actually leave right now if you want and you'll get a full refund for your ticket. Plus a dollar… for your trouble… PICK But thanks for coming…! VANYA Or going… BABS Oy vey… ASTER Really, Vanya? VANYA So, okay, we might as well get this fakoktah thing started… [Folks head off stage or into positions to begin…] SONIA [Back to us, in confidence…] Seriously, it's not that bad. Vanya's just... Anyway, you'll see. This is our play. It's called LIFE SUCKS or THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS. Anyway…Thanks for coming. Okay. Everyone ready? Okay, then, off we go…!
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 7 ACT I • ALL THE PEOPLE 1.0 WORK [ASTER and BABS are talking and she is quietly drinking very small glasses of vodka. Tiny glasses, but quite often. He is pacing or roaming. Restless...] ASTER You know what my problem is? Do you? BABS [She's thinking…] Ummm… ASTER You know what my fucking problem is? BABS Astound me. ASTER I work too hard. BABS Oh. ASTER I work way too fucking hard. (Sorry, Babs...) BABS (Oh, I don't care...) ASTER People are always, let's go here or let's do this or why don't you take a little break and I'm always, no no no, I can't, I can't, I've gotta work. That's what I say, constantly. "Gotta work." Like the world'll fucking end if I / don't work. BABS You swear too much. ASTER I know, I do. BABS You do. ASTER You drink too much. BABS I do, you're right, I do. ASTER We are none of us perfect. BABS You do work too much. ASTER I know!
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 8 BABS But I / don't think-- AST And to what end? I don't have a wife... or, you know... children. And even if I did, money screws kids up nine times out of eleven— [to the audience…] don't Google it, I made it up, but still... cool, sane rich kids are the total exception and we all know it. BABS Want another drink? ASTER No. I have to go. I gotta wo— Did you hear that? I just about said it. It's ridiculous! I can't stop myself. Like some absurd machine... "Gotta work. Gotta work. Gotta work. Gotta work." And do you think people in 100 years will care how hard we worked. I mean maybe a few great geniuses, an artist or two, maybe... But most of us? The normal people. Will anyone care? Not a chance. But still...! And you know what is even crazier than working so hard? BABS Enlighten me. ASTER You know what I do on those rare occasions when I'm not working. BABS You count groundhogs! Or… grouse, or…? ASTER Well, yeah, that, I do do that, but that's not crazy, that's the one sane thing I do, that's my work for the nature conservancy and... [fully realizing what she said] hey, I'm not counting grouse, I'm tracking patterns of population and-- BABS What's the crazier thing? ASTER Sorry? BABS You said you did something crazier than wasting your life working so much. So now, you know... I'm just dying to know what that could be. ASTER I work out. For hours. Sweat my ass off picking stuff up…and putting it down again. Picking it up, putting it down. Picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down… Pushing on things! And pulling on things! And running in place – for hours! There cannot be anything more ridiculous in modern life than a treadmill.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 9 You ever imagine what an alien would think if the first place they saw was a gym. Or worse, some ridiculous doctor in his own little living room just running in place for hours and not getting anywhere. Not generating energy… using it! The fucking thing has to be plugged in! [Bottom line] It costs me money to run with all my strength to get nowhere! BABS You, my friend… You, my dear, dear, dear one, you are the thing that's ridiculous. Do you even know what you're really complaining about? ASTER Ummm… [BABS looks out the window at Ella, and back at ASTER…] BABS You and Vanya both. Just ridiculous… VANYA [Entering awkwardly] And speaking of ridiculous…! Ta-da! [To ASTER and BABS] Excuse me a moment, I'm just going to … [Indicating chatting or engaging in some way with the audience…] … for a moment. Is that okay? ASTER Oh, certainly, don't mind us. We're just waiting for the troops to return from their walk… VANYA Excellent. BABS [To ASTER] 'Nother drink? ASTER Don't mind if I do… [They move elsewhere on stage for a bit…] 1.1 UNCLE VANYA Hello again. I'm Vanya. Or "Uncle Vanya" if you're either Sonia, (which none of you are…), or we went to grade school together where I wore stupid little cardigans and bow ties and was teased incessantly for my… nascent avuncular demeanor. Anyway… Sonia's my dead sister Daphne's daughter. And my roommate. Housemate. (Well, I'm her housemate, technically, since this house was left to her when darling Daphne died…). God, that's a lot of alliteration so early in the play… Anyway, Sonia's my niece. And I'm her Uncle Vanya.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 10 Such a stupid word. "Uncle". What kind of serious word starts with an "Un". Except negational Un's. Such as… Un-happy. Un-popular. Un-fortunate. [He notices how negative all those words are, considers saying something to us about it, thinks better of it…] And then there's the humiliating phrase "Say Uncle", which means, basically, "Give up". So the word itself is synonymous with admitting defeat. You can't be afraid of an Uncle. You can't want to sleep with an Uncle. You can't even really take that much notice of an Uncle. An uncle can practically be defined as He Who Can Be Summarily Dismissed. Anyway… I'm Uncle Vanya. [Beat. Surveys us for a moment. Makes a choice, jumps on in…] Okay, so there's these two guys, right… the schlemiel and the schlimazel. Do you know this? Have you heard this before? Have you? Seriously, have you? [He tries to get a response from the audience. And then controls that response… beginning to set the rules for the audience interaction to come... Either from the audience or from himself he finds his way around to here:] So, yeah, the way I always heard it was this: A schlemiel is a guy, who at a nice restaurant, would accidentally spill a bowl of soup on someone. And a schlimazel... he's the guy the soup would get spilled on. But....... there's another guy. That's right, there's this entirely other guy at the restaurant, too. He also has the soup, although—and here's the thing-- he's really wishing it was the salmon. Or a salad. Or the brisket. But he came here for the soup, and now he has the soup, and before he's even tasted it… he's already disappointed. You see, he'd heard such amazing things about the soup, after months of deliberating he'd finally just... come to the restaurant and ordered it! And now he's here, feeling absolutely certain he's made the wrong decision. Let's call him a schmo. The Uncomfortable Visitor. The Awkward Outsider. The Guy At Odds With The World. The schmo. And that guy… That's not me. Everyone thinks that's me, but it's not. There is a schmo in this play (see if you can figure out who it is. I'll call him schmo towards the end, just to see if were… you know… all on the same page…) but it's not me.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 11 But there's this other guy. This entirely other other guy-- not the schlemiel or the schlimazel or the schmo. This guy doesn't even have a a a funny and oddly descriptive Yiddish name. He's just... he's just Yet Another Other Guy. And this guy… he's not even at the fucking restaurant! No no no, he's just talking about the restaurant, thinking about the restaurant, wondering if he should've opened a restaurant, knowing he'll never open a restaurant, will never even, in all probability, go to the fucking restaurant, but will only languish forever in a tepid of soup of recrimination and self-loathing brought about by the very fact that the restaurant exists, that he could go to it or own it or order from it… and won't. Ever. Not ever. And that's me. Aren't you glad you came today? 1.2 TOPSY-TURVY [THE PROFESSOR, PICKLES, SONIA & ELLA enter from a walk] PROF It's a lovely garden now, Sonia, lovely. I mean, not astonishingly, movingly lovely like Switzerland, like those practically incandescent meadows near the base of the Tschingelhorn in the Bernese Alps, but lovely all the same… SONIA Thanks. I think… PICK It's sometimes hard to tell if you are complimenting us or insulting us… PROF [Cheerily…] Isn't it? ASTER The… shingelhorn…? PROF Tschingelhorn. With a tsch at the beginning… ASTER I've always wanted to go to Switzerland. PICK I love that name. Alps. Alps. Sounds like a… cockney puppy. [Barking it out…] Here, Alps! Alps. Alps! [Quick beat…]
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 12 PROF Ella, remember that couple we met at the Tschingelhorn? That terribly skinny Ophthalmologist with the enormous mole … ELLA …gynocologist… PROF …on his face. Oh, yes, gynecologist. Not opthamologist? ELLA No. PROF Climatologist? I feel almost sure / that he — ELLA No. I know the difference between an eye, a vagina and a hurricane. ASTER [Beat] I feel almost certain there's a joke in there somewhere… ELLA Oh. Can you find it? ASTER I'm looking… ELLA Well go on… [Prompting him…] vagina, vagina, vagina… PROF Yes, well, Gynecologist. As the poet says: Instabilis est memoriae amici. Anyway, I swear, you could not have a conversation / with this man VANYA What does that mean? PROF Sorry? VANYA What does that mean? You know none of us speak Latin, why / would— PROF "The memory is a fickle friend". It's from Virgil. VANYA Than why the hell didn't / you just say… PROF Anyway, you could NOT speak with this… person… VANYA [overlapping] …isn't language designed to communicate, not to… PROF without staring right at this incredible mole. I swear, it was not humanly possible. And he had a stutter, which I'm sure he developed in response to people staring at his… m-m-m-monolithic m-m-m-mole whenever he talked. ELLA [She's been thinking…] Maybe he was a dermatologist…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 13 PICK Oh, I've never been anywhere… PROF Well, you must go! PICK Where? PROF Anywhere! Travel! It's the only the thing! VANYA Fascinating. Yesterday you said learning was the only thing. Two nights ago at dinner you said a great meal was the only thing. How many / only things… PROF Did someone say something? I heard a buzzing… a / gnat or… a fly or a… VANYA Yes, ha ha, very funny, very witty ha ha ha… PROF Travel is enlightening. It lets you know who you are and what really matters. You can never really understand where you are until you leave. VANYA And you understand, do you? Where you are? PROF I believe I do, yes. VANYA Where the hell are you, then? No, seriously, I really want to know. Where are you? From what great height do you presume to pontificate and / lecture us PROF [Quick beat Then beating the air…] There it is again, that annoying gnat… VANYA I'm serious, we've been listening to you hold forth for / all these years and I ELLA Oh, please please please, just stop it… SONIA Uncle Vanya, please don't… VANYA All right. Down, boy, down! Heel! I musn't talk, never ever talk! [Quick beat…] BABS [Pleasantly] You've really become quite a pompous old shit, haven't you? PROF Oh, yes, yes… or so my friends are fond of telling me... BABS [A friendly, positive toss-away…] Perceptive friends.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 14 PROF [Getting a tad huffy…] All right, now, / Babs, if there's something / you want PICK Well, I thought that was a lovely walk. BABS Oh? PICK I should walk more. Just…walk… BABS Did you enjoy your walk, Ella? ELLA Oh yes. [Mildly ironic…] Spectacular. PICK You know, walk all over the land, and just… look at things… and see what's out there in the wide, wide world, you know? VANYA How is it, Pickles, that nothing you say ever… leads anywhere? You speak, I hear you, its perfectly reasonable and all, but I never have anything to say in return. And neither does anyone else. You're a conversation annihilator! PICK [Quick beat…] Well, it takes all different kinds of trees to make a forest. [Beat. Everyone just looks at everyone else…] ELLA Well, I'm going to take a nap. PROF [Pretend sotto voce] That's code for "I'm bored." ELLA It's not code. I'm bored. I'll be in bed if anyone needs me… [That image has the intended/unintended effect on the room… ASTER looks out the audience and mouths "holy shit" as she leaves…] PROF Well, back to work. See you all for dinner if I don't die in the meantime. I'll leave now so you can all talk about my wife behind her back… [He leaves…] BABS I'm gonna get back to work, too. I'll be in my studio… [She leaves…] VANYA [To SONIA] What the hell are they doing here? SONIA [Back to VANYA] I don't know VANYA How long are they staying? SONIA I have no idea.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 15 VANYA You have no idea why they're here, or… SONIA No. He just said they were coming and could they stay a bit… VANYA Oy… SONIA I'll be back soon. VANYA Where are you going? SONIA Shopping. We need something for dinner. And she needs more fizzy water. [SONIA leaves… VANYA, ASTER & PICKLES are left standing there…] 1.3 RIDICULOUS VANYA Oh my God, it's ridiculous... PICK What is? VANYA The air seems to just… leave the room with her when she goes... PICK Who, Sonia? VANYA No, you idiot… Ella. PICK Oh. Yeah… ASTER She does... draw the eye. VANYA Like a light has been turned off somewhere. [PICKLES looks around at the light a moment…] ASTER How long have they been married? VANYA Oh, God, I don’t know. Eight years. Six. Nine. I don’t know… PICKLES She isn't even really that pretty, really. I mean—she's pretty and everything… but she's not even really that pretty, you know…? ASTER She's very…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 16 PICKLES Yeah VANYA She's making me crazy. ASTER [Smiling. Clearly reaching way, way back…] Like what's her name… VANYA Who? ASTER Whatsername. Who lived on…umm… Clarke Street. VANYA Linberger? ASTER No! With the accent… and the "ducky waddle baby butt"? VANYA Claire…! (Jesus, how do you remember / what we called…) ASTER Yeah, right, Claire Carter, Jesus... PICKLES [Coming off of looking at her… and alluring, still…] Like a smoothie. VANYA What? ASTER What? PICKLES She reminds me of a smoothie. ASTER Huh. PICKLES Or an ocelot. VANYA What the hell are you talking about? PICKLES No, seriously. Like the World's Sexiest Ocelot… ASTER That’s good. That's close, I think. [Trying it…] A really sexy ocelot… VANYA Well, she's making me batshit crazy. ASTER Is she faithful? VANYA To what? ASTER To him.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 17 VANYA Why? ASTER No reason. VANYA What do you care? ASTER I don't. But is she? VANYA How should I know? It's hard to imagine, though. I mean… look at him! PICK What about him? VANYA He's awful! So absurdly… self-obsessed. Like the rest of us are beneath his notice. Like while he's talking to you he's really looking in a mirror. PICKLES Huh. I think he's really smart. VANYA You know what he teaches? You know what his specialty is in his rarified little enclave of academic elitism and self-aggrandizement? ASTER No, actually. You always just call him The Professor, so I don’t— VANYA Ironically! You get that right?! I call him The Professor IRONICALLY! ASTER Yes, of course. But still… VANYA Semiotics. Semitoics! PICK That's the study of… big trucks? VANYA Signs! Symbols! Clues! It's the study of clues!!! PICK My bad… VANYA I mean… why? Who gives a fuck? I have a sign for him: STOP! Stop "studying" things that no real person in the real world could ever imagine caring about! At least esoteric sciences can lead to… you know… new kinds of wheat or or or or or better drugs or bicycles or whatever, but
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 18 Christ On A Cracker, endless impassioned arguments about--- look, I stole this article he wrote from his room to try to get some… here… here… "Semiotic Phenomenology & The Relational Constitution of Presence" Hello? Oh, and wait, there's a subtitle, thank God, this will really clear things up: "Thematizing the Problematic through Human Speech Praxis " PICK Practice? VANYA No! Praxis! PICK Wow… VANYA I mean… WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!?! PICK Presence? Or Presents…? VANYA [Beat] What?!? PICK I'm saying, Presence, like… being here in this room… Or Presents, like… wrapped up for Christmas with a bow? VANYA [Beat] What possible difference does it make?!?! PICK Umm…They're/completely different… VANYA It's a vast conspiracy that costs real people gazillions of dollars each year. Academics! Privileged, arrogant fuckers arguing endlessly about esoteric minutiae so stunningly meaningless and rampantly unimportant that even they could not possibly care themselves, except that if they ever told anyone how little they cared they couldn't continue the absurd conspiracy of getting generations of over-privileged eighteen-year-old sparrow-farts to pay them and praise them and give them tenure and spend their time and our money arguing endlessly about… "The Phenomenology of Whatever-The-Fuck" and giving each other awards and making the rest of us feel like uncultured boobs and morons because we don't give a shit! [Pause…] PICK So you're not a big fan of his work? VANYA Shut up. ASTER So, I take it you're saying she is faithful to him.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 19 VANYA Yes, I think so. Which is another absolute horror in and of itself. ASTER Her fidelity? VANYA Yes. Absolutely. It's morally repugnant. It's against nature. It's like -- PICK No. VANYA [Taken aback…] I'm sorry? PICK No. That's not right. Fidelity is fidelity. It's constancy. It's a commitment and it's to be honored, not mocked. Not mocked. You all make fun of me and I get it, I do, I guess I'm a little ridiculous, and maybe I'd make fun of me too if I were someone else, but I know about fidelity, / and I… VANYA Oh, God, Pickles, I'm not talking / about your... PICK I gave her my heart. I gave her my whole heart and we made each other a vow and I have been true to that vow / because VANYA But that was twenty years ago…! PICK Seventeen. VANYA Whatever. [A throw away…] I'm not doing this again… PICK [Turning abruptly to us in the audience instead…] Iris was the love of my life and, yes, she left me after three months / and change, and VANYA Don't just tell them, that's not fair…! PICK everyone is always saying to me—move on. "It's time to move on". That's the exact phrase that everyone uses, like some agreed upon plan: "It's time to Move On!" VANYA Because it is! ASTER It really is… PICK But here's the thing: I can't. I can't "move on". How can I? Because that love is still there. It still sits… right there. [Pointing at her heart or gut or soul…]. I don't know how you all [and she is talking simultaneously to the other actors
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 20 and the audience…] can just go from one lover to another to another to another, I don't, not if that love is real. Not if it's real. Love is love and it stays forever. I think. I think it stays forever. VANYA No one is saying— ASTER I don't think— PICK I don't even know what people mean when they say "Oh, yeah, we really loved each other back then…" or "Yeah, I used to really love her" cause I just think: Where did that love go? Because I don’t know about you, but I still love everyone I've ever loved. Everyone I've ever loved, I still love. [She starts crying right about here…] And I think I always will. The truth is… I don't know how to stop. And… and the other truth is… I don't want to stop. My love for Iris is real. And I don't want to move on. I'm just fine where I am, thank you very much. I'm just fine right here… 1.4 3 THINGS I LOVE… [The actors all come on together and talk right to us…] BABS This scene is called: Three things I love. [Beat] I think you'll figure it out. VANYA Bad ice cream. Like really cheap ice cream sandwiches and those crappy cones wrapped in paper with chocolate and nuts on top—like Drumsticks or Nutty Buddies or whatever. Just really great, really bad ice cream. ELLA Old barns; ancient churches; abandoned buildings; all the old, empty, quiet spaces of the world… PROF An elegant string quartet weaving impossibly sublime music out of midair… BABS The crisp clink of cubes of ice in a really sturdy glass… and what follows… SONIA Kindness. Tiny, meaningless acts of kindness.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 21 ASTER Putting my ears under the bathwater… that empty, muffled, drowning sound when you're the only creature on the planet for a hot, damp moment... ELLA Yes… I love that, too… PICK [Still pulling herself together…] Umm… berry cobbler, I guess… VANYA A cool, cool pillow on a hot, hot night… BABS Dirt boys in boots who played the drums... God, I loved to nibble on those. PROF Her fingertips just softly brushing my arm or face, just… casually…lovingly… but in a way where everyone else in the room knows she is… mine. PICK Audrey Hepbern. I mean… just the idea of Audrey Hepbern, right? BABS Right… SONIA Kittens. [Off of the reaction] I know, I know, but seriously… kittens. ELLA Tiny, dangerous boats. VANYA The really stupid jokes kids love. Like "Where does a General keep his armies?" "In his sleevies." Or "What did one wall say to the other? I'll meet you at the corner!" Those kinds of jokes… PICK That face people make when they're really listening and want you to keep talking… not because they have something to say and they want you to finish, but when they truly want to hear what you have to say. ASTER Really big, really ancient, really amazing Trees. ELLA That mysterious, unnamable moment when an orgasm becomes inevitable… PROF Being right. Winning. And genuine approbation. [Tiny beat] Look it up. SONIA Fairy tales. BABS Adventures. ASTOR Ocelots. [SONIA suddenly steps forward. Everyone else leaves…]
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 22 1.5 DANCE CARD SONIA [To us] Do you know who all these people are? I was afraid it might be a bit confusing so I thought maybe I could give you a kind of… guide… or dance card... So, I'm Sonia, and this is my house, I guess. Pretty much. I mean it is, but… I live here with my Uncle Vanya, my mother's little brother… and Babs, whose my aunt. Well, not my actual aunt, but my mother's best friend from college, and she was living here since before I was born, so…. Her real name is Bathsheba, but no one calls her that. She's a potter. A "Ceramic Artist." She made this [the mug she's holding]. She actually does pretty well, I guess, because she travels a lot, sometimes for months at a time. Just disappears. "Off on an adventure…" she says, and she's gone. My mother died when I was 11. Breast cancer. So… So Vanya and Babs are my… extended family, I guess-- Oh, and Pickles! Geez! I forgot her, but she lives here, too. She's Vanya's step-half sister… or half step sister… so she's actually kind of my aunt, too, but I don't think of her as an aunt as much as I do Babs, who isn't actually my aunt. Weird… Anyway, she lives in the apartment over the garage and she works at a Group Home for people with… you know… challenges. And she makes crafty things. She made this… [Holds up a thing…] She's been here forever, but I still forget her all the time. Sorry…! Dr. Aster is Uncle Vanya's oldest friend. They grew up together and he lives less than a mile away. Nine hundred and fifty one steps, actually. More or less. Anyway... Sometimes he's here a lot, sometimes not. Just now, he is. The one Vanya calls The Professor—that's my father. Dad. He and his third wife, Ella, have been here for a few days now. My mother was his first wife… but they all stayed close, and I guess they're… kind of visiting? Actually, it's all a little tense. Family, right? It's like everyone is hard-wired to totally upset everyone else. [PICKLES enters the kitchen, unseen, makes a snack…] Like, at breakfast yesterday I started imagining everyone had these buttons on their backs… like on an old blender, those solid push buttons. Blend, Whip, Spindle, Mutilate, whatever. But these were like… Annoy… Provoke… Poke-At-Painful-Old-Wound. Things like that. [Leaning in…] The things is—
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 23 PICK Do you think love lasts forever? SONIA I'm sorry…? PICK Do you think love is real? A force. A real, actual, substantial thing in the world… like a rock… or selfishness… or do you think it's just an artificial man-made construct like religion… or football? SONIA Oh, man, really? PICK Yes, really. SONIA I think it's real. Like a rock. [Discovering this idea more fully as she goes…] Exactly like rock, actually. Solid… weighty… hard… and painful in a variety of awful and humiliating ways… PICK That's what I think! SONIA Well, okay then…. PICK [Abruptly] Did you know that this play is called LIFE SUCKS? SONIA [This is getting awkward…] Ummm… yes. PICK Do you think that's right? SONIA Oh Pickles… PICK Do you think life sucks? Do you think that that's… accurate? SONIA Pickles we're not even at the end of Act 1 PICK 'Cause I don't. [Turning out to include us, too…] I don't think that title is right and I just want you to know that I didn't choose it… and furthermore, that I repudiate it. SONIA But--- PICK That sounds funny. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Is that a word? SONIA Yes.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 24 PICK Does it mean… to deny. To reverse. To… erase? SONIA I think so. [To us] Does it? [Hopefully the audience answers positively…] PICK Okay, good. Well, then, I repudiate that title. Sure, life is hard, life is tricky. And it can be really unfair and frustrating and, you know… deeply problematic sometimes. Right? Right? SONIA Right. PICK But life does not suck. I just wanted to get that on the record. Not that there's a record or whatever, I know that, but I wanted to get that on the record anyway… [She starts to walk away…] Life does not suck. Life does not suck. Life does not suck. [PICKLES is gone. SONIA is alone on stage…] SONIA End of Act I. END ACT I
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 25 ACT II • THE MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT 2.0 MY WIFE [Late that night THE PROFESSOR and BABS are drinking. He's in some pain, maybe in his joints or his body overall. It is hard for him to get comfortable...] PROF My wife. My third wife… BABS Yes… PROF This fascinating… this captivating… this insanely alluring creature… BABS … yes? PROF Hates me. BABS Oh? PROF And loves me… BABS Of course… PROF I mean, she must love me a little, or she wouldn’t have married me, right? BABS Absolutely. PROF But, no, beyond any question, she hates me now, too. As only a wife can… A kind of… glacial… long-simmering… cat-footed little hatred… a glowing- embers-long-into-the-night kind of hatred. BABS Gosh… PROF I don’t know what she was thinking. I mean, look at me... BABS Ummm… PROF No, seriously, look at me. This is what I look like. Exactly this. This is me. BABS Yes it is. PROF And trust me, I didn’t look much better when we met, in case you were wondering… or excusing… or judging…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 26 BABS I wasn't… PROF No, maybe not. Maybe that's why I can talk to you. You don't judge, do you? BABS Not much, no. PROF Why is that? BABS Oh… PROF No, seriously, why? BABS Oh, my 20's, I guess. After a certain quantity of unnecessarily stupid choices and thoughtless acts—some with real consequences—I decided one probably ought to relinquish the right to judge others for anything… PROF I see. [Quick beat] Were these… indiscretions of—? BABS Oh shhhh. No stories. Besides, you're asking for the wrong reasons. Anyway, you were saying? About you and your wife and how you look…? PROF Oh. Oh, yes… Well, here's the thing. Here's the odd little lacuna of my life… BABS Lacuna? PROF Umm… unfilled, unknown space. Puzzle. Gap… BABS Gotchya. PROF Ready? BABS Astound me. PROF I don’t look like this in my mind. BABS No? PROF Not even close.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 27 BABS Really? PROF Absolutely. BABS So… what do you look like in your mind? PROF Better. Much better. My self-image is… amazingly better than the reality. Even as I speak to you, at this precise moment, when I picture in my mind what you're looking at, though I know for a fact that you are seeing… this [gestures to himself]… what I imagine is something much closer to… *oh, Sean Connery circa The Untouchables, maybe… or Alan Rickman in Sense & Sensibility… rather than… a slightly bloated, badly-aging Bill Maher.* Whereas—and here is the oddest part of my much-maligned married life— I'm afraid my wife's self-image works unrelentingly in the opposite direction. BABS Really? PROF Absolutely. Shockingly, her self-image leads her to perceive herself much less like the *near-Kate-Blanchet-like siren that she really is, and more like a… sweaty, disheveled Chelsea Clinton after 10K charity run for Africa...* BABS You are such— PROF [Ignoring her, going on…] And what I think happened here is… well, I think her self-image somehow fell in love, ass over teacup, with my self-image. So when people meet us they tend to think "What the fuck?"— which I have to tell you is not a great deal of fun when you see it play so rampantly across the faces of people you are being introduced to for the first time over and over and over again. But… if they could see us as we so oddly see ourselves… then they'd probably think: "Hmm. Seems about right." BABS Well, that's… that's quite a— 2.1 CHANGE! ELLA [ELLA enters, sees him…] Oh, hey… You're still awake? Hi Babs. BABS Hi. [Getting up right away…] And bye… ELLA You don't have to go.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 28 BABS Oh, yes I do. It's late. Nighty-night you two love birds. See you in the morn. ELLA Good night. [BABS leaves slightly awkwardly…] What were you two / talking PROF Nothing. ELLA Oh, God, were you really talking about us? PROF No, no, I was just ELLA Robert… PROF I just can't— I can't quite believe that it's come to this. It's like everything I touch eventually turns to shit, I / can't catch ELLA Well, that's awfully sweet of you… PROF a break, and I end up feeling horrible most of the time, trapped in an insupportable, perdurable miasma / of lost ELLA Oh, please just talk! Don't… write it! Just / say it! PROF This is me! This is how I talk. This is who / I am! ELLA Then change! Try to change for the better! For me! PROF You change! You try! Try— you know— LIKING ME, for instance! ELLA Oh, Lord Almighty, I love you, you fucking idiot, but that doesn't mean you automatically get a free pass on / every annoying PROF So you don't like the way I talk? You really want me to change how I talk?!? ELLA Yes! I do. I really do. You don't talk to people any more, you talk at them, or or or through them, or… or over their heads in order to humiliate them. PROF Oh, please…! ELLA [Going right on…] What was that with Vanya today, with the Virgil quote? PROF That? That was a perfectly apropos reference / that was appropriate
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 29 ELLA Oh please! You did it to shame him. You rubbed your Virgil in his face like an old dead fish! You've gotten meaner, Robert, you / have. PROF That's a stupid thing to say. ELLA It's not! When did you become such a… flagrant prick? You weren’t always this way, were you? Or were you, and I just couldn't see it? PROF [Truly taken aback…] I have no idea how to answer a question that asinine. ELLA There's contempt in your voice these days, Robert, and that can't be a good thing. Vanya can be as annoying as it gets, but he's not an idiot and he's not the devil, and we're trying to make nice here, / not piss everyone off. PROF [Agreeing sheepishly, perhaps…] I know, I know, you're right, you're right… ELLA And I'm sorry if your whole life has "gone to shit", but I'm still part of that life / and I'd appreciate it PROF That's not what I meant…! ELLA if you'd pull your head out of your ass and make a fucking effort! PROF Oh, God, I don't feel well. ELLA [Having tread this path before…] No, no of course not… PROF It's not my fault. I'm all achy… ELLA Did you have dinner? PROF No. I couldn't bear the idea… ELLA Oh, great, I get the Trifecta: Sick, tired and hungry. Now you'll be cruel on top / of being cranky and pouty PROF Oh, I'm so sorry if my pain is inconvenient to you! ELLA so you'll be completely unbearable. PROF I thought I was already completely / unbearable. Aren’t you--
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 30 ELLA More unbearable, extra, super-duper unbearable why in God's name would you choose that to pick a fight about / in the wee hours… PROF Go to bed, then, go / to bed.. ELLA You go to bed! You go! PROF Oh, so you can go chat with Vanya! Or / the doctor! Or ELLA Oh, please, you are so pathetic... PROF I am, I am pathetic, I love you / so much, and I know you ELLA Oh, God, no, not that, please anything but that small, clingy, ingratiating horseshit, do you want to drive me / away forever…? PROF I know, I know, I'm sorry, / I just ELLA You're so infuriating! I'm going for a walk! / Good-night! PROF Wait, come back, I— [She is gone] 2.2 GREY NOSE HAIRS PROF [Abruptly to us…] Well, that didn't go well. You know what I hate worst about aging? About turning into an old man... ? You get a little pain. A little… condition. Some insignificant nothing, but it hurts, so now you can't exercise, so you gain a little weight, and that's depressing, so you drink a little more scotch, or eat a little more ice cream or indulge whatever your particular predilection may be to stave off the encroaching depression, and the awful cycle has begun… more pain, more weight, more indulgence, more depression, pain, weight, indulgence, depression, and on and on and on and… Same thing psychologically, right? One day you just feel kind of… old. Or wrinkled. So you get a little low, a little insecure. Which is less attractive. And you see it in her eyes—she sees you're insecure. So you get more insecure. So you retreat. So she retreats. Or attacks. So you attack! You overcompensate. And she fucking hates that.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 31 And so on and so on till death… or divorce… or disdain… or the most common of all the awful D's… disengagement. And then there you are. The rest of your life. And it sucks. All because of a gouty knee. Or grey nose hairs. Or any of the thousand and one tiny indignities of the irreparably aging human body. It isn't fair. And it isn't kind. It is, however, sadly inevitable. But the thing is… the key thing you have to understand about life is this: [Beat. Beat…] Oh, fuck it, I'm too tired. I'm gonna take some pills and see what dreams may come to visit this decaying mortal coil... Nighty-night. 2.3 PRE-ABSTRACT [Scene shifts. ELLA & VANYA enter, mid-conversation. He is more following ELLA than walking with her. She is agitated and frustrated. It is late…] ELLA Why aren't you asleep? VANYA Why aren't you? ELLA I wish I were. VANYA I wish I were pre-abstract. ELLA What? I mean—what??? VANYA That's what I wish. I wish I lived before the dawn of abstraction. ELLA [Puzzling through a quick beat before…] What does that even mean? VANYA Imagine The Garden, before… you know, before the snake fucked the goose and we all got kicked out on our metaphorical asses. ELLA Are you drunk? VANYA Some.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 32 ELLA Oh, God… VANYA Doesn't that sound wonderful? To be pre-abstract. Think about it! ELLA Is this another of your ridiculous-- because I have a pedicure a year from Thursday, so I might not have / time to fully… VANYA I'm just saying: The Apple is Abstraction. ELLA Which apple? VANYA THE Apple. Eve's apple. What other app--? ELLA Ah, Eve. VANYA I mean—knowledge of Good and Evil? Please, what does that even mean? But the dawn of the capacity for abstract thought…? Okay, imagine you've spent your entire existence living in the present—in the moment—in the perpetual, instinctual NOW of the animal kingdom… ELLA Okay. VANYA …and then suddenly, somehow, Boom! Abstract thought! Just like that! (Like when my father used to wake me up for a trip he would walk into my room, four AM, turn on the light, tear the comforter off the bed and yell "get up!" ELLA Jesus… VANYA Yeah, I know, but effective! Welcome to the fucking world! Good luck!) So I imagine the Dawn of Abstraction like that. There you are in your pre- dawn REM sleep, dreaming of simple things like muffins and blow jobs and then… Shwannk!!!!! Good Morning Death and Complexity! Somehow we woke up to Abstraction and there we were—hurled unwittingly into the impossible early morning light of existence by our own ridiculous brains! You see what I'm saying…? ELLA I understand the idea, but I don't / know what VANYA Because the truth is… I don't really want to know that I'm going to die! Why would I want that? Why would anyone??? I don't want to be able to to to to extrapolate possible futures or ruminate on the ridiculous choices of my past or or or be bound by man-made constructs like fidelity or morality or…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 33 I fantasize about a life before I knew how to fantasize… ELLA [A positive, thoughtful response, finally…] That's… VANYA I wish to God (in whom I emphatically do not believe…) that I could just live my life blissfully in the present-- The Ridiculous Present-- of wanting to eat that delicious thing… or make love to that beautiful woman… or sleep in that shady spot and just… you know… be content. Just… content. ELLA [With real warmth for the first time] I must say… content does sound nice… VANYA Run away with me. ELLA Oh, Lord… VANYA Walk out the door with me and never look back. ELLA What are you doing? VANYA Living in the Ridiculous Present! ELLA You ruin everything, you know that? You're like Shiva… VANYA Isn't that a restaurant? ELLA It's the Hindu God of Destruction. VANYA I knew that. ELLA You're like a terrible little six-year-old on the playground. "I want that!" "Mine!" "Mine!" "Mine!" And if you can't have it—if some other little devil already has it-- you throw a tantrum. VANYA So I'm like a six-year-old God of Destruction, is that right? A Child Shiva? Is that the story you want to tell yourself to protect yourself from the truth? ELLA What truth? VANYA That I'm your beshert. I'm the other part of your soul. I could not feel what I feel for you if we were not connected somehow. If there weren't something important and… true... between us. You must feel that…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 34 ELLA I don't. VANYA You must. ELLA You're an idiot. VANYA That's immaterial. ELLA [She starts to go, maybe kind of laughing…] I don't believe you…! VANYA Believe me! Trust me. Love me…! ELLA Shut up! Would you please just shut up, leave me alone, and learn to live in this broken, "ridiculous", post-abstract world. Life is hard. Love is hard. Days are long and hard, and death, like it or not, is coming for all of us the day after tomorrow, more or less. Now pull yourself together, get your tongue off the floor, stop acting like a lovesick poodle, and do something useful for SOMEONE ELSE, for God's sake. Be a Person! How's that for beshert?!? [She storms away. He waits a beat. Looks at us.] VANYA Isn't she wonderful? You see it, right? She has a big soul. Or do we always just say that to justify our lusts and longings… Like reading Playboy for the articles. Or discussing the excellence of Scarlett Johansson's acting. Or… But I would die for her. Do you think she likes me, deep down? Do you think I have a chance? Seriously. I'm asking. Seriously… [They answer. Or don't. If they do, maybe there is a real discussion about Unrequited Love or Mismatched Love or Unbalanced love or… After the conversation has run its course, he yells to the wings…] Next! 2.4 LOST & DRUNK [SONIA and ASTER walk on in mid conversation…] SONIA But that's not an answer.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 35 ASTER Oh, God, I don't know… Because I wish to, okay? SONIA No, I know… but why? ASTER [As they get to the stage, perhaps…] Ah, but why not? SONIA Excuse me? ASTER That's the real question. That’s always the real question… "Why not?!" SONIA But… ASTER After… half-time… the real questions are the "Why Not's", not the "Why's"… "Why's" are practical. "Why Not's" are more… poetic. Why not quit your job? Why not… drink the rest of that Vodka? (Oh, don't mind if I do…) [And he does…] Why not… you know… throw yourself off that silly old bridge? Fun little questions like that… SONIA You sound so…sad ASTER [Overlapping] Wise? [Then, having heard her] Oh. Well. Yeah… SONIA But why are you sad? Why? ASTER Why not? SONIA Seriously. ASTER [Mock realizing what she meant…] Oh, seriously… SONIA Please. ASTER Life is a glorious cycle of song A medley of extemporanea And love is a thing that can never go wrong And I am Marie of Romania SONIA Seriously, please… ASTER Okay. Ummm… I can't… I can't… care so much. I just find it kind of hard to… you know… care. I had my appendix out when I was eight, so / maybe SONIA You don't have any… passion? For anything? Or… anyone?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 36 ASTER Global warming. The utter insanity of a world built on destructive, irreplaceable fossil fuels. Babs, in my own odd way. And an ancient little basset hound my neighbor has named Mr. BasilWorthy. That's about it… SONIA I have a friend… ASTER Oh? SONIA And she's… well, a little obsessed, I'm afraid, with a man maybe a bit like you. Successful… handsome, charming… slightly eccentric, maybe, but with many positive virtues. But older and still unsettled. And drinks, too, like you. ASTER [Joking-ish…] You're not just talking about me, are you? SONIA No! No, no, not at all. That would be creepy. ASTER Oh, okay. Sorry. SONIA But—anyway-- he doesn't seem to notice her… you know… as… a woman. ASTER Ah. And…? SONIA What should she do? I don't think she wants to love him, but I don't think she can help it. I don't want to overstate it, but it's kind of… you know… ASTER What? SONIA Ruining her life. It's kind of ruining her life. So what would you advise her to do? ASTER Is she pretty? SONIA No. ASTER Oh. Not at all? SONIA Not so much. [Quick beat] Nice hair. Nice eyes… ASTER Too bad.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 37 Drink more. Think less. And run away from him as fast as she can. He sounds like a fucking nightmare. If he's anything like me he's a perfect recipe for disaster. I'm… a trap. You know what my second ex-fiancée called me? SONIA No. ASTER "A perfect lover in everyway except all the most important ways." SONIA That sounds bad. ASTER 'Bout as bad as it gets. SONIA So, my mother used to tell me that our house was full of Radiant Invisible Butterflies. And every so often she'd call a Hunt and a wild family excursion for Radiant Invisible Butterflies (or R.I.B.'s) would be on. I was really young, but I remember these episodes quite clearly. They were… high points. But when I got older—I don't know, maybe 7 or 8, maybe 9, I finally asked her The Question. The Big One: Were they real? Were there really Radiant Invisible Butterflies fluttering around our house? Were there really? ASTER And what did she tell you? SONIA She told me that they were either real… or not real… she wasn't sure which… but she preferred the world where they were real, because the world of possibility and discovery is so much more… intriguing and so much more exciting… so… Why Not Just Go Ahead and Believe? ASTER Ummm… [Not mean, but…] I'm not sure I quite / understand your SONIA She told me the real question wasn't, why believe in them… but Why Not? Why Not? You see? ASTER Listen: Tell your friend… Run Away. Fast… Good night. [He leaves] SONIA Oh. My. God. "I have a friend"? And butterflies? "Invisible butterflies"? Where did that even come from? Did it even make any sense?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 38 I just told him some… insane story about Radiant Invisible Butterflies when all I wanted to say was "please, please, please, take me upstairs right now, tear my stupid clothes off my stupid body with your teeth and fuck me so hard and so well and so long that that that… that the bed breaks, and the universe disappears, and the sun stops in its rotation to see what all the fuss is about and the world comes crashing to a stop and our epic, ridiculous, sublime love-making is the last thing that the universe ever knows." And instead I made up some story about invisible butterflies in a pathetic attempt to let him know I understand him and that he could do with me as he would… and I could see, totally clearly in his face that he didn't get the message. Not even close. It never even occurred to him because he cannot see me as a woman. Because the women that are real to him aren't like me… [ELLA enters upstage somewhere…] They're a lot more like her… 2.5 OH. HELLO ELLA Oh. Hello. SONIA [Gently mocking…] Oh. Hello. ELLA Am I interrupting? SONIA No. I mean—no. ELLA Are you all right? SONIA Of course. ELLA Really? SONIA No. I mean… yes, of course. ELLA You seem... SONIA What? ELLA I don’t know. Do you want to… talk to me about it? I would so like us to be friends but I can't help but feel… SONIA Yes…?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 39 ELLA …that you sort of… SONIA What? ELLA Hate me. I can't help but feel you sort of hate me. SONIA I do! I do hate you, I hate you so much I can barely stand to look at you. Except that I'm just a little bit in love with you, too…. Or infatuated… or bewitched like everyone else, and of course I envy you absurdly, and I'm feeling restless and reckless tonight because… nevermind… and I want to… to… to slap you hard right across the face but then also bring you a rum and coke and talk with you on the carpet with our shoes off until 4am and tell you all about everything that is pushing on my soul to the bursting / point and… ELLA Okay. Okay. Good. Let's start with the slap. SONIA What? ELLA Let's start with the slap. I understand you perfectly and I'm thrilled you're finally talking to me and I think the only thing for it is that we do just as you suggest but I don't think any of it can happen without the slap, so… ready? SONIA You're my stepmother. I'm not going / to just slap ELLA I am not leaving this room until you slap me hard, just once, right across / the face. SONIA Are you crazy? Why would I slap you? ELLA Let's not waste time, I want the rum and coke and the girl talk so --! SONIA [SONIA slaps her once, HARD, right across the face. She is immediately astounded at what she has done…] Oh my God! ELLA [Surprised more than hurt, but still…] That hurt! SONIA Oh God! I'm so, so sorry! ELLA That hurt! SONIA Are you okay?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 40 ELLA No, I'm not okay! You just slapped me / across the damn face! SONIA I know! I did! I really did! ELLA How did it feel? SONIA Great! ELLA Good. SONIA How did it feel to you? ELLA It hurt! It's still stinging. But I'm still totally glad you did it. Now go! SONIA Go? ELLA Go get me a rum & coke! And get one for yourself, too. SONIA Oh. Okay. ELLA And then I want to hear all about it. SONIA Ummm… ELLA Go. SONIA Okay. I… ummm… okay! [She goes] ELLA [To us] That really hurt. But in a nice way. That's weird… I like her. I think she's a good person. She's like… an avocado. You know? Kind of good and good for you and a with a kind of weird texture… I don't know what made my think that. I've never compared anyone to a fruit—or vegetable—before. But I think it kind of makes some odd kind of sense… [To the audience, actually] Is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable? [She hopefully gets an answer, right or wrong…] Good. Thanks. 2.6 FRIENDS SONIA [Returning hastily…] Ok, here, I just brought the mixings… the coke…and the Run, of course… And some snacks.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 41 ELLA Perfect. SONIA Yeah? ELLA Sure. Though I don't actually love rum & coke, it was more a… metaphor. A metaphorical drink rather than— SONIA Do you want something else? ELLA No. This is fine… The play will bog down if / you… SONIA Okay. ELLA Okay. So. SONIA Yes…? ELLA What's wrong? SONIA With? ELLA No. [Making it larger…] What's wrong? SONIA You mean with everything? ELLA What… in particular. SONIA Well, you know…. Love, I guess. ELLA Ah. Specifically, or in general. SONIA Specifically. ELLA The doctor? SONIA How did you--? ELLA Are you serious? Everyone knows. SONIA I don't care. I'm not ashamed of my love. I love him so much, and I think I could make him happy. I think I could be exactly what he needs/ if he
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 42 ELLA Oh, dear… SONIA What? ELLA Nothing. SONIA What? I know what love is. I do. Just because I don't look like you doesn't mean/ I don't ELLA Whoa there… SONIA What? ELLA Who said you have to look / like anything to understand SONIA I get it. I know what I look like. Everyone thinks that if you look like me you have to settle for… you know, all the Steve Buscemi's of the world, but-- ELLA You are lovely. SONIA No I'm not. ELLA You are. SONIA No I'm not. ELLA Sonia, you have / beautiful SONIA Stop! I swear to God if you say eyes or hair I will cut your heart out with this swizzle stick! ELLA Ummm— SONIA We all know the code. You know your codes, what the glances and looks and little touches or whatever you get mean… you know sexy code, right? ELLA Umm… SONIA Right?! ELLA Yes, I guess so… SONIA Well I know ugly code. I know / what the looks
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 43 ELLA You're not— SONIA Whatever. Homely. Plain. Nice looking. "Sweet". "Lovely". "A great person." "She's terrific." "She's really great, such a good person." And the worst ones, the most brutal code there is is— Nice eyes. Nice hair. ELLA Okay. Okay, so… You're not that pretty. Is that what you want to hear? SONIA Yes! It is. Thank you. ELLA You actually do have… some lovely physical qualities… but I get that they don't add up to quite the picture you might want them to. How's that? SONIA Good. Now you're being a good stepmother. You're telling me the truth. ELLA Well good. I so want us to be… friends. SONIA Then keep being honest with me. ELLA I will. And you be honest with me. SONIA I will. ELLA So about the doctor… SONIA Oh, God. ELLA Tell me about it. Does he know how you feel? SONIA No! I mean… I don't think so. I haven't, you know… ELLA Told him. Or shown him. SONIA Shown? ELLA You know… lingering glances. Casual touches. "I like you" code… SONIA No. Never. ELLA Never? SONIA Well… I just told him a story about butterflies, but it was a disaster.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 44 ELLA Ummm… SONIA What's the point? He loves women like you. And they love him. So what hope do I have? Even though I know I could be better for him than anyone else in the world. I could save him. I could give him everything he needs if he could just see past my stupid face and… whatever… and just… love me. ELLA What about what you need? SONIA I don't need anything! I have too many things! I want to give my things away. I'm out of room inside. I'm like an emotional hoarder. I have to give some of my heart to someone or I'm going to explode! ELLA Oh, Sonia, you have no idea what you're talking about. You can't just give and give and give even if it feels like you could. You're just wrong. And if you try to give give give to those that are willing to take take take… well, it usually doesn't end up so well. In fact, it never ends up well. SONIA Well, thanks. You've cheered me up tremendously. ELLA Now hold on… SONIA What, I'm just wrong and stupid and young and ugly and you're gonna be my friend by just pointing out how wrong / I am about everything. ELLA I'm trying my best to be helpful, to help / you see that you're not looking at this with the clearest eyes so you can SONIA Wait, here, take my swizzle stick so you can poke me in the eye, too! ELLA I'm trying to be / your friend and SONIA Shut up! Don't try to help me by telling me I'm bad and wrong!!! Being honest doesn't need you have to be a condescending— Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so unhappy. You can't make someone love you, can you? ELLA Well… SONIA Or maybe you can, but I can't. I can't. I'm just me.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 45 I'm just nothing but… me. I hate that so much. ELLA I'm so sorry you do. SONIA Life sucks. ELLA No it doesn't. SONIA Life sucks. ELLA No. It doesn't. SONIA Oh. Well… What does life do, then? [Beat. Beat. Blackout] END OF ACT II
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 46 ACT III • NEEDS 3.0 INCOMPREHENSIBLE ASTER It's practically incomprehensible. ELLA Is it? ASTER And will, I think, become only more so as the future horribly unfolds... ELLA Ah… ASTER They'll undoubtedly condemn us. The people of the future—if they somehow muddle through and there ARE people of the future— will look back at our incomprehensible choices and policies and boundless selfishness and think: Just what-- by all that is Holy-- could they possibly have been thinking?!?! Is greed THAT powerful? Or did they somehow think you could have… you know… an apple tree, say, a single lovely Apple Tree and just, you know, pick a bunch of apples… and then pick a bunch more… and then pick a quarter of the apples one day, and then another quarter, and then another quarter, and then another quarter and then another and another and another and another and that this could go on FOR EVER? You see what I'm saying? ELLA Yeah, I get it, of course,/I do, but… ASTER Or maybe… maybe they'll believe we thought the earth was so big we couldn't get our minds around the fact that we were systematically destroying it. Maybe they'll believe that the earth seemed SO big and SO strong and so indestructible that we thought it really was indestructible and therefore that we could do whatever we pleased with total impunity… But I don't think they'll think that. ELLA No? ASTER No. I think they'll just hate us. ELLA Yes, I expect so… ASTER The list is already incomprehensible and it's growing every day. Rampant extinctions. Ravaged ecosystems. Raping the earth. Polluting the seas. Decimating the forests. Mutating the crops. What are we thinking…?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 47 ELLA I don't know… ASTER You are unbelievably bored by me, aren't you? ELLA No, no, not by you… ASTER Oh? ELLA Just by what you're saying. ASTER Ah… ELLA I think you are wonderfully interesting… much of the time… Though why you are so… ASTER …obsessed? ELLA Exactly… is beyond me. Even if everything you say is true. Which I'm sure it is. Even if we are raping the world and destroying the glaciers and the rain forests and the horny owls and / lizards and ASTER Spotted owls… ELLA whatever, and ruining everything, even if that's ALL true… what are we supposed to do about it? Seriously? Seriously, I want to know. (Ella dials) ASTER Um… ELLA "Excuse me, Mr Tillerson? [To Aster] CEO of Exxon… [On phone] Could you please… stop drilling? We think it's very bad. For the world. What's that? Oh, you will? Really? Gosh, thanks, that would be lovely…" ASTER I know it / won't be ELLA The die is cast. You know? It's cast. We went this direction. Don't you think? Big choices were made hundreds of years ago and now… well, there are huge, complex, well-funded, historical and financial forces that were put in motion generations ago, and…well… you can't go backwards, can you? The world can't go backwards. The government can't go backwards. Exxon can't go backwards. I can't go backwards. Nothing can go backwards. Nothing ever goes backwards. Everything just… has to do what it has to do...
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 48 ASTER Would you… ELLA What? ASTER …want to go backwards? ELLA I'm sorry? ASTER You put you on the list. You said, the world, the government, you… Would you want to go backwards? [With significance…] Do things differently? ELLA I just meant… ASTER I think I know what you meant. And I think you know what I mean. Don't you? Don't you know what I mean? Don't pretend you don't. You know… ELLA I think so… ASTER So? If everything just… has to do what it has to do… ELLA Please don't. I don't think I can take it... ASTER You know what's going on here. You're feeling the same things I'm feeling, I know you are. Am I wrong? Am I completely delusional? ELLA No, no, / but I… [During this, VANYA, a bouquet of flowers in hand, appears and see them. He hides and listens to the rest of this, amazed and appalled…] ASTER What's happening here is real. It's real. I have no idea what it is or what it means, but this is the world, this is life, and all I know is I want you so badly I can hardly form a coherent thought or finish / a fucking sentence… ELLA [To us and herself and the universe…] I can't believe this is my life! ASTER Will you meet me later? ELLA No. ASTER No? ELLA No!
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 49 ASTER Why not? ELLA Because you're just another kind of backwards. ASTER No, I'm not! ELLA Oh, trust me, you are! I've been where you want me to go and it is not a place I can live. I have to go forward no matter how I feel / about it, even if ASTER Why? Whose rule is that? Who says that that's the way it has / to be? ELLA I do… ASTER Well, I think you're wrong. I think you're an amazing creature / and I think ELLA Oh, God… ASTER we owe it to ourselves and to the universe to give whatever this is between us a chance and see where it might take us and what new paths in our lives might open up because of it. ELLA [She grabs him and kisses him hard on the mouth for several seconds, like a quick meal, and then just as abruptly, breaks away] ASTER So you'll meet me? ELLA No. ASTER But— ELLA You should go. ASTER You're-- incomprehensible. ELLA Like the world? And the apple tree? ASTER Precisely. ELLA Well, there you go then. ASTER Where?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 50 ELLA I have no idea. Now, please… leave me alone. For five fucking minutes. Please. [He gets up. Beat. He leaves…VANYA, in shock, leaves too… ELLA turns abruptly to us and fills us in on where she and how she is feeling…] 3.1 THE GAVOTTE ELLA I like people, I really do. I find us all… fascinating. And mysterious. And kind of irresistibly fucked up in such unique and broken little ways. And I genuinely want to know people and connect with them, I really do, but… Can I ask you all a question? How many of you would like to sleep with me if you could? I mean, hypothetically, if there were no rules, no issues of fidelity or morality… or even meta-theatricality… Just based on whatever it is you know about me right at this moment, can we get a show of hands…? How many of you would just… pretty much like to have sex with me? Okay. Great. Now… You don't have to raise your hands for this one, but… how many of you were lying? Either because of who you are here with, or how you want to be thought of in the world, or because of my feelings, or… And now… show of hands again… how many of you would give nearly anything to know what is really going on in the minds and hearts of everyone around you right now? Okay, here's my point: As far as I can tell, were all just in a twisty, impossible, fucked up… yes, okay, perdurable miasma of "unmanageable urges" vs. "moral imperatives", and instead of being able to just… connect… just be in a kind and loving communion with our fellow human beings… we're forever wrapped up in this… sexual dance macabre… this ridiculous relational gavotte… this endless pursuit (and retreat) of unexpressed, unfulfilled, unexplored, unknowable needs and desires and frustrations and-- 3.2. A WAY [VANYA appears with manic, twisted energy. He is frantic and determined…] VANYA Okay, look—
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 51 ELLA Oh, no… VANYA [Launching right in…] So there has to be a way, right? A a a a ELLA Vanya…. VANYA no no, hold on… a a a a a magic word… a gesture or or or something so compelling that you'll suddenly see me in a whole new light, and just begin to imagine the that there's the merest possibility of you… loving me back. ELLA [To audience] You see what I mean? VANYA There must be. Some… avenue? Some… amazingly persuasive argument... ELLA Argument? VANYA Or story? Or or or… insight? A view into the previously locked room of my soul that will touch some new place in you, put my finger on your button… ELLA …Vanya… VANYA …I mean… A story or anecdote that will make what at this moment seems… you know… the usual… pathetic and repellant and whatnot… suddenly seem moving and endearing and so wonderfully, brokenly, human that your icy heart will / melt and and and ELLA [A tiny sarcastic toss away…] "Icy heart" is nice… VANYA you will see me as I am on the inside, and / begin to-- ELLA And what is that? VANYA What? ELLA What is that? What are you like on the inside that is so different from what you are like on the outside? VANYA Uh… ELLA You've said / this over and VANYA It's not that—
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 52 ELLA No wait, let me talk. You've said this over and over in all kids of odd little ways. "The real me." "What I'm really like on the inside." "Who I really am." So fine, great, I'm ready, I'm all ears. And eyes. And… whatever: What are you? What is so fucking different about you on the inside…? VANYA Well, I can't just suddenly explain— ELLA Why not? Why the hell not? I've listened to you talk and talk and whine and moan off and on for… a decade or so... and you know, I think I have a pretty good idea of who you are and how you operate and what you think and feel and want, and how you… present yourself in the world. Or would like to be thought of by others. I honestly think I could probably do a pretty good Vanya imitation by now. By all the standard, accepted measures, I Know You. I know you pretty darn well. Not intimately, maybe, but… pretty darn well. So… I've rambled here. I've given you some time to gather your addled and surprised wits. So… enlighten me. What are you like inside? What is going on in there that is SO different that you want me to know? [A fairly good sized pause…] VANYA Oh God. Oh my God… Nothing. That's your answer. Not a fucking thing. You're absolutely right. This is the "real me". The one whose been pathetically prostrating himself before you in one way or another for the past… This is it. This is all there is. This is me. And if I were you… I wouldn’t be interested in me either. I swear to God it all just hit me. Just now. For the first time... I think my whole life I've been saying to myself—not just about you, but all the way back as far as this kind of thing goes. I've always thought "she" would choose me if only she really knew me. If she understood me. If only she knew what I'm really like, what I am like deep down inside. How I mean so well. How much I want to do the right thing. How good my heart is. How much I hurt. How confused and lost I am... How hopeful…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 53 And maybe those are even true, maybe... But those are no more the "real me" than the lonely, whining, dissatisfied, pathetic putz who pesters you constantly with his inconvenient love. I swear I've always thought that the internal me was the "real me" and this guy—the one in the world, the one just doing things was… I don't know… a facsimile. Not important. Just the guy out there doing things… But now, suddenly, I don't know. I guess I'm this guy. Not that guy. Because it's what you DO that matters, right? That's what I've always liked best about Jewish theology. No sinning in your heart. No being punished for your thoughts. It's actions! Not what you say or what you think or what you feel, but what you DO. And if the real me is this guy, this schmuck who just wanders around bothering people… Then I am so royally fucked I don't what to do. ELLA Vanya, I'm so sorry that— VANYA Yeah, I'm just gonna… [Indicates going] you know… [He leaves…] ELLA I hope you're enjoying this, because it's no picnic up here… 3.3 DON'T SAY A WORD [ASTER enters. Sees her…] Oh, goody… ASTER Never a dull moment, huh? ELLA A thrill a minute. ASTER The thing is… ELLA If you say one more word I will walk out that door, out the front door, into the car out of the car onto a train, buy a one way ticket for anywhere and you will never, ever, ever see me again and I swear I mean it. One single word… What is it about me? Don't answer that! What is it? My eyes? My shocking, transparent eyes? The sadness in my eyes?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 54 My dangerous red hair? My perky tits? My perfect ass? My boredom? My grace? My contempt? What??? What makes you think I'd be willing to just give up everything and hurl myself into your arms??? Don't answer that! Don't you dare say a word!!! [Beat] What is it about me that you find so… fucking irresistible? ASTER [Calmly, truthfully, confidently] It's your contradictions. ELLA Hmm. [She goes to him… kisses him hard and strong and full… fuller and deeper and sexier than kisses are supposed to go on stage, till we start to get a bit uncomfortable… and then abruptly stops. Then steps back and slaps him once, really hard, right across the face…] Maybe you're right. [MUSIC. Everyone else suddenly joins them in one fell swoop…] 3.4 3 THINGS I HATE PICK This scene is called: 3 THINGS I HATE VANYA Myself. Others. Optimists. PROF Vanya. Bad Art. Aging. ELLA Weakness. Strength. All the same old day-to-day-to-day-to-day-to-day-to-day horse shit. ASTER Selfishness. Stupidity. Asparagus. PICK Nicknames. Narcissists. Bad things happening to good people. SONIA My body. My face. The lie of Literature.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 55 BABS Bullshit. Humidity. Lists. 3.5 A CONUNDRUM [Instant shift into the gathering that the PROFESSOR has called…] PROF Well, now, thank you all for coming. So…Well, you know… life is a conundrum, isn't it? A conundrum rapped in a riddle, sautéed in an enigma, and peppered, as it were, with mystery. BABS Oh dear. PROF As Euripides so wisely wrote: "Zoy dane ay nye pahnta aftoo pou nomizetaya". Life is not always what you think. I believe that is a great truth. Simple, perhaps, and yet profound. Life does not tend to go exactly where you thought it might go when you boldly headed out on the Great Journey. And needs are needs… VANYA Oh, this can't be good. PROF So, as of late… certain ventures, certain ventures of a financial nature… did not perform as we had hoped, and now we find ourselves in a bit of a… well, a bit of a pickle, as it were… a financially precarious pickle. PICK Hey! Twinsies! [They all look at her…] I'm a financially precarious pickle. VANYA Please...! PICK Sorry. PROF Well, not to put too fine a point on it—we need money, and the only certain place to get it is to… sell this house and use the proceeds to pay off some debts and get a leg up and see if we can't… right our fiscal ship, as it were. SONIA I'm sorry? ASTER Are you kidding? BABS Wow.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 56 PROF I know it won't be uncomplicated, but a house like this, what with the garden and the outbuildings and all, is worth quite a pretty penny these days, and there may well be ways we could all benefit / from making smart decisions VANYA YOU'RE NOT THE SUN! PROF I'm sorry… what?!?! VANYA [Driving, but deliberate] YOU. ARE NOT. THE FUCKING. SUN!!! The world / does not revolve around you SONIA Uncle Vanya, please don't… VANYA and your fucking needs and your fucking predicaments and your fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking PICKLES! PROF You are insane. You won't // even do me the simple ELLA [Interrupting] I told you this was not the time… VANYA [Interrupting] Yes, I think that's right. I think I must be insane, I think I must be hallucinating because it seems to me that you just told us that you NEED MONEY and therefore plan to sell a house that DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU to raise money for… I mean… WHAT??? This is Sonia's house! Hers, not yours, you fucking moron! Hers! She and I have been working our asses off for years and years and years, paying the mortgage, and keeping this house up without the slightest help / from you PROF Now that's enough…! VANYA [He is starting to lose it for maybe the first time in his life. Most of a lifetime of rage and frustration and sadness and shattered things come pouring out all at once… a huge amount of feeling trying to get out of a bottle with not nearly a wide enough mouth…] Enough?!? That's not NEARLY ENOUGH! How about this: I fucking hate you and everything you are and everything you do and everything you think and… and… Wait! Wait! Wait right here… [He runs off…] PROF I have never in my life / seen such an… infantile… SONIA He doesn't mean it, things have been very tight and we've been working so hard to make ends meet, and he's been very upset / recently, and I
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 57 ELLA Where do you think he went? BABS Probably to get my gun and shoot him. ELLA Ha ha, very funny. PROF I wouldn't / put it past him. Did you see his eyes? ASTER [To BABS] You have a gun? BABS Oh, just a little one… PROF [This continues straight on from the previous line…] They went all goggly. I mean, for God's sake, I was simply talking about a possible— ELLA Don't. Not again. Let it go… PROF A person can't talk? A person can't— [VANYA comes running back in, a small gun in hand…!] VANYA I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL! [VANYA shoots at the PROFESSOR, in full expectation of killing or at least wounding him. There are four bullets in the gun and some empty clicks as well. While he shoots people scream, duck, etc. etc. When he is done shooting, everyone just kinds of holds where they are as the PROF realizes that he has not been hit by even one of the bullets. He is totally fine…] VANYA I missed. I missed. I fucking missed. PROF [In shock…] You just tried to kill me. ASTER You sure you're okay? PROF [Still in shock, to ASTER] Yeah. [To VANYA] You just tried to kill me. VANYA Yeah. PROF Well you failed! Like everything you've ever done, you pathetic fuck! ELLA Robbie, Robbie…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 58 PROF We will leave here forever! I have never… I can't believe… I… [He leaves. ELLA looks at the room a moment… then goes after him.] SONIA Oh, Uncle Vanya… [She leaves] [Beat] PICK Oh my God, that just happened. That just really happened… VANYA Shut up. Please... PICK All right… [She sits down in a corner somewhere…] BABS Look at me. [Forceful. No bullshit at all.] Look at me! VANYA [Slowly looking at her] Yes? BABS Are you okay now? Or do I need to go call someone right now? VANYA No. I'm fine. [Quick serious beat] I'm fine. BABS Okay. Okay. [She steps aside, satisfied for the moment…] ASTER Those were real bullets, right? BABS Yeah. VANYA Yeah. ASTER Wow. You missed him four times. And you were standing pretty damn close. VANYA Yeah. ASTER I think you're the one who dodged a bullet, my friend. VANYA Yeah. ASTER I… I need a drink. Would anyone like a drink?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 59 VANYA Yeah. PICKLES Sure BABS Absolutely. ASTER Back in a flash. [He leaves. It's now just VANYA and BABS. VANYA is maybe beginning to realize the reality of what he just did… and didn't do…Beat] BABS I thought I had maybe seen all the things I was going to see, you know. I thought my highlight reel might be full, but this… I love you, Vanya. I always have. You are smart as a whip and can talk me and pretty much anyone else in circles… you know so much about so many things… But, I swear, you don't seem to understand a blessed thing about anything that really matters in the world, and that's the God's honest truth. VANYA Yeah. BABS You can't just go and shoot at someone because he disappoints you… VANYA Yeah. BABS Or because he reminds you how much you disappoint yourself. VANYA Yeah. BABS Or because you really want to sleep with his wife. VANYA Yeah. BABS Even if you actually do love his wife… VANYA Yeah. BABS I'm so, so, so sorry you're hurting, Vanya, but you've really gotta… you know… get it together. VANYA Yeah. BABS Yeah. [Beat…]
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 60 VANYA How? [Beat…] Life sucks. BABS Sometimes. VANYA Life fucking sucks. BABS Yes, sometimes. VANYA Not all the times? BABS No. Not all the times. VANYA Oh. Okay. END ACT III
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 61 ACT IV • AFTERMATH 4.0 THE GRATITUDES [BABS doesn't leave. She just turns to us and starts talking… before too long SONIA wanders on unseen by BABS and listens to most of this…] BABS So, yeah, well… my Zadie Oscar died in a plane crash when I was eleven. (Don't worry, I have a point. Go with me a minute…) He was born in Poltava, in the Ukraine, and came over here with his four younger brothers and actually managed to get rich. A hot dog cart, then a burger shack, then a steakhouse. Oscar's. Very fancy. The American Dream made good... He was a character, as they say. Quite a natty dresser, slicked back hair, pencil thin mustache. He was also, apparently, quite the gambler, drinker and womanizer, but I didn't know any of that then. To me he was "Zadie Oscar", the life of the party who would slip a five-dollar bill into your palm when Bobbe Sophie wasn't looking. It always seemed to me he knew some secret that no one else knew that made him awfully happy. I remember asking my mother about it all the way back then. She told me he was "a life- eater", a particular type of person. That he ate life the way the rest of us ate latkes… could never get enough, could never have his fill… And speaking of eating, here's my point. Here's my point: Before every family meal I can ever remember eating with him—which were mostly around various family Bar Mitzvahs and Bris' and weddings and such-- we did what he called, with grave seriousness, The Gratitudes. Everyone at the table—family, strangers, everyone, young and old—had to take a moment and say what they were grateful for at that moment. Kind of like Grace, but without God. Or holding hands... And sometimes it was just simple little things like a raise, or finding a dollar in the gutter, or a good knish… But sometimes someone would… go deep. And things would come out. Real things. About other people at the table… or those lost to us. I remember a lot of tears, but also lots of laughing. But it was always real. Real gratitude. An odd kind of secular prayer or or or humble appreciation for the miracle of making it through another day, and having something good to eat at the end of it, and someone to eat it with. I still say them. Mostly to myself, but I say them. Every meal. Every day.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 62 4.1 NOT THE ANSWER… SONIA [Suddenly, from elsewhere on stage…] Life sucks. BABS [Putting out her arms for a hug] Oh, c'mere. Love, love, love, huh? SONIA [Going in for the hug, probably…] Stupid, stupid, stupid… BABS The doctor? SONIA [Incredulous] Is it really / that obvious??? BABS Ummm… yes. SONIA Oh, God. BABS You're not alone. He's practically irresistible, in all his… receding grandeur. SONIA I know! BABS I'm sorry you're hurting… SONIA It's awful. I shake inside when I see him. My insides just go… [She does a weird little shaking action…] I literally have to restrain myself to not just… reach out and grab him. And just… hold him. Or stroke him. Or… BABS Oh, dear. SONIA I only hear about half of what he says because I'm just watching his lips, and picturing him just—oh, God, is it okay that I'm telling you this? BABS Get it out! No judgment here, believe me. Not an ounce. Not an / iota… SONIA I want him! And he needs me. And if he won't love me back I don't know if I will survive it. I think I might just… just… just BABS No, you won't. You'll survive it. I know it doesn't feel that way, but— SONIA How do you know? BABS I know. SONIA Oh, please don't tell me I'm young, or when you were / my age
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 63 BABS [With both clarity and code...] When I was… much younger than I am now I felt just what you're feeling. Precisely what you're feeling. SONIA How could you--- wait, what? BABS [With fuller meaning…] Because I know he's practically irresistible. And always has been… SONIA Wait… what are you saying? BABS I'm just saying I know what you're feeling. But exactly… You didn't invent this little torture. This is the world, Sonia, and longing is part of the price we pay for living. And trust me, you wouldn't want it any other way. Love your longing, Sonia, live in it. It's a gift. Love. Lust. Desire. The imagined touch… The need to… grab on and hold tight. To connect. To be touched, to be known, biblically. To be filled… SONIA Babs… BABS I'm old, Sonia. Not dead. The fire dies down, but it never goes out. You know the doctor moved here when he was maybe 9 or 10 and he and Vanya have been friends forever. Aster was a little older, but your grandmother was friends with his mother from Bridge or Mah Jong or something, and / Vanya followed him around SONIA I never knew that, I just… BABS like his own private superhero: "Nature-Man" or whatever. Oh, you should have seen Aster back then. He was so cute. And so serious… SONIA Wait, are you really telling me…? BABS [Going right on…] Just listen. One day when he was 15 or 16 he was just hanging around the house, waiting for Vanya, who was inevitably late for everything—he had an innate knack for pissing people off, even back then— and, well, I don't remember exactly but suddenly we were talking about… life. A real talk. About the environment and nature and The Way Things Are and I remember thinking "Oh, he's way smarter than I am" which I hadn't really known before… And there it was. I was…. interested.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 64 I started noticing when he was around and found ways to… engage him, spend time in odd little ways… and show him a little flash of something or making a just barely off-color comment without seeming to notice… Believe me, putting sex in the room for a 16-year-old boy is no great challenge… SONIA I can't believe I'm even hearing this… BABS Okay, well, this is getting long. So… I seduced him. He thought he seduced me. He probably still thinks that. Hell, knowing him he probably still feels bad about it, feels like he took advantage of me, but I was the one doing the taking. Mostly… SONIA Oh, my God… BABS I'm not saying it was right. What I did. But… life is for living, right? Not running away from. And life just seemed to want this to happen………… SONIA Why are you telling me this? And why haven't you ever told me before? BABS You know what the doctor is…? He's a human being. A flawed, fabulous, broken, ridiculous human being. And I know you think he is… it, the One, the Thing That Could Make Everything Better, but that is almost always a lie. And with him… I know it is. I know its nearly impossible to actually hear what I'm saying, but… I'm right. Move on. The Doctor is Not The Answer. SONIA Then… what happens to all that love? To everything I feel…? BABS It will move forward. Into the world... I know it's hard to see when you're in the middle of it, but this is just a part of the… shape of things. Have a little faith. Have a little gratitude for all the things you've got and… move on… SONIA But Pickles always says… BABS She's wrong. I love her dearly, but… consider the source. Move on… Move forward. Move further into life… It really is the most wonderful adventure. SONIA Wow… [VANYA enters…] BABS Hey. How are you?
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 65 VANYA I have one more thing to tell them. Can I have the room…? BABS Sure… SONIA [To VANYA] Are you / okay? VANYA [To SONYA, a tad abrupt] I'm fine. SONIA Okay. BABS Vanya. VANYA Yeah? BABS Don't do anything stupid. VANYA No more than usual. BABS Okay, then… [To SONIA as they go] Let me make you one of my special concoctions. SONIA I've had your concoctions… BABS Not this one. This one, you'll like… [And they are gone…] 4.2 GONE VANYA [Directly, even urgently, to us] The Joy is Gone. Gone. Oooooops. Bye-bye "Joy". I hardly knew thee… She used to come and go regularly, good old "Joy". Gone for the holidays. Here one odd, rainy morning for a few hours, away for a month, back during nearly all of DOMBEY & SON, gone for my birthday month, back a for crisp weekend in October… fleeting little visits after good meals or a nice chat with an old chum or whatever, but now… Done. No more Joy. Makes getting out of bed on cold mornings nearly inconceivable. Chilly, lonely breakfasts might be the worst first-world problem ever.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 66 [Quick beat…] So, what's the worst thing about your life? What's the hardest thing you have to slog through…? That makes the thought of more endless, impossible days approximately tragic. [And going on, really before anyone has a chance to say anything, which they are unlikely to do quickly…] Come on, it might make us all feel a little better. Perspective. Grass is always greener, etc. [Tiny beat…] No one? Gosh, this must be the happiest, most content group of [actual approximate headcount] people in the world. Oh right, how stupid. You're all here with other people. And while you might think about telling a group of total strangers about the deepest, hardest part of your life, you can't admit it in front of Michael. Or Megan. Or Greg and Susie. Or Mrs. Finkelstein. Because you had dinner with them an hour ago and you never told them that three mornings a week you wake up in despair. Or that if you had to sum up your life in one word it would be… disappointed. Or lost. Or… Or maybe it's just me. Maybe you're all fine, and… Tom and Tim and Terrence and Tabitha and Tariq and Tamisha and Tong Il Han already know everything there is to know about you… Shit. Life life life, huh? Can't live with it, can't… [the next part is implied.] [ASTER enters…] ASTER Hey. VANYA Hey. ASTER So… What's going on here, pal? VANYA Isn't it… painfully obvious? ASTER No. So tell me: What's really wrong? VANYA Everything. ASTER Wow. That's a lot… VANYA Yeah. But there it is. I've been taking a good hard look at my life and
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 67 ASTER …yeah? VANYA as far as I can tell I've done everything wrong. ASTER Everything? VANYA I think so. I think everything… ASTER Not everything. VANYA Yeah, I think so… ASTER C'mon, you can't have done everything wrong. VANYA Everything that matters. Everything real… Yeah, fucking everything. [Quick beat… small change of tone and energy…] ASTER And therefore…? VANYA What? ASTER And therefore…………??? VANYA I heard you, I just don't know / what you ASTER "And therefore, my dear Doctor, I am going to do X… or Y… or Z to change my life. [Beat. Nothing…] "And therefore, my dear old friend, having now finally fully realized the depth of the wrongness of my choices over the past X many years, I now resolve to Y. Or Z. Or W. Or some fucking thing, because I gotta tell you, Vanya, with all due love and respect and genuine affection in the world, there is a limit to the amount of… self-indulgent angst-y wallowing even your nearest and dearest can endure if you don't… you know… at least try to DO SOMETHING / ABOUT IT! VANYA What?! What am I supposed to / do? What the hell… ASTER [Entirely improvised…] Move! Quit your job! Study Egyptian basket weaving or or or Hindu macramé. Buy a bike. Learn to bake. Sell all your belongings on ebay and move to Kenosha, Wisconsin or East Jabip or outer fucking Mongolia! But, Heavens to Murgatroyd, man, IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR LIFE, THEN FUCKING DO SOMETHING / TO MAKE IT BETTER!
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 68 VANYA I'VE TRIED! You think I haven't tried All Those Things? Trips and books and on-line dating and diets and exercise plans. Gyms rejoice when they see me coming because they know I'll pay their exorbitant fees and go exactly three times before I… get a cold or pull something in my groin or just… you know… stop going! Lose energy. Lose momentum. Lose… lose… lose… ASTER …what? VANYA …belief. Okay!? BELIEF!!! Lose the motherfucking BELIEF that I will ever really change, that I will ever be anything other than the over-educated, under-motivated, grumpy, pudgy little troll you see before you, trapped in the endless cycle of his own failure and… lack of will, and and and and... ASTER Give them back. VANYA What? ASTER Give them back. Now. VANYA I don't know / what you're ASTER Don't fuck me around on this, they're prescription pills, you don't have one, I'm your friend, they'll assume I gave them to you and it will be horribly bad for me, so if you really are thinking of doing the stupidest, stupidest, stupidest, stupidest, STUPIDEST fucking thing you could ever do, you are going to need to steal a car and drive off a cliff or or or self-immolate or somefuckingthing, but you are NOT going to do it with pills that can be traced back to me, and you are not going to do it at all because it is ridiculous and insane and there are those of us who actually love you, impossible as you are, and would miss your troll-ish self, so give me back both bottles… take a long hot bath or go for a walk or make some fresh peach ice cream or something, and, you know… buck up. Buck the fuck up and get on with living. This is your ONE LIFE, this is it, this is all you get, EVER. This is not a dress rehearsal for some stupid fucking play or a a a rough draft of that novel you started, the the the "Daily Turtle" or-- VANYA The "Quotidian Tortoise"! ASTER Whatever. This is not some placeholder for life. This is it!
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 69 This is YOUR ONE, OWN, ONLY little life. And you—and only you—can make it better. Surely you can do that. And I will NOT quit calling you Shirley. So deal with that, too, bucko. [It has landed, but not fully. Not well enough. On to step two…] [Calling off stage…] Hey, can you all come out here, please…! [Suddenly the rest of the cast appear en masse and move into positions for the scene that is about to take place. Someone places a chair downstage center facing upstage for VANYA. The rest gather upstage at the table.] VANYA Oh, God. This can't be good… 4.3 WHAT, AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL SORRY FOR YOU? ASTER It's for your own good. This is called "What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" Ready? VANYA As I'll ever be… ASTER Okay then… VANYA Let the games begin… PICK I'll go first. What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? My life is just ridiculous. Everyone calls me Pickles. And has forever. But my real name is Penelope. Do you even know that? Penelope Pickford Grunen. My mom wanted me to be a myth… or a movie star… Not a Pickles. I wanted to be a mom.
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 70 I wanted to be a great artist and make those huge paintings that fill whole walls in museums, not just… stupid wall hangings… and sock puppets and oven mitts to sell at bake sales… but none of that happened. I live above a garage, I lost the only woman I ever loved, and I became… Pickles. SONIA What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? You might be a troll, but I'm a frog. I'm an Un-Bewitched Frog! You know in Fairy Tales the Frog is always bewitched. They were once a prince or princess, but they get bewitched and turned into a frog and then at the end they get turned back into the glorious thing they were… but better now, lesson learned, or whatever... Well, I'm an UnBewitched Frog, because you can kiss me or hurl me against a wall, but there's no turning me back because… I was never something else. I'm just this awkward, uncomfortable, odd little frog… with nice hair and nice eyes. And that's about it… ASTER What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I work my ass off! At my job... and for the world! I work and work and stress and contribute and volunteer for causes, and run 5k's and 10k's for This Disease and That Disaster… and do you know why? Do you? Because if I allowed myself to fully live in relation to how comprehensively fucked everything is, I wouldn't get out of bed in the mornings. So I drink too much and work out too much and sleep with the wrong people and compulsively try to fix everything so I just… won't think about anything. Ever. That's no way to live. VANYA But you just said--…! ASTER I know what I said! Why do you think I want you to get your shit together? Figure it out and send me a fucking map… ELLA What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I'm unhappy, too, you know. And I've done all the things I was told would make me happy! I read, I studied, I went to church and therapy. I have a BA from Amherst, a Masters from Duke, and a PhD. from Northwestern. And I fell head over heels for this brilliant professor; the smartest one, the one I should never have been able to get, and I got him… I got it all…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 71 And none of it has made me happy. So, here I am with a half finished book on phenomenology no human being would ever want to read, a seriously floundering marriage, $150,000 is student loans, and most of the time I just feel lost… just… irretrievably lost. PROF So, what am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I'm on the downhill slope. Of my life. Of my whole fucking life. My health is … not so good, and will not get any better, it seems, so it's all just downhill from here. Which just seems… shocking, and horrible, and utterly unfair. Like someone somewhere has gotten something terribly wrong somehow. Of course we all know death is coming eventually, but knowing it theoretically is one thing, and actually feeling it… slowly encroaching… well that's another thing all together, and… and… and it's scaring the shit out of me, if you want to know the truth. It's scaring the fucking shit out of me. BABS What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Vanya. Bubbie… Life is just life. Life is just exactly life, you know that, right? And we should be grateful every day for the great and mysterious gift that it is. And yet… we find the most extraordinary ways to fuck it all up for ourselves. But I don't think it has to be as hard as we make it, I really don't. Spoiler alert: Most of us won't get everything we want. Most of us won't ever find our beshert... Bad things will happen to good people… and, worse, maybe, visa versa… And yet… I'm trying to live every day like my grandfather—my Zadie Oscar—and eat every morsel of Life I can before I'm through. As my dear friend, Dr. Aster would say… Why not? Why the fuck not? 4.4 ROUND & ROUND [That scene is now over. Light or sound shift. They all sit there a minute, taking all of this in… some wander away… PICKLES picks up her uke…]
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 72 PICK IMAGINE THERE'S NO HEAVEN IT'S EASY IF YOU TRY NO HELL BELOW US ABOVE US ONLY SKY IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE-- VANYA [Interrupting, abruptly to THE PROFESSOR] Robert, I'm sorry. PROF For what? VANYA I'm sorry… I'm sorry… PROF Yes? VANYA That I tried to kill you. I'm sorry that I tried to kill you, all right? PROF Forget it. It's past. You're not going to try again, are you? VANYA No. PROF All right then. Let's move on… VANYA Thank you. I'm an idiot… PROF Yes, well… VANYA Oh, thanks. And you… you're such a schmo, you know that? I mean-- ELLA Vanya. PROF Let's not, okay? VANYA Yeah, okay. Okay. Sorry... [Beat…] PICK IMAGINE THERE'S NO COUNTRIES IT ISN'T HARD TO DO-- VANYA Yeah, okay, so… [To everyone, actors and audience…] Sorry everyone. Sorry for the… you know… shooting… and kvetching and whatnot…
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 73 PICK That's okay. VANYA The thing is… [He finds it hard to go on…] ELLA …yeah? VANYA The thing is… ASTER … what is it, pal? VANYA Okay, look, so… Right, so here's the thing… I think it was my third therapist who said there is only one question in life you ever really need to ask… or answer… And that is: "What Do You Want?" ASTER It's a good question. BABS It's a great question. PICK It's a hard question. ELLA It's an impossible question. SONIA It's an easy question… PROF It's the quintessential question, actually… VANYA So, you know what I really, really want, when all is said and done? Under all the ridiculous moaning and and and… tsuris… you know what I really want? PICK What? VANYA I want to be loved… by everybody… all the time… no matter what. SONIA But… that's not possible. VANYA Since when does that matter? We want what we want no matter why we want it. The last thing that makes any difference is how much sense it makes. PICK That's for sure. ELLA True… ASTER Yeah, that's fair… BABS Amen
LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 74 VANYA And the truth is… I want everyone I meet to love me, totally and entirely, day in and day out, just because I'm me. I want to be loved, just as I am, on my own terms, by everyone, all the time. That's what I want. SONIA But… you can't have that. VANYA I know. That's why life sucks. SONIA No it doesn’t. VANYA Yes it does. SONIA No, it doesn't. VANYA Yes, it does. SONIA Well… I don't think it does. VANYA Well, you're wrong. SONIA No, I'm not. I don't think life sucks. PROF I think it kind of does. ELLA I don't. I don't. I just SO don't want that to be true… PICK I don't think life sucks. I might suck sometimes, but Life doesn't… SONIA Well, I don't think life sucks. I don't. I really don't. And I don't think Pickles sucks, and I don't think my ridiculous Uncle Vanya sucks and… and… and I don't even think I suck. PICK YOU MAY SAY I'M A DREAMER— [SONIA stops her from playing…] SONIA I just think life is … I think life is just… Life is just… Oh, how should I know? [To the audience] What do you think? [Beat. Beat. Blackout…] END OF PLAY

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pdfcoffee.com_life-sucks-pdf-free.pdf

  • 1. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 1 LIFE SUCKS Or THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS By Aaron Posner Sort of Adapted from UNCLE VANYA by Anton Chekhov Draft 3.3 January, 2015
  • 2. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 2 THE CAST Vanya—45. An ruminator. Not attractive. A smart, passionate, insightful, wound-tight failure. Sonia— 24. Kind, caring and quirky. A Good Person. Not attractive or comfortable in her body. Ella—36. Searching, frustrated, hopeful and sad. Very attractive and rampantly desirable. Babs— 64. Vibrant, but understated. Ironic. No nonsense. Good soul, scrappy wit. Savvy… The Professor—62. Big mind, big ego, big vocabulary, small soul. Selfish. Well-meaning. Dr. Aster—52. Broken, beautiful, dissatisfied, savvy and sad. He cares deeply and oddly. Pickles— 40ish. An odd, sweet duck. A relentlessly positive utopian woman. SETTING The world should be a fairly simple, flexible space with multiple areas so that more than one thing can be happening at the same time. There should be space for actors to be when they are not "on stage" or the center of attention but where they can still be (at least partially) seen. The space should feel open, practical, and yet theatrical and even Chekhovian in some way. Since the play is about Love and Longing, that could be reflected in the setting somehow. TRANSITIONS There may well be a group dance of some kind between each of the four acts. NOTES • An / indicates that the next person starts speaking there… • Two names next to each other, without a space, means these lines are simultaneous. • An option N symbol-- ˜-- means it should be tailored to the real actors…
  • 3. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 3 SCENES PROLOGUE Love & Longing! ACT I • ALL THE PEOPLE Scene 1.0 Work Scene 1.1 Uncle Scene 1.2 Topsy-Turvy Scene 1.3 Ridiculous Scene 1.4 3 Things I Love Scene 1.5 Dance Card Scene 1.6 Repudiate ACT II • THE MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Scene 2.0 My Wife Scene 2.1 Change! Scene 2.2 Grey Nose Hairs Scene 2.3 Pre-Abstract Scene 2.4 Lost & Drunk Scene 2.5 Oh. Hello. Scene 2.6 Friends INTERMISSION ACT III • NEEDS Scene 3.0 Incomprehensible Scene 3.1 The Gavotte Scene 3.2 A Way Scene 3.3 Don't Say A Word Scene 3.4 3 Things I Hate Scene 3.5 A Conundrum ACT IV • AFTERMATH Scene 4.0 The Gratitudes Scene 4.1 Not the Answer… Scene 4.2 Gone Scene 4.3 What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Scene 4.4 What I Want
  • 4. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 4 PROLOGUE • LOVE & LONGING! [The cast comes on. They come straight down and talk to the audience…] VANYA Okay, so… SONIA Here we go! BABS [Not without irony…] More art! PICK [Alla Fantasy Island…] Look boss! The play! The play! VANYA [Already mildly annoyed by her…] C'mon, / please… ASTER So, yeah, right, well…. ELLA Thanks for coming. BABS We're the actors. And you, of course, are the audience. PICK We couldn't do this without you. I mean, think about it. Without you, we'd have a kind of… "one hand clapping" situation. VANYA I don't even know / what that PICK Or, I guess, more like NO hands clapping. I mean, without you it's like we don't / even exist VANYA [To PICKLES, gently, but seriously…] Shhhh…. ASTER Right, so... Cell phones off. Exits there and there, no photography or recording, blah blah blah. You all know these things, right? BABS And if you won't suck on hard candies which you unwrap really slowly thinking that we'll hear them less that way, then we promise that we won't either. I don't know what it is about us old Jewish ladies and our hard candies in uncannily loud wrappers, but it's… something… so, if we can just save those till intermission or after the show that would be awesome. SONIA Shakespeare calls his plays our "two hours traffic on the stage…", and while we might / not be able-- ELLA This one might be more like two hours stuck in traffic…
  • 5. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 5 SONIA That's not / what I was-- VANYA [Blurting, cutting her off…] Most of it is going to be about love and longing. Yep. That's right. Love. And Longing... SONIA That's not all it's about. VANYA Pretty much. So you can't say you weren’t / warned. ASTER Well, this is off to a lovely start… PROF It's also about the protean nature of the obstreperous and feckless human heart. PICK [Amazed by his pretentiousness…] Oh, wow… SONIA It's also about… not getting what you want. ELLA Yes. Or getting what you thought you wanted but then… you know… PICK Or the opposite of all that. BABS Or the inverse. PROF Or the contra positive… VANYA What does that / even mean? ASTER It's also about how disastrously, irretrievably fucked up the world is and the insanity of the choices we humans have made for the last four hundred years. SONIA Right VANYA Right. That too… BABS And about loss. [Beat] VANYA Yeah, well, so if you aren't interested in love and longing and loss… ASTER: …uhh…
  • 6. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 6 VANYA …and how fucked up the world is… then you may have, you know… chosen your nights entertainment badly… and you can actually leave right now if you want and you'll get a full refund for your ticket. Plus a dollar… for your trouble… PICK But thanks for coming…! VANYA Or going… BABS Oy vey… ASTER Really, Vanya? VANYA So, okay, we might as well get this fakoktah thing started… [Folks head off stage or into positions to begin…] SONIA [Back to us, in confidence…] Seriously, it's not that bad. Vanya's just... Anyway, you'll see. This is our play. It's called LIFE SUCKS or THE PRESENT RIDICULOUS. Anyway…Thanks for coming. Okay. Everyone ready? Okay, then, off we go…!
  • 7. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 7 ACT I • ALL THE PEOPLE 1.0 WORK [ASTER and BABS are talking and she is quietly drinking very small glasses of vodka. Tiny glasses, but quite often. He is pacing or roaming. Restless...] ASTER You know what my problem is? Do you? BABS [She's thinking…] Ummm… ASTER You know what my fucking problem is? BABS Astound me. ASTER I work too hard. BABS Oh. ASTER I work way too fucking hard. (Sorry, Babs...) BABS (Oh, I don't care...) ASTER People are always, let's go here or let's do this or why don't you take a little break and I'm always, no no no, I can't, I can't, I've gotta work. That's what I say, constantly. "Gotta work." Like the world'll fucking end if I / don't work. BABS You swear too much. ASTER I know, I do. BABS You do. ASTER You drink too much. BABS I do, you're right, I do. ASTER We are none of us perfect. BABS You do work too much. ASTER I know!
  • 8. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 8 BABS But I / don't think-- AST And to what end? I don't have a wife... or, you know... children. And even if I did, money screws kids up nine times out of eleven— [to the audience…] don't Google it, I made it up, but still... cool, sane rich kids are the total exception and we all know it. BABS Want another drink? ASTER No. I have to go. I gotta wo— Did you hear that? I just about said it. It's ridiculous! I can't stop myself. Like some absurd machine... "Gotta work. Gotta work. Gotta work. Gotta work." And do you think people in 100 years will care how hard we worked. I mean maybe a few great geniuses, an artist or two, maybe... But most of us? The normal people. Will anyone care? Not a chance. But still...! And you know what is even crazier than working so hard? BABS Enlighten me. ASTER You know what I do on those rare occasions when I'm not working. BABS You count groundhogs! Or… grouse, or…? ASTER Well, yeah, that, I do do that, but that's not crazy, that's the one sane thing I do, that's my work for the nature conservancy and... [fully realizing what she said] hey, I'm not counting grouse, I'm tracking patterns of population and-- BABS What's the crazier thing? ASTER Sorry? BABS You said you did something crazier than wasting your life working so much. So now, you know... I'm just dying to know what that could be. ASTER I work out. For hours. Sweat my ass off picking stuff up…and putting it down again. Picking it up, putting it down. Picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down… Pushing on things! And pulling on things! And running in place – for hours! There cannot be anything more ridiculous in modern life than a treadmill.
  • 9. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 9 You ever imagine what an alien would think if the first place they saw was a gym. Or worse, some ridiculous doctor in his own little living room just running in place for hours and not getting anywhere. Not generating energy… using it! The fucking thing has to be plugged in! [Bottom line] It costs me money to run with all my strength to get nowhere! BABS You, my friend… You, my dear, dear, dear one, you are the thing that's ridiculous. Do you even know what you're really complaining about? ASTER Ummm… [BABS looks out the window at Ella, and back at ASTER…] BABS You and Vanya both. Just ridiculous… VANYA [Entering awkwardly] And speaking of ridiculous…! Ta-da! [To ASTER and BABS] Excuse me a moment, I'm just going to … [Indicating chatting or engaging in some way with the audience…] … for a moment. Is that okay? ASTER Oh, certainly, don't mind us. We're just waiting for the troops to return from their walk… VANYA Excellent. BABS [To ASTER] 'Nother drink? ASTER Don't mind if I do… [They move elsewhere on stage for a bit…] 1.1 UNCLE VANYA Hello again. I'm Vanya. Or "Uncle Vanya" if you're either Sonia, (which none of you are…), or we went to grade school together where I wore stupid little cardigans and bow ties and was teased incessantly for my… nascent avuncular demeanor. Anyway… Sonia's my dead sister Daphne's daughter. And my roommate. Housemate. (Well, I'm her housemate, technically, since this house was left to her when darling Daphne died…). God, that's a lot of alliteration so early in the play… Anyway, Sonia's my niece. And I'm her Uncle Vanya.
  • 10. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 10 Such a stupid word. "Uncle". What kind of serious word starts with an "Un". Except negational Un's. Such as… Un-happy. Un-popular. Un-fortunate. [He notices how negative all those words are, considers saying something to us about it, thinks better of it…] And then there's the humiliating phrase "Say Uncle", which means, basically, "Give up". So the word itself is synonymous with admitting defeat. You can't be afraid of an Uncle. You can't want to sleep with an Uncle. You can't even really take that much notice of an Uncle. An uncle can practically be defined as He Who Can Be Summarily Dismissed. Anyway… I'm Uncle Vanya. [Beat. Surveys us for a moment. Makes a choice, jumps on in…] Okay, so there's these two guys, right… the schlemiel and the schlimazel. Do you know this? Have you heard this before? Have you? Seriously, have you? [He tries to get a response from the audience. And then controls that response… beginning to set the rules for the audience interaction to come... Either from the audience or from himself he finds his way around to here:] So, yeah, the way I always heard it was this: A schlemiel is a guy, who at a nice restaurant, would accidentally spill a bowl of soup on someone. And a schlimazel... he's the guy the soup would get spilled on. But....... there's another guy. That's right, there's this entirely other guy at the restaurant, too. He also has the soup, although—and here's the thing-- he's really wishing it was the salmon. Or a salad. Or the brisket. But he came here for the soup, and now he has the soup, and before he's even tasted it… he's already disappointed. You see, he'd heard such amazing things about the soup, after months of deliberating he'd finally just... come to the restaurant and ordered it! And now he's here, feeling absolutely certain he's made the wrong decision. Let's call him a schmo. The Uncomfortable Visitor. The Awkward Outsider. The Guy At Odds With The World. The schmo. And that guy… That's not me. Everyone thinks that's me, but it's not. There is a schmo in this play (see if you can figure out who it is. I'll call him schmo towards the end, just to see if were… you know… all on the same page…) but it's not me.
  • 11. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 11 But there's this other guy. This entirely other other guy-- not the schlemiel or the schlimazel or the schmo. This guy doesn't even have a a a funny and oddly descriptive Yiddish name. He's just... he's just Yet Another Other Guy. And this guy… he's not even at the fucking restaurant! No no no, he's just talking about the restaurant, thinking about the restaurant, wondering if he should've opened a restaurant, knowing he'll never open a restaurant, will never even, in all probability, go to the fucking restaurant, but will only languish forever in a tepid of soup of recrimination and self-loathing brought about by the very fact that the restaurant exists, that he could go to it or own it or order from it… and won't. Ever. Not ever. And that's me. Aren't you glad you came today? 1.2 TOPSY-TURVY [THE PROFESSOR, PICKLES, SONIA & ELLA enter from a walk] PROF It's a lovely garden now, Sonia, lovely. I mean, not astonishingly, movingly lovely like Switzerland, like those practically incandescent meadows near the base of the Tschingelhorn in the Bernese Alps, but lovely all the same… SONIA Thanks. I think… PICK It's sometimes hard to tell if you are complimenting us or insulting us… PROF [Cheerily…] Isn't it? ASTER The… shingelhorn…? PROF Tschingelhorn. With a tsch at the beginning… ASTER I've always wanted to go to Switzerland. PICK I love that name. Alps. Alps. Sounds like a… cockney puppy. [Barking it out…] Here, Alps! Alps. Alps! [Quick beat…]
  • 12. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 12 PROF Ella, remember that couple we met at the Tschingelhorn? That terribly skinny Ophthalmologist with the enormous mole … ELLA …gynocologist… PROF …on his face. Oh, yes, gynecologist. Not opthamologist? ELLA No. PROF Climatologist? I feel almost sure / that he — ELLA No. I know the difference between an eye, a vagina and a hurricane. ASTER [Beat] I feel almost certain there's a joke in there somewhere… ELLA Oh. Can you find it? ASTER I'm looking… ELLA Well go on… [Prompting him…] vagina, vagina, vagina… PROF Yes, well, Gynecologist. As the poet says: Instabilis est memoriae amici. Anyway, I swear, you could not have a conversation / with this man VANYA What does that mean? PROF Sorry? VANYA What does that mean? You know none of us speak Latin, why / would— PROF "The memory is a fickle friend". It's from Virgil. VANYA Than why the hell didn't / you just say… PROF Anyway, you could NOT speak with this… person… VANYA [overlapping] …isn't language designed to communicate, not to… PROF without staring right at this incredible mole. I swear, it was not humanly possible. And he had a stutter, which I'm sure he developed in response to people staring at his… m-m-m-monolithic m-m-m-mole whenever he talked. ELLA [She's been thinking…] Maybe he was a dermatologist…
  • 13. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 13 PICK Oh, I've never been anywhere… PROF Well, you must go! PICK Where? PROF Anywhere! Travel! It's the only the thing! VANYA Fascinating. Yesterday you said learning was the only thing. Two nights ago at dinner you said a great meal was the only thing. How many / only things… PROF Did someone say something? I heard a buzzing… a / gnat or… a fly or a… VANYA Yes, ha ha, very funny, very witty ha ha ha… PROF Travel is enlightening. It lets you know who you are and what really matters. You can never really understand where you are until you leave. VANYA And you understand, do you? Where you are? PROF I believe I do, yes. VANYA Where the hell are you, then? No, seriously, I really want to know. Where are you? From what great height do you presume to pontificate and / lecture us PROF [Quick beat Then beating the air…] There it is again, that annoying gnat… VANYA I'm serious, we've been listening to you hold forth for / all these years and I ELLA Oh, please please please, just stop it… SONIA Uncle Vanya, please don't… VANYA All right. Down, boy, down! Heel! I musn't talk, never ever talk! [Quick beat…] BABS [Pleasantly] You've really become quite a pompous old shit, haven't you? PROF Oh, yes, yes… or so my friends are fond of telling me... BABS [A friendly, positive toss-away…] Perceptive friends.
  • 14. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 14 PROF [Getting a tad huffy…] All right, now, / Babs, if there's something / you want PICK Well, I thought that was a lovely walk. BABS Oh? PICK I should walk more. Just…walk… BABS Did you enjoy your walk, Ella? ELLA Oh yes. [Mildly ironic…] Spectacular. PICK You know, walk all over the land, and just… look at things… and see what's out there in the wide, wide world, you know? VANYA How is it, Pickles, that nothing you say ever… leads anywhere? You speak, I hear you, its perfectly reasonable and all, but I never have anything to say in return. And neither does anyone else. You're a conversation annihilator! PICK [Quick beat…] Well, it takes all different kinds of trees to make a forest. [Beat. Everyone just looks at everyone else…] ELLA Well, I'm going to take a nap. PROF [Pretend sotto voce] That's code for "I'm bored." ELLA It's not code. I'm bored. I'll be in bed if anyone needs me… [That image has the intended/unintended effect on the room… ASTER looks out the audience and mouths "holy shit" as she leaves…] PROF Well, back to work. See you all for dinner if I don't die in the meantime. I'll leave now so you can all talk about my wife behind her back… [He leaves…] BABS I'm gonna get back to work, too. I'll be in my studio… [She leaves…] VANYA [To SONIA] What the hell are they doing here? SONIA [Back to VANYA] I don't know VANYA How long are they staying? SONIA I have no idea.
  • 15. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 15 VANYA You have no idea why they're here, or… SONIA No. He just said they were coming and could they stay a bit… VANYA Oy… SONIA I'll be back soon. VANYA Where are you going? SONIA Shopping. We need something for dinner. And she needs more fizzy water. [SONIA leaves… VANYA, ASTER & PICKLES are left standing there…] 1.3 RIDICULOUS VANYA Oh my God, it's ridiculous... PICK What is? VANYA The air seems to just… leave the room with her when she goes... PICK Who, Sonia? VANYA No, you idiot… Ella. PICK Oh. Yeah… ASTER She does... draw the eye. VANYA Like a light has been turned off somewhere. [PICKLES looks around at the light a moment…] ASTER How long have they been married? VANYA Oh, God, I don’t know. Eight years. Six. Nine. I don’t know… PICKLES She isn't even really that pretty, really. I mean—she's pretty and everything… but she's not even really that pretty, you know…? ASTER She's very…
  • 16. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 16 PICKLES Yeah VANYA She's making me crazy. ASTER [Smiling. Clearly reaching way, way back…] Like what's her name… VANYA Who? ASTER Whatsername. Who lived on…umm… Clarke Street. VANYA Linberger? ASTER No! With the accent… and the "ducky waddle baby butt"? VANYA Claire…! (Jesus, how do you remember / what we called…) ASTER Yeah, right, Claire Carter, Jesus... PICKLES [Coming off of looking at her… and alluring, still…] Like a smoothie. VANYA What? ASTER What? PICKLES She reminds me of a smoothie. ASTER Huh. PICKLES Or an ocelot. VANYA What the hell are you talking about? PICKLES No, seriously. Like the World's Sexiest Ocelot… ASTER That’s good. That's close, I think. [Trying it…] A really sexy ocelot… VANYA Well, she's making me batshit crazy. ASTER Is she faithful? VANYA To what? ASTER To him.
  • 17. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 17 VANYA Why? ASTER No reason. VANYA What do you care? ASTER I don't. But is she? VANYA How should I know? It's hard to imagine, though. I mean… look at him! PICK What about him? VANYA He's awful! So absurdly… self-obsessed. Like the rest of us are beneath his notice. Like while he's talking to you he's really looking in a mirror. PICKLES Huh. I think he's really smart. VANYA You know what he teaches? You know what his specialty is in his rarified little enclave of academic elitism and self-aggrandizement? ASTER No, actually. You always just call him The Professor, so I don’t— VANYA Ironically! You get that right?! I call him The Professor IRONICALLY! ASTER Yes, of course. But still… VANYA Semiotics. Semitoics! PICK That's the study of… big trucks? VANYA Signs! Symbols! Clues! It's the study of clues!!! PICK My bad… VANYA I mean… why? Who gives a fuck? I have a sign for him: STOP! Stop "studying" things that no real person in the real world could ever imagine caring about! At least esoteric sciences can lead to… you know… new kinds of wheat or or or or or better drugs or bicycles or whatever, but
  • 18. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 18 Christ On A Cracker, endless impassioned arguments about--- look, I stole this article he wrote from his room to try to get some… here… here… "Semiotic Phenomenology & The Relational Constitution of Presence" Hello? Oh, and wait, there's a subtitle, thank God, this will really clear things up: "Thematizing the Problematic through Human Speech Praxis " PICK Practice? VANYA No! Praxis! PICK Wow… VANYA I mean… WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!?! PICK Presence? Or Presents…? VANYA [Beat] What?!? PICK I'm saying, Presence, like… being here in this room… Or Presents, like… wrapped up for Christmas with a bow? VANYA [Beat] What possible difference does it make?!?! PICK Umm…They're/completely different… VANYA It's a vast conspiracy that costs real people gazillions of dollars each year. Academics! Privileged, arrogant fuckers arguing endlessly about esoteric minutiae so stunningly meaningless and rampantly unimportant that even they could not possibly care themselves, except that if they ever told anyone how little they cared they couldn't continue the absurd conspiracy of getting generations of over-privileged eighteen-year-old sparrow-farts to pay them and praise them and give them tenure and spend their time and our money arguing endlessly about… "The Phenomenology of Whatever-The-Fuck" and giving each other awards and making the rest of us feel like uncultured boobs and morons because we don't give a shit! [Pause…] PICK So you're not a big fan of his work? VANYA Shut up. ASTER So, I take it you're saying she is faithful to him.
  • 19. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 19 VANYA Yes, I think so. Which is another absolute horror in and of itself. ASTER Her fidelity? VANYA Yes. Absolutely. It's morally repugnant. It's against nature. It's like -- PICK No. VANYA [Taken aback…] I'm sorry? PICK No. That's not right. Fidelity is fidelity. It's constancy. It's a commitment and it's to be honored, not mocked. Not mocked. You all make fun of me and I get it, I do, I guess I'm a little ridiculous, and maybe I'd make fun of me too if I were someone else, but I know about fidelity, / and I… VANYA Oh, God, Pickles, I'm not talking / about your... PICK I gave her my heart. I gave her my whole heart and we made each other a vow and I have been true to that vow / because VANYA But that was twenty years ago…! PICK Seventeen. VANYA Whatever. [A throw away…] I'm not doing this again… PICK [Turning abruptly to us in the audience instead…] Iris was the love of my life and, yes, she left me after three months / and change, and VANYA Don't just tell them, that's not fair…! PICK everyone is always saying to me—move on. "It's time to move on". That's the exact phrase that everyone uses, like some agreed upon plan: "It's time to Move On!" VANYA Because it is! ASTER It really is… PICK But here's the thing: I can't. I can't "move on". How can I? Because that love is still there. It still sits… right there. [Pointing at her heart or gut or soul…]. I don't know how you all [and she is talking simultaneously to the other actors
  • 20. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 20 and the audience…] can just go from one lover to another to another to another, I don't, not if that love is real. Not if it's real. Love is love and it stays forever. I think. I think it stays forever. VANYA No one is saying— ASTER I don't think— PICK I don't even know what people mean when they say "Oh, yeah, we really loved each other back then…" or "Yeah, I used to really love her" cause I just think: Where did that love go? Because I don’t know about you, but I still love everyone I've ever loved. Everyone I've ever loved, I still love. [She starts crying right about here…] And I think I always will. The truth is… I don't know how to stop. And… and the other truth is… I don't want to stop. My love for Iris is real. And I don't want to move on. I'm just fine where I am, thank you very much. I'm just fine right here… 1.4 3 THINGS I LOVE… [The actors all come on together and talk right to us…] BABS This scene is called: Three things I love. [Beat] I think you'll figure it out. VANYA Bad ice cream. Like really cheap ice cream sandwiches and those crappy cones wrapped in paper with chocolate and nuts on top—like Drumsticks or Nutty Buddies or whatever. Just really great, really bad ice cream. ELLA Old barns; ancient churches; abandoned buildings; all the old, empty, quiet spaces of the world… PROF An elegant string quartet weaving impossibly sublime music out of midair… BABS The crisp clink of cubes of ice in a really sturdy glass… and what follows… SONIA Kindness. Tiny, meaningless acts of kindness.
  • 21. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 21 ASTER Putting my ears under the bathwater… that empty, muffled, drowning sound when you're the only creature on the planet for a hot, damp moment... ELLA Yes… I love that, too… PICK [Still pulling herself together…] Umm… berry cobbler, I guess… VANYA A cool, cool pillow on a hot, hot night… BABS Dirt boys in boots who played the drums... God, I loved to nibble on those. PROF Her fingertips just softly brushing my arm or face, just… casually…lovingly… but in a way where everyone else in the room knows she is… mine. PICK Audrey Hepbern. I mean… just the idea of Audrey Hepbern, right? BABS Right… SONIA Kittens. [Off of the reaction] I know, I know, but seriously… kittens. ELLA Tiny, dangerous boats. VANYA The really stupid jokes kids love. Like "Where does a General keep his armies?" "In his sleevies." Or "What did one wall say to the other? I'll meet you at the corner!" Those kinds of jokes… PICK That face people make when they're really listening and want you to keep talking… not because they have something to say and they want you to finish, but when they truly want to hear what you have to say. ASTER Really big, really ancient, really amazing Trees. ELLA That mysterious, unnamable moment when an orgasm becomes inevitable… PROF Being right. Winning. And genuine approbation. [Tiny beat] Look it up. SONIA Fairy tales. BABS Adventures. ASTOR Ocelots. [SONIA suddenly steps forward. Everyone else leaves…]
  • 22. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 22 1.5 DANCE CARD SONIA [To us] Do you know who all these people are? I was afraid it might be a bit confusing so I thought maybe I could give you a kind of… guide… or dance card... So, I'm Sonia, and this is my house, I guess. Pretty much. I mean it is, but… I live here with my Uncle Vanya, my mother's little brother… and Babs, whose my aunt. Well, not my actual aunt, but my mother's best friend from college, and she was living here since before I was born, so…. Her real name is Bathsheba, but no one calls her that. She's a potter. A "Ceramic Artist." She made this [the mug she's holding]. She actually does pretty well, I guess, because she travels a lot, sometimes for months at a time. Just disappears. "Off on an adventure…" she says, and she's gone. My mother died when I was 11. Breast cancer. So… So Vanya and Babs are my… extended family, I guess-- Oh, and Pickles! Geez! I forgot her, but she lives here, too. She's Vanya's step-half sister… or half step sister… so she's actually kind of my aunt, too, but I don't think of her as an aunt as much as I do Babs, who isn't actually my aunt. Weird… Anyway, she lives in the apartment over the garage and she works at a Group Home for people with… you know… challenges. And she makes crafty things. She made this… [Holds up a thing…] She's been here forever, but I still forget her all the time. Sorry…! Dr. Aster is Uncle Vanya's oldest friend. They grew up together and he lives less than a mile away. Nine hundred and fifty one steps, actually. More or less. Anyway... Sometimes he's here a lot, sometimes not. Just now, he is. The one Vanya calls The Professor—that's my father. Dad. He and his third wife, Ella, have been here for a few days now. My mother was his first wife… but they all stayed close, and I guess they're… kind of visiting? Actually, it's all a little tense. Family, right? It's like everyone is hard-wired to totally upset everyone else. [PICKLES enters the kitchen, unseen, makes a snack…] Like, at breakfast yesterday I started imagining everyone had these buttons on their backs… like on an old blender, those solid push buttons. Blend, Whip, Spindle, Mutilate, whatever. But these were like… Annoy… Provoke… Poke-At-Painful-Old-Wound. Things like that. [Leaning in…] The things is—
  • 23. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 23 PICK Do you think love lasts forever? SONIA I'm sorry…? PICK Do you think love is real? A force. A real, actual, substantial thing in the world… like a rock… or selfishness… or do you think it's just an artificial man-made construct like religion… or football? SONIA Oh, man, really? PICK Yes, really. SONIA I think it's real. Like a rock. [Discovering this idea more fully as she goes…] Exactly like rock, actually. Solid… weighty… hard… and painful in a variety of awful and humiliating ways… PICK That's what I think! SONIA Well, okay then…. PICK [Abruptly] Did you know that this play is called LIFE SUCKS? SONIA [This is getting awkward…] Ummm… yes. PICK Do you think that's right? SONIA Oh Pickles… PICK Do you think life sucks? Do you think that that's… accurate? SONIA Pickles we're not even at the end of Act 1 PICK 'Cause I don't. [Turning out to include us, too…] I don't think that title is right and I just want you to know that I didn't choose it… and furthermore, that I repudiate it. SONIA But--- PICK That sounds funny. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Repudiate. Is that a word? SONIA Yes.
  • 24. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 24 PICK Does it mean… to deny. To reverse. To… erase? SONIA I think so. [To us] Does it? [Hopefully the audience answers positively…] PICK Okay, good. Well, then, I repudiate that title. Sure, life is hard, life is tricky. And it can be really unfair and frustrating and, you know… deeply problematic sometimes. Right? Right? SONIA Right. PICK But life does not suck. I just wanted to get that on the record. Not that there's a record or whatever, I know that, but I wanted to get that on the record anyway… [She starts to walk away…] Life does not suck. Life does not suck. Life does not suck. [PICKLES is gone. SONIA is alone on stage…] SONIA End of Act I. END ACT I
  • 25. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 25 ACT II • THE MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT 2.0 MY WIFE [Late that night THE PROFESSOR and BABS are drinking. He's in some pain, maybe in his joints or his body overall. It is hard for him to get comfortable...] PROF My wife. My third wife… BABS Yes… PROF This fascinating… this captivating… this insanely alluring creature… BABS … yes? PROF Hates me. BABS Oh? PROF And loves me… BABS Of course… PROF I mean, she must love me a little, or she wouldn’t have married me, right? BABS Absolutely. PROF But, no, beyond any question, she hates me now, too. As only a wife can… A kind of… glacial… long-simmering… cat-footed little hatred… a glowing- embers-long-into-the-night kind of hatred. BABS Gosh… PROF I don’t know what she was thinking. I mean, look at me... BABS Ummm… PROF No, seriously, look at me. This is what I look like. Exactly this. This is me. BABS Yes it is. PROF And trust me, I didn’t look much better when we met, in case you were wondering… or excusing… or judging…
  • 26. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 26 BABS I wasn't… PROF No, maybe not. Maybe that's why I can talk to you. You don't judge, do you? BABS Not much, no. PROF Why is that? BABS Oh… PROF No, seriously, why? BABS Oh, my 20's, I guess. After a certain quantity of unnecessarily stupid choices and thoughtless acts—some with real consequences—I decided one probably ought to relinquish the right to judge others for anything… PROF I see. [Quick beat] Were these… indiscretions of—? BABS Oh shhhh. No stories. Besides, you're asking for the wrong reasons. Anyway, you were saying? About you and your wife and how you look…? PROF Oh. Oh, yes… Well, here's the thing. Here's the odd little lacuna of my life… BABS Lacuna? PROF Umm… unfilled, unknown space. Puzzle. Gap… BABS Gotchya. PROF Ready? BABS Astound me. PROF I don’t look like this in my mind. BABS No? PROF Not even close.
  • 27. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 27 BABS Really? PROF Absolutely. BABS So… what do you look like in your mind? PROF Better. Much better. My self-image is… amazingly better than the reality. Even as I speak to you, at this precise moment, when I picture in my mind what you're looking at, though I know for a fact that you are seeing… this [gestures to himself]… what I imagine is something much closer to… *oh, Sean Connery circa The Untouchables, maybe… or Alan Rickman in Sense & Sensibility… rather than… a slightly bloated, badly-aging Bill Maher.* Whereas—and here is the oddest part of my much-maligned married life— I'm afraid my wife's self-image works unrelentingly in the opposite direction. BABS Really? PROF Absolutely. Shockingly, her self-image leads her to perceive herself much less like the *near-Kate-Blanchet-like siren that she really is, and more like a… sweaty, disheveled Chelsea Clinton after 10K charity run for Africa...* BABS You are such— PROF [Ignoring her, going on…] And what I think happened here is… well, I think her self-image somehow fell in love, ass over teacup, with my self-image. So when people meet us they tend to think "What the fuck?"— which I have to tell you is not a great deal of fun when you see it play so rampantly across the faces of people you are being introduced to for the first time over and over and over again. But… if they could see us as we so oddly see ourselves… then they'd probably think: "Hmm. Seems about right." BABS Well, that's… that's quite a— 2.1 CHANGE! ELLA [ELLA enters, sees him…] Oh, hey… You're still awake? Hi Babs. BABS Hi. [Getting up right away…] And bye… ELLA You don't have to go.
  • 28. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 28 BABS Oh, yes I do. It's late. Nighty-night you two love birds. See you in the morn. ELLA Good night. [BABS leaves slightly awkwardly…] What were you two / talking PROF Nothing. ELLA Oh, God, were you really talking about us? PROF No, no, I was just ELLA Robert… PROF I just can't— I can't quite believe that it's come to this. It's like everything I touch eventually turns to shit, I / can't catch ELLA Well, that's awfully sweet of you… PROF a break, and I end up feeling horrible most of the time, trapped in an insupportable, perdurable miasma / of lost ELLA Oh, please just talk! Don't… write it! Just / say it! PROF This is me! This is how I talk. This is who / I am! ELLA Then change! Try to change for the better! For me! PROF You change! You try! Try— you know— LIKING ME, for instance! ELLA Oh, Lord Almighty, I love you, you fucking idiot, but that doesn't mean you automatically get a free pass on / every annoying PROF So you don't like the way I talk? You really want me to change how I talk?!? ELLA Yes! I do. I really do. You don't talk to people any more, you talk at them, or or or through them, or… or over their heads in order to humiliate them. PROF Oh, please…! ELLA [Going right on…] What was that with Vanya today, with the Virgil quote? PROF That? That was a perfectly apropos reference / that was appropriate
  • 29. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 29 ELLA Oh please! You did it to shame him. You rubbed your Virgil in his face like an old dead fish! You've gotten meaner, Robert, you / have. PROF That's a stupid thing to say. ELLA It's not! When did you become such a… flagrant prick? You weren’t always this way, were you? Or were you, and I just couldn't see it? PROF [Truly taken aback…] I have no idea how to answer a question that asinine. ELLA There's contempt in your voice these days, Robert, and that can't be a good thing. Vanya can be as annoying as it gets, but he's not an idiot and he's not the devil, and we're trying to make nice here, / not piss everyone off. PROF [Agreeing sheepishly, perhaps…] I know, I know, you're right, you're right… ELLA And I'm sorry if your whole life has "gone to shit", but I'm still part of that life / and I'd appreciate it PROF That's not what I meant…! ELLA if you'd pull your head out of your ass and make a fucking effort! PROF Oh, God, I don't feel well. ELLA [Having tread this path before…] No, no of course not… PROF It's not my fault. I'm all achy… ELLA Did you have dinner? PROF No. I couldn't bear the idea… ELLA Oh, great, I get the Trifecta: Sick, tired and hungry. Now you'll be cruel on top / of being cranky and pouty PROF Oh, I'm so sorry if my pain is inconvenient to you! ELLA so you'll be completely unbearable. PROF I thought I was already completely / unbearable. Aren’t you--
  • 30. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 30 ELLA More unbearable, extra, super-duper unbearable why in God's name would you choose that to pick a fight about / in the wee hours… PROF Go to bed, then, go / to bed.. ELLA You go to bed! You go! PROF Oh, so you can go chat with Vanya! Or / the doctor! Or ELLA Oh, please, you are so pathetic... PROF I am, I am pathetic, I love you / so much, and I know you ELLA Oh, God, no, not that, please anything but that small, clingy, ingratiating horseshit, do you want to drive me / away forever…? PROF I know, I know, I'm sorry, / I just ELLA You're so infuriating! I'm going for a walk! / Good-night! PROF Wait, come back, I— [She is gone] 2.2 GREY NOSE HAIRS PROF [Abruptly to us…] Well, that didn't go well. You know what I hate worst about aging? About turning into an old man... ? You get a little pain. A little… condition. Some insignificant nothing, but it hurts, so now you can't exercise, so you gain a little weight, and that's depressing, so you drink a little more scotch, or eat a little more ice cream or indulge whatever your particular predilection may be to stave off the encroaching depression, and the awful cycle has begun… more pain, more weight, more indulgence, more depression, pain, weight, indulgence, depression, and on and on and on and… Same thing psychologically, right? One day you just feel kind of… old. Or wrinkled. So you get a little low, a little insecure. Which is less attractive. And you see it in her eyes—she sees you're insecure. So you get more insecure. So you retreat. So she retreats. Or attacks. So you attack! You overcompensate. And she fucking hates that.
  • 31. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 31 And so on and so on till death… or divorce… or disdain… or the most common of all the awful D's… disengagement. And then there you are. The rest of your life. And it sucks. All because of a gouty knee. Or grey nose hairs. Or any of the thousand and one tiny indignities of the irreparably aging human body. It isn't fair. And it isn't kind. It is, however, sadly inevitable. But the thing is… the key thing you have to understand about life is this: [Beat. Beat…] Oh, fuck it, I'm too tired. I'm gonna take some pills and see what dreams may come to visit this decaying mortal coil... Nighty-night. 2.3 PRE-ABSTRACT [Scene shifts. ELLA & VANYA enter, mid-conversation. He is more following ELLA than walking with her. She is agitated and frustrated. It is late…] ELLA Why aren't you asleep? VANYA Why aren't you? ELLA I wish I were. VANYA I wish I were pre-abstract. ELLA What? I mean—what??? VANYA That's what I wish. I wish I lived before the dawn of abstraction. ELLA [Puzzling through a quick beat before…] What does that even mean? VANYA Imagine The Garden, before… you know, before the snake fucked the goose and we all got kicked out on our metaphorical asses. ELLA Are you drunk? VANYA Some.
  • 32. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 32 ELLA Oh, God… VANYA Doesn't that sound wonderful? To be pre-abstract. Think about it! ELLA Is this another of your ridiculous-- because I have a pedicure a year from Thursday, so I might not have / time to fully… VANYA I'm just saying: The Apple is Abstraction. ELLA Which apple? VANYA THE Apple. Eve's apple. What other app--? ELLA Ah, Eve. VANYA I mean—knowledge of Good and Evil? Please, what does that even mean? But the dawn of the capacity for abstract thought…? Okay, imagine you've spent your entire existence living in the present—in the moment—in the perpetual, instinctual NOW of the animal kingdom… ELLA Okay. VANYA …and then suddenly, somehow, Boom! Abstract thought! Just like that! (Like when my father used to wake me up for a trip he would walk into my room, four AM, turn on the light, tear the comforter off the bed and yell "get up!" ELLA Jesus… VANYA Yeah, I know, but effective! Welcome to the fucking world! Good luck!) So I imagine the Dawn of Abstraction like that. There you are in your pre- dawn REM sleep, dreaming of simple things like muffins and blow jobs and then… Shwannk!!!!! Good Morning Death and Complexity! Somehow we woke up to Abstraction and there we were—hurled unwittingly into the impossible early morning light of existence by our own ridiculous brains! You see what I'm saying…? ELLA I understand the idea, but I don't / know what VANYA Because the truth is… I don't really want to know that I'm going to die! Why would I want that? Why would anyone??? I don't want to be able to to to to extrapolate possible futures or ruminate on the ridiculous choices of my past or or or be bound by man-made constructs like fidelity or morality or…
  • 33. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 33 I fantasize about a life before I knew how to fantasize… ELLA [A positive, thoughtful response, finally…] That's… VANYA I wish to God (in whom I emphatically do not believe…) that I could just live my life blissfully in the present-- The Ridiculous Present-- of wanting to eat that delicious thing… or make love to that beautiful woman… or sleep in that shady spot and just… you know… be content. Just… content. ELLA [With real warmth for the first time] I must say… content does sound nice… VANYA Run away with me. ELLA Oh, Lord… VANYA Walk out the door with me and never look back. ELLA What are you doing? VANYA Living in the Ridiculous Present! ELLA You ruin everything, you know that? You're like Shiva… VANYA Isn't that a restaurant? ELLA It's the Hindu God of Destruction. VANYA I knew that. ELLA You're like a terrible little six-year-old on the playground. "I want that!" "Mine!" "Mine!" "Mine!" And if you can't have it—if some other little devil already has it-- you throw a tantrum. VANYA So I'm like a six-year-old God of Destruction, is that right? A Child Shiva? Is that the story you want to tell yourself to protect yourself from the truth? ELLA What truth? VANYA That I'm your beshert. I'm the other part of your soul. I could not feel what I feel for you if we were not connected somehow. If there weren't something important and… true... between us. You must feel that…
  • 34. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 34 ELLA I don't. VANYA You must. ELLA You're an idiot. VANYA That's immaterial. ELLA [She starts to go, maybe kind of laughing…] I don't believe you…! VANYA Believe me! Trust me. Love me…! ELLA Shut up! Would you please just shut up, leave me alone, and learn to live in this broken, "ridiculous", post-abstract world. Life is hard. Love is hard. Days are long and hard, and death, like it or not, is coming for all of us the day after tomorrow, more or less. Now pull yourself together, get your tongue off the floor, stop acting like a lovesick poodle, and do something useful for SOMEONE ELSE, for God's sake. Be a Person! How's that for beshert?!? [She storms away. He waits a beat. Looks at us.] VANYA Isn't she wonderful? You see it, right? She has a big soul. Or do we always just say that to justify our lusts and longings… Like reading Playboy for the articles. Or discussing the excellence of Scarlett Johansson's acting. Or… But I would die for her. Do you think she likes me, deep down? Do you think I have a chance? Seriously. I'm asking. Seriously… [They answer. Or don't. If they do, maybe there is a real discussion about Unrequited Love or Mismatched Love or Unbalanced love or… After the conversation has run its course, he yells to the wings…] Next! 2.4 LOST & DRUNK [SONIA and ASTER walk on in mid conversation…] SONIA But that's not an answer.
  • 35. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 35 ASTER Oh, God, I don't know… Because I wish to, okay? SONIA No, I know… but why? ASTER [As they get to the stage, perhaps…] Ah, but why not? SONIA Excuse me? ASTER That's the real question. That’s always the real question… "Why not?!" SONIA But… ASTER After… half-time… the real questions are the "Why Not's", not the "Why's"… "Why's" are practical. "Why Not's" are more… poetic. Why not quit your job? Why not… drink the rest of that Vodka? (Oh, don't mind if I do…) [And he does…] Why not… you know… throw yourself off that silly old bridge? Fun little questions like that… SONIA You sound so…sad ASTER [Overlapping] Wise? [Then, having heard her] Oh. Well. Yeah… SONIA But why are you sad? Why? ASTER Why not? SONIA Seriously. ASTER [Mock realizing what she meant…] Oh, seriously… SONIA Please. ASTER Life is a glorious cycle of song A medley of extemporanea And love is a thing that can never go wrong And I am Marie of Romania SONIA Seriously, please… ASTER Okay. Ummm… I can't… I can't… care so much. I just find it kind of hard to… you know… care. I had my appendix out when I was eight, so / maybe SONIA You don't have any… passion? For anything? Or… anyone?
  • 36. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 36 ASTER Global warming. The utter insanity of a world built on destructive, irreplaceable fossil fuels. Babs, in my own odd way. And an ancient little basset hound my neighbor has named Mr. BasilWorthy. That's about it… SONIA I have a friend… ASTER Oh? SONIA And she's… well, a little obsessed, I'm afraid, with a man maybe a bit like you. Successful… handsome, charming… slightly eccentric, maybe, but with many positive virtues. But older and still unsettled. And drinks, too, like you. ASTER [Joking-ish…] You're not just talking about me, are you? SONIA No! No, no, not at all. That would be creepy. ASTER Oh, okay. Sorry. SONIA But—anyway-- he doesn't seem to notice her… you know… as… a woman. ASTER Ah. And…? SONIA What should she do? I don't think she wants to love him, but I don't think she can help it. I don't want to overstate it, but it's kind of… you know… ASTER What? SONIA Ruining her life. It's kind of ruining her life. So what would you advise her to do? ASTER Is she pretty? SONIA No. ASTER Oh. Not at all? SONIA Not so much. [Quick beat] Nice hair. Nice eyes… ASTER Too bad.
  • 37. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 37 Drink more. Think less. And run away from him as fast as she can. He sounds like a fucking nightmare. If he's anything like me he's a perfect recipe for disaster. I'm… a trap. You know what my second ex-fiancée called me? SONIA No. ASTER "A perfect lover in everyway except all the most important ways." SONIA That sounds bad. ASTER 'Bout as bad as it gets. SONIA So, my mother used to tell me that our house was full of Radiant Invisible Butterflies. And every so often she'd call a Hunt and a wild family excursion for Radiant Invisible Butterflies (or R.I.B.'s) would be on. I was really young, but I remember these episodes quite clearly. They were… high points. But when I got older—I don't know, maybe 7 or 8, maybe 9, I finally asked her The Question. The Big One: Were they real? Were there really Radiant Invisible Butterflies fluttering around our house? Were there really? ASTER And what did she tell you? SONIA She told me that they were either real… or not real… she wasn't sure which… but she preferred the world where they were real, because the world of possibility and discovery is so much more… intriguing and so much more exciting… so… Why Not Just Go Ahead and Believe? ASTER Ummm… [Not mean, but…] I'm not sure I quite / understand your SONIA She told me the real question wasn't, why believe in them… but Why Not? Why Not? You see? ASTER Listen: Tell your friend… Run Away. Fast… Good night. [He leaves] SONIA Oh. My. God. "I have a friend"? And butterflies? "Invisible butterflies"? Where did that even come from? Did it even make any sense?
  • 38. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 38 I just told him some… insane story about Radiant Invisible Butterflies when all I wanted to say was "please, please, please, take me upstairs right now, tear my stupid clothes off my stupid body with your teeth and fuck me so hard and so well and so long that that that… that the bed breaks, and the universe disappears, and the sun stops in its rotation to see what all the fuss is about and the world comes crashing to a stop and our epic, ridiculous, sublime love-making is the last thing that the universe ever knows." And instead I made up some story about invisible butterflies in a pathetic attempt to let him know I understand him and that he could do with me as he would… and I could see, totally clearly in his face that he didn't get the message. Not even close. It never even occurred to him because he cannot see me as a woman. Because the women that are real to him aren't like me… [ELLA enters upstage somewhere…] They're a lot more like her… 2.5 OH. HELLO ELLA Oh. Hello. SONIA [Gently mocking…] Oh. Hello. ELLA Am I interrupting? SONIA No. I mean—no. ELLA Are you all right? SONIA Of course. ELLA Really? SONIA No. I mean… yes, of course. ELLA You seem... SONIA What? ELLA I don’t know. Do you want to… talk to me about it? I would so like us to be friends but I can't help but feel… SONIA Yes…?
  • 39. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 39 ELLA …that you sort of… SONIA What? ELLA Hate me. I can't help but feel you sort of hate me. SONIA I do! I do hate you, I hate you so much I can barely stand to look at you. Except that I'm just a little bit in love with you, too…. Or infatuated… or bewitched like everyone else, and of course I envy you absurdly, and I'm feeling restless and reckless tonight because… nevermind… and I want to… to… to slap you hard right across the face but then also bring you a rum and coke and talk with you on the carpet with our shoes off until 4am and tell you all about everything that is pushing on my soul to the bursting / point and… ELLA Okay. Okay. Good. Let's start with the slap. SONIA What? ELLA Let's start with the slap. I understand you perfectly and I'm thrilled you're finally talking to me and I think the only thing for it is that we do just as you suggest but I don't think any of it can happen without the slap, so… ready? SONIA You're my stepmother. I'm not going / to just slap ELLA I am not leaving this room until you slap me hard, just once, right across / the face. SONIA Are you crazy? Why would I slap you? ELLA Let's not waste time, I want the rum and coke and the girl talk so --! SONIA [SONIA slaps her once, HARD, right across the face. She is immediately astounded at what she has done…] Oh my God! ELLA [Surprised more than hurt, but still…] That hurt! SONIA Oh God! I'm so, so sorry! ELLA That hurt! SONIA Are you okay?
  • 40. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 40 ELLA No, I'm not okay! You just slapped me / across the damn face! SONIA I know! I did! I really did! ELLA How did it feel? SONIA Great! ELLA Good. SONIA How did it feel to you? ELLA It hurt! It's still stinging. But I'm still totally glad you did it. Now go! SONIA Go? ELLA Go get me a rum & coke! And get one for yourself, too. SONIA Oh. Okay. ELLA And then I want to hear all about it. SONIA Ummm… ELLA Go. SONIA Okay. I… ummm… okay! [She goes] ELLA [To us] That really hurt. But in a nice way. That's weird… I like her. I think she's a good person. She's like… an avocado. You know? Kind of good and good for you and a with a kind of weird texture… I don't know what made my think that. I've never compared anyone to a fruit—or vegetable—before. But I think it kind of makes some odd kind of sense… [To the audience, actually] Is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable? [She hopefully gets an answer, right or wrong…] Good. Thanks. 2.6 FRIENDS SONIA [Returning hastily…] Ok, here, I just brought the mixings… the coke…and the Run, of course… And some snacks.
  • 41. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 41 ELLA Perfect. SONIA Yeah? ELLA Sure. Though I don't actually love rum & coke, it was more a… metaphor. A metaphorical drink rather than— SONIA Do you want something else? ELLA No. This is fine… The play will bog down if / you… SONIA Okay. ELLA Okay. So. SONIA Yes…? ELLA What's wrong? SONIA With? ELLA No. [Making it larger…] What's wrong? SONIA You mean with everything? ELLA What… in particular. SONIA Well, you know…. Love, I guess. ELLA Ah. Specifically, or in general. SONIA Specifically. ELLA The doctor? SONIA How did you--? ELLA Are you serious? Everyone knows. SONIA I don't care. I'm not ashamed of my love. I love him so much, and I think I could make him happy. I think I could be exactly what he needs/ if he
  • 42. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 42 ELLA Oh, dear… SONIA What? ELLA Nothing. SONIA What? I know what love is. I do. Just because I don't look like you doesn't mean/ I don't ELLA Whoa there… SONIA What? ELLA Who said you have to look / like anything to understand SONIA I get it. I know what I look like. Everyone thinks that if you look like me you have to settle for… you know, all the Steve Buscemi's of the world, but-- ELLA You are lovely. SONIA No I'm not. ELLA You are. SONIA No I'm not. ELLA Sonia, you have / beautiful SONIA Stop! I swear to God if you say eyes or hair I will cut your heart out with this swizzle stick! ELLA Ummm— SONIA We all know the code. You know your codes, what the glances and looks and little touches or whatever you get mean… you know sexy code, right? ELLA Umm… SONIA Right?! ELLA Yes, I guess so… SONIA Well I know ugly code. I know / what the looks
  • 43. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 43 ELLA You're not— SONIA Whatever. Homely. Plain. Nice looking. "Sweet". "Lovely". "A great person." "She's terrific." "She's really great, such a good person." And the worst ones, the most brutal code there is is— Nice eyes. Nice hair. ELLA Okay. Okay, so… You're not that pretty. Is that what you want to hear? SONIA Yes! It is. Thank you. ELLA You actually do have… some lovely physical qualities… but I get that they don't add up to quite the picture you might want them to. How's that? SONIA Good. Now you're being a good stepmother. You're telling me the truth. ELLA Well good. I so want us to be… friends. SONIA Then keep being honest with me. ELLA I will. And you be honest with me. SONIA I will. ELLA So about the doctor… SONIA Oh, God. ELLA Tell me about it. Does he know how you feel? SONIA No! I mean… I don't think so. I haven't, you know… ELLA Told him. Or shown him. SONIA Shown? ELLA You know… lingering glances. Casual touches. "I like you" code… SONIA No. Never. ELLA Never? SONIA Well… I just told him a story about butterflies, but it was a disaster.
  • 44. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 44 ELLA Ummm… SONIA What's the point? He loves women like you. And they love him. So what hope do I have? Even though I know I could be better for him than anyone else in the world. I could save him. I could give him everything he needs if he could just see past my stupid face and… whatever… and just… love me. ELLA What about what you need? SONIA I don't need anything! I have too many things! I want to give my things away. I'm out of room inside. I'm like an emotional hoarder. I have to give some of my heart to someone or I'm going to explode! ELLA Oh, Sonia, you have no idea what you're talking about. You can't just give and give and give even if it feels like you could. You're just wrong. And if you try to give give give to those that are willing to take take take… well, it usually doesn't end up so well. In fact, it never ends up well. SONIA Well, thanks. You've cheered me up tremendously. ELLA Now hold on… SONIA What, I'm just wrong and stupid and young and ugly and you're gonna be my friend by just pointing out how wrong / I am about everything. ELLA I'm trying my best to be helpful, to help / you see that you're not looking at this with the clearest eyes so you can SONIA Wait, here, take my swizzle stick so you can poke me in the eye, too! ELLA I'm trying to be / your friend and SONIA Shut up! Don't try to help me by telling me I'm bad and wrong!!! Being honest doesn't need you have to be a condescending— Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so unhappy. You can't make someone love you, can you? ELLA Well… SONIA Or maybe you can, but I can't. I can't. I'm just me.
  • 45. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 45 I'm just nothing but… me. I hate that so much. ELLA I'm so sorry you do. SONIA Life sucks. ELLA No it doesn't. SONIA Life sucks. ELLA No. It doesn't. SONIA Oh. Well… What does life do, then? [Beat. Beat. Blackout] END OF ACT II
  • 46. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 46 ACT III • NEEDS 3.0 INCOMPREHENSIBLE ASTER It's practically incomprehensible. ELLA Is it? ASTER And will, I think, become only more so as the future horribly unfolds... ELLA Ah… ASTER They'll undoubtedly condemn us. The people of the future—if they somehow muddle through and there ARE people of the future— will look back at our incomprehensible choices and policies and boundless selfishness and think: Just what-- by all that is Holy-- could they possibly have been thinking?!?! Is greed THAT powerful? Or did they somehow think you could have… you know… an apple tree, say, a single lovely Apple Tree and just, you know, pick a bunch of apples… and then pick a bunch more… and then pick a quarter of the apples one day, and then another quarter, and then another quarter, and then another quarter and then another and another and another and another and that this could go on FOR EVER? You see what I'm saying? ELLA Yeah, I get it, of course,/I do, but… ASTER Or maybe… maybe they'll believe we thought the earth was so big we couldn't get our minds around the fact that we were systematically destroying it. Maybe they'll believe that the earth seemed SO big and SO strong and so indestructible that we thought it really was indestructible and therefore that we could do whatever we pleased with total impunity… But I don't think they'll think that. ELLA No? ASTER No. I think they'll just hate us. ELLA Yes, I expect so… ASTER The list is already incomprehensible and it's growing every day. Rampant extinctions. Ravaged ecosystems. Raping the earth. Polluting the seas. Decimating the forests. Mutating the crops. What are we thinking…?
  • 47. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 47 ELLA I don't know… ASTER You are unbelievably bored by me, aren't you? ELLA No, no, not by you… ASTER Oh? ELLA Just by what you're saying. ASTER Ah… ELLA I think you are wonderfully interesting… much of the time… Though why you are so… ASTER …obsessed? ELLA Exactly… is beyond me. Even if everything you say is true. Which I'm sure it is. Even if we are raping the world and destroying the glaciers and the rain forests and the horny owls and / lizards and ASTER Spotted owls… ELLA whatever, and ruining everything, even if that's ALL true… what are we supposed to do about it? Seriously? Seriously, I want to know. (Ella dials) ASTER Um… ELLA "Excuse me, Mr Tillerson? [To Aster] CEO of Exxon… [On phone] Could you please… stop drilling? We think it's very bad. For the world. What's that? Oh, you will? Really? Gosh, thanks, that would be lovely…" ASTER I know it / won't be ELLA The die is cast. You know? It's cast. We went this direction. Don't you think? Big choices were made hundreds of years ago and now… well, there are huge, complex, well-funded, historical and financial forces that were put in motion generations ago, and…well… you can't go backwards, can you? The world can't go backwards. The government can't go backwards. Exxon can't go backwards. I can't go backwards. Nothing can go backwards. Nothing ever goes backwards. Everything just… has to do what it has to do...
  • 48. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 48 ASTER Would you… ELLA What? ASTER …want to go backwards? ELLA I'm sorry? ASTER You put you on the list. You said, the world, the government, you… Would you want to go backwards? [With significance…] Do things differently? ELLA I just meant… ASTER I think I know what you meant. And I think you know what I mean. Don't you? Don't you know what I mean? Don't pretend you don't. You know… ELLA I think so… ASTER So? If everything just… has to do what it has to do… ELLA Please don't. I don't think I can take it... ASTER You know what's going on here. You're feeling the same things I'm feeling, I know you are. Am I wrong? Am I completely delusional? ELLA No, no, / but I… [During this, VANYA, a bouquet of flowers in hand, appears and see them. He hides and listens to the rest of this, amazed and appalled…] ASTER What's happening here is real. It's real. I have no idea what it is or what it means, but this is the world, this is life, and all I know is I want you so badly I can hardly form a coherent thought or finish / a fucking sentence… ELLA [To us and herself and the universe…] I can't believe this is my life! ASTER Will you meet me later? ELLA No. ASTER No? ELLA No!
  • 49. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 49 ASTER Why not? ELLA Because you're just another kind of backwards. ASTER No, I'm not! ELLA Oh, trust me, you are! I've been where you want me to go and it is not a place I can live. I have to go forward no matter how I feel / about it, even if ASTER Why? Whose rule is that? Who says that that's the way it has / to be? ELLA I do… ASTER Well, I think you're wrong. I think you're an amazing creature / and I think ELLA Oh, God… ASTER we owe it to ourselves and to the universe to give whatever this is between us a chance and see where it might take us and what new paths in our lives might open up because of it. ELLA [She grabs him and kisses him hard on the mouth for several seconds, like a quick meal, and then just as abruptly, breaks away] ASTER So you'll meet me? ELLA No. ASTER But— ELLA You should go. ASTER You're-- incomprehensible. ELLA Like the world? And the apple tree? ASTER Precisely. ELLA Well, there you go then. ASTER Where?
  • 50. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 50 ELLA I have no idea. Now, please… leave me alone. For five fucking minutes. Please. [He gets up. Beat. He leaves…VANYA, in shock, leaves too… ELLA turns abruptly to us and fills us in on where she and how she is feeling…] 3.1 THE GAVOTTE ELLA I like people, I really do. I find us all… fascinating. And mysterious. And kind of irresistibly fucked up in such unique and broken little ways. And I genuinely want to know people and connect with them, I really do, but… Can I ask you all a question? How many of you would like to sleep with me if you could? I mean, hypothetically, if there were no rules, no issues of fidelity or morality… or even meta-theatricality… Just based on whatever it is you know about me right at this moment, can we get a show of hands…? How many of you would just… pretty much like to have sex with me? Okay. Great. Now… You don't have to raise your hands for this one, but… how many of you were lying? Either because of who you are here with, or how you want to be thought of in the world, or because of my feelings, or… And now… show of hands again… how many of you would give nearly anything to know what is really going on in the minds and hearts of everyone around you right now? Okay, here's my point: As far as I can tell, were all just in a twisty, impossible, fucked up… yes, okay, perdurable miasma of "unmanageable urges" vs. "moral imperatives", and instead of being able to just… connect… just be in a kind and loving communion with our fellow human beings… we're forever wrapped up in this… sexual dance macabre… this ridiculous relational gavotte… this endless pursuit (and retreat) of unexpressed, unfulfilled, unexplored, unknowable needs and desires and frustrations and-- 3.2. A WAY [VANYA appears with manic, twisted energy. He is frantic and determined…] VANYA Okay, look—
  • 51. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 51 ELLA Oh, no… VANYA [Launching right in…] So there has to be a way, right? A a a a ELLA Vanya…. VANYA no no, hold on… a a a a a magic word… a gesture or or or something so compelling that you'll suddenly see me in a whole new light, and just begin to imagine the that there's the merest possibility of you… loving me back. ELLA [To audience] You see what I mean? VANYA There must be. Some… avenue? Some… amazingly persuasive argument... ELLA Argument? VANYA Or story? Or or or… insight? A view into the previously locked room of my soul that will touch some new place in you, put my finger on your button… ELLA …Vanya… VANYA …I mean… A story or anecdote that will make what at this moment seems… you know… the usual… pathetic and repellant and whatnot… suddenly seem moving and endearing and so wonderfully, brokenly, human that your icy heart will / melt and and and ELLA [A tiny sarcastic toss away…] "Icy heart" is nice… VANYA you will see me as I am on the inside, and / begin to-- ELLA And what is that? VANYA What? ELLA What is that? What are you like on the inside that is so different from what you are like on the outside? VANYA Uh… ELLA You've said / this over and VANYA It's not that—
  • 52. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 52 ELLA No wait, let me talk. You've said this over and over in all kids of odd little ways. "The real me." "What I'm really like on the inside." "Who I really am." So fine, great, I'm ready, I'm all ears. And eyes. And… whatever: What are you? What is so fucking different about you on the inside…? VANYA Well, I can't just suddenly explain— ELLA Why not? Why the hell not? I've listened to you talk and talk and whine and moan off and on for… a decade or so... and you know, I think I have a pretty good idea of who you are and how you operate and what you think and feel and want, and how you… present yourself in the world. Or would like to be thought of by others. I honestly think I could probably do a pretty good Vanya imitation by now. By all the standard, accepted measures, I Know You. I know you pretty darn well. Not intimately, maybe, but… pretty darn well. So… I've rambled here. I've given you some time to gather your addled and surprised wits. So… enlighten me. What are you like inside? What is going on in there that is SO different that you want me to know? [A fairly good sized pause…] VANYA Oh God. Oh my God… Nothing. That's your answer. Not a fucking thing. You're absolutely right. This is the "real me". The one whose been pathetically prostrating himself before you in one way or another for the past… This is it. This is all there is. This is me. And if I were you… I wouldn’t be interested in me either. I swear to God it all just hit me. Just now. For the first time... I think my whole life I've been saying to myself—not just about you, but all the way back as far as this kind of thing goes. I've always thought "she" would choose me if only she really knew me. If she understood me. If only she knew what I'm really like, what I am like deep down inside. How I mean so well. How much I want to do the right thing. How good my heart is. How much I hurt. How confused and lost I am... How hopeful…
  • 53. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 53 And maybe those are even true, maybe... But those are no more the "real me" than the lonely, whining, dissatisfied, pathetic putz who pesters you constantly with his inconvenient love. I swear I've always thought that the internal me was the "real me" and this guy—the one in the world, the one just doing things was… I don't know… a facsimile. Not important. Just the guy out there doing things… But now, suddenly, I don't know. I guess I'm this guy. Not that guy. Because it's what you DO that matters, right? That's what I've always liked best about Jewish theology. No sinning in your heart. No being punished for your thoughts. It's actions! Not what you say or what you think or what you feel, but what you DO. And if the real me is this guy, this schmuck who just wanders around bothering people… Then I am so royally fucked I don't what to do. ELLA Vanya, I'm so sorry that— VANYA Yeah, I'm just gonna… [Indicates going] you know… [He leaves…] ELLA I hope you're enjoying this, because it's no picnic up here… 3.3 DON'T SAY A WORD [ASTER enters. Sees her…] Oh, goody… ASTER Never a dull moment, huh? ELLA A thrill a minute. ASTER The thing is… ELLA If you say one more word I will walk out that door, out the front door, into the car out of the car onto a train, buy a one way ticket for anywhere and you will never, ever, ever see me again and I swear I mean it. One single word… What is it about me? Don't answer that! What is it? My eyes? My shocking, transparent eyes? The sadness in my eyes?
  • 54. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 54 My dangerous red hair? My perky tits? My perfect ass? My boredom? My grace? My contempt? What??? What makes you think I'd be willing to just give up everything and hurl myself into your arms??? Don't answer that! Don't you dare say a word!!! [Beat] What is it about me that you find so… fucking irresistible? ASTER [Calmly, truthfully, confidently] It's your contradictions. ELLA Hmm. [She goes to him… kisses him hard and strong and full… fuller and deeper and sexier than kisses are supposed to go on stage, till we start to get a bit uncomfortable… and then abruptly stops. Then steps back and slaps him once, really hard, right across the face…] Maybe you're right. [MUSIC. Everyone else suddenly joins them in one fell swoop…] 3.4 3 THINGS I HATE PICK This scene is called: 3 THINGS I HATE VANYA Myself. Others. Optimists. PROF Vanya. Bad Art. Aging. ELLA Weakness. Strength. All the same old day-to-day-to-day-to-day-to-day-to-day horse shit. ASTER Selfishness. Stupidity. Asparagus. PICK Nicknames. Narcissists. Bad things happening to good people. SONIA My body. My face. The lie of Literature.
  • 55. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 55 BABS Bullshit. Humidity. Lists. 3.5 A CONUNDRUM [Instant shift into the gathering that the PROFESSOR has called…] PROF Well, now, thank you all for coming. So…Well, you know… life is a conundrum, isn't it? A conundrum rapped in a riddle, sautéed in an enigma, and peppered, as it were, with mystery. BABS Oh dear. PROF As Euripides so wisely wrote: "Zoy dane ay nye pahnta aftoo pou nomizetaya". Life is not always what you think. I believe that is a great truth. Simple, perhaps, and yet profound. Life does not tend to go exactly where you thought it might go when you boldly headed out on the Great Journey. And needs are needs… VANYA Oh, this can't be good. PROF So, as of late… certain ventures, certain ventures of a financial nature… did not perform as we had hoped, and now we find ourselves in a bit of a… well, a bit of a pickle, as it were… a financially precarious pickle. PICK Hey! Twinsies! [They all look at her…] I'm a financially precarious pickle. VANYA Please...! PICK Sorry. PROF Well, not to put too fine a point on it—we need money, and the only certain place to get it is to… sell this house and use the proceeds to pay off some debts and get a leg up and see if we can't… right our fiscal ship, as it were. SONIA I'm sorry? ASTER Are you kidding? BABS Wow.
  • 56. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 56 PROF I know it won't be uncomplicated, but a house like this, what with the garden and the outbuildings and all, is worth quite a pretty penny these days, and there may well be ways we could all benefit / from making smart decisions VANYA YOU'RE NOT THE SUN! PROF I'm sorry… what?!?! VANYA [Driving, but deliberate] YOU. ARE NOT. THE FUCKING. SUN!!! The world / does not revolve around you SONIA Uncle Vanya, please don't… VANYA and your fucking needs and your fucking predicaments and your fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking PICKLES! PROF You are insane. You won't // even do me the simple ELLA [Interrupting] I told you this was not the time… VANYA [Interrupting] Yes, I think that's right. I think I must be insane, I think I must be hallucinating because it seems to me that you just told us that you NEED MONEY and therefore plan to sell a house that DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU to raise money for… I mean… WHAT??? This is Sonia's house! Hers, not yours, you fucking moron! Hers! She and I have been working our asses off for years and years and years, paying the mortgage, and keeping this house up without the slightest help / from you PROF Now that's enough…! VANYA [He is starting to lose it for maybe the first time in his life. Most of a lifetime of rage and frustration and sadness and shattered things come pouring out all at once… a huge amount of feeling trying to get out of a bottle with not nearly a wide enough mouth…] Enough?!? That's not NEARLY ENOUGH! How about this: I fucking hate you and everything you are and everything you do and everything you think and… and… Wait! Wait! Wait right here… [He runs off…] PROF I have never in my life / seen such an… infantile… SONIA He doesn't mean it, things have been very tight and we've been working so hard to make ends meet, and he's been very upset / recently, and I
  • 57. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 57 ELLA Where do you think he went? BABS Probably to get my gun and shoot him. ELLA Ha ha, very funny. PROF I wouldn't / put it past him. Did you see his eyes? ASTER [To BABS] You have a gun? BABS Oh, just a little one… PROF [This continues straight on from the previous line…] They went all goggly. I mean, for God's sake, I was simply talking about a possible— ELLA Don't. Not again. Let it go… PROF A person can't talk? A person can't— [VANYA comes running back in, a small gun in hand…!] VANYA I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL! [VANYA shoots at the PROFESSOR, in full expectation of killing or at least wounding him. There are four bullets in the gun and some empty clicks as well. While he shoots people scream, duck, etc. etc. When he is done shooting, everyone just kinds of holds where they are as the PROF realizes that he has not been hit by even one of the bullets. He is totally fine…] VANYA I missed. I missed. I fucking missed. PROF [In shock…] You just tried to kill me. ASTER You sure you're okay? PROF [Still in shock, to ASTER] Yeah. [To VANYA] You just tried to kill me. VANYA Yeah. PROF Well you failed! Like everything you've ever done, you pathetic fuck! ELLA Robbie, Robbie…
  • 58. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 58 PROF We will leave here forever! I have never… I can't believe… I… [He leaves. ELLA looks at the room a moment… then goes after him.] SONIA Oh, Uncle Vanya… [She leaves] [Beat] PICK Oh my God, that just happened. That just really happened… VANYA Shut up. Please... PICK All right… [She sits down in a corner somewhere…] BABS Look at me. [Forceful. No bullshit at all.] Look at me! VANYA [Slowly looking at her] Yes? BABS Are you okay now? Or do I need to go call someone right now? VANYA No. I'm fine. [Quick serious beat] I'm fine. BABS Okay. Okay. [She steps aside, satisfied for the moment…] ASTER Those were real bullets, right? BABS Yeah. VANYA Yeah. ASTER Wow. You missed him four times. And you were standing pretty damn close. VANYA Yeah. ASTER I think you're the one who dodged a bullet, my friend. VANYA Yeah. ASTER I… I need a drink. Would anyone like a drink?
  • 59. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 59 VANYA Yeah. PICKLES Sure BABS Absolutely. ASTER Back in a flash. [He leaves. It's now just VANYA and BABS. VANYA is maybe beginning to realize the reality of what he just did… and didn't do…Beat] BABS I thought I had maybe seen all the things I was going to see, you know. I thought my highlight reel might be full, but this… I love you, Vanya. I always have. You are smart as a whip and can talk me and pretty much anyone else in circles… you know so much about so many things… But, I swear, you don't seem to understand a blessed thing about anything that really matters in the world, and that's the God's honest truth. VANYA Yeah. BABS You can't just go and shoot at someone because he disappoints you… VANYA Yeah. BABS Or because he reminds you how much you disappoint yourself. VANYA Yeah. BABS Or because you really want to sleep with his wife. VANYA Yeah. BABS Even if you actually do love his wife… VANYA Yeah. BABS I'm so, so, so sorry you're hurting, Vanya, but you've really gotta… you know… get it together. VANYA Yeah. BABS Yeah. [Beat…]
  • 60. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 60 VANYA How? [Beat…] Life sucks. BABS Sometimes. VANYA Life fucking sucks. BABS Yes, sometimes. VANYA Not all the times? BABS No. Not all the times. VANYA Oh. Okay. END ACT III
  • 61. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 61 ACT IV • AFTERMATH 4.0 THE GRATITUDES [BABS doesn't leave. She just turns to us and starts talking… before too long SONIA wanders on unseen by BABS and listens to most of this…] BABS So, yeah, well… my Zadie Oscar died in a plane crash when I was eleven. (Don't worry, I have a point. Go with me a minute…) He was born in Poltava, in the Ukraine, and came over here with his four younger brothers and actually managed to get rich. A hot dog cart, then a burger shack, then a steakhouse. Oscar's. Very fancy. The American Dream made good... He was a character, as they say. Quite a natty dresser, slicked back hair, pencil thin mustache. He was also, apparently, quite the gambler, drinker and womanizer, but I didn't know any of that then. To me he was "Zadie Oscar", the life of the party who would slip a five-dollar bill into your palm when Bobbe Sophie wasn't looking. It always seemed to me he knew some secret that no one else knew that made him awfully happy. I remember asking my mother about it all the way back then. She told me he was "a life- eater", a particular type of person. That he ate life the way the rest of us ate latkes… could never get enough, could never have his fill… And speaking of eating, here's my point. Here's my point: Before every family meal I can ever remember eating with him—which were mostly around various family Bar Mitzvahs and Bris' and weddings and such-- we did what he called, with grave seriousness, The Gratitudes. Everyone at the table—family, strangers, everyone, young and old—had to take a moment and say what they were grateful for at that moment. Kind of like Grace, but without God. Or holding hands... And sometimes it was just simple little things like a raise, or finding a dollar in the gutter, or a good knish… But sometimes someone would… go deep. And things would come out. Real things. About other people at the table… or those lost to us. I remember a lot of tears, but also lots of laughing. But it was always real. Real gratitude. An odd kind of secular prayer or or or humble appreciation for the miracle of making it through another day, and having something good to eat at the end of it, and someone to eat it with. I still say them. Mostly to myself, but I say them. Every meal. Every day.
  • 62. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 62 4.1 NOT THE ANSWER… SONIA [Suddenly, from elsewhere on stage…] Life sucks. BABS [Putting out her arms for a hug] Oh, c'mere. Love, love, love, huh? SONIA [Going in for the hug, probably…] Stupid, stupid, stupid… BABS The doctor? SONIA [Incredulous] Is it really / that obvious??? BABS Ummm… yes. SONIA Oh, God. BABS You're not alone. He's practically irresistible, in all his… receding grandeur. SONIA I know! BABS I'm sorry you're hurting… SONIA It's awful. I shake inside when I see him. My insides just go… [She does a weird little shaking action…] I literally have to restrain myself to not just… reach out and grab him. And just… hold him. Or stroke him. Or… BABS Oh, dear. SONIA I only hear about half of what he says because I'm just watching his lips, and picturing him just—oh, God, is it okay that I'm telling you this? BABS Get it out! No judgment here, believe me. Not an ounce. Not an / iota… SONIA I want him! And he needs me. And if he won't love me back I don't know if I will survive it. I think I might just… just… just BABS No, you won't. You'll survive it. I know it doesn't feel that way, but— SONIA How do you know? BABS I know. SONIA Oh, please don't tell me I'm young, or when you were / my age
  • 63. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 63 BABS [With both clarity and code...] When I was… much younger than I am now I felt just what you're feeling. Precisely what you're feeling. SONIA How could you--- wait, what? BABS [With fuller meaning…] Because I know he's practically irresistible. And always has been… SONIA Wait… what are you saying? BABS I'm just saying I know what you're feeling. But exactly… You didn't invent this little torture. This is the world, Sonia, and longing is part of the price we pay for living. And trust me, you wouldn't want it any other way. Love your longing, Sonia, live in it. It's a gift. Love. Lust. Desire. The imagined touch… The need to… grab on and hold tight. To connect. To be touched, to be known, biblically. To be filled… SONIA Babs… BABS I'm old, Sonia. Not dead. The fire dies down, but it never goes out. You know the doctor moved here when he was maybe 9 or 10 and he and Vanya have been friends forever. Aster was a little older, but your grandmother was friends with his mother from Bridge or Mah Jong or something, and / Vanya followed him around SONIA I never knew that, I just… BABS like his own private superhero: "Nature-Man" or whatever. Oh, you should have seen Aster back then. He was so cute. And so serious… SONIA Wait, are you really telling me…? BABS [Going right on…] Just listen. One day when he was 15 or 16 he was just hanging around the house, waiting for Vanya, who was inevitably late for everything—he had an innate knack for pissing people off, even back then— and, well, I don't remember exactly but suddenly we were talking about… life. A real talk. About the environment and nature and The Way Things Are and I remember thinking "Oh, he's way smarter than I am" which I hadn't really known before… And there it was. I was…. interested.
  • 64. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 64 I started noticing when he was around and found ways to… engage him, spend time in odd little ways… and show him a little flash of something or making a just barely off-color comment without seeming to notice… Believe me, putting sex in the room for a 16-year-old boy is no great challenge… SONIA I can't believe I'm even hearing this… BABS Okay, well, this is getting long. So… I seduced him. He thought he seduced me. He probably still thinks that. Hell, knowing him he probably still feels bad about it, feels like he took advantage of me, but I was the one doing the taking. Mostly… SONIA Oh, my God… BABS I'm not saying it was right. What I did. But… life is for living, right? Not running away from. And life just seemed to want this to happen………… SONIA Why are you telling me this? And why haven't you ever told me before? BABS You know what the doctor is…? He's a human being. A flawed, fabulous, broken, ridiculous human being. And I know you think he is… it, the One, the Thing That Could Make Everything Better, but that is almost always a lie. And with him… I know it is. I know its nearly impossible to actually hear what I'm saying, but… I'm right. Move on. The Doctor is Not The Answer. SONIA Then… what happens to all that love? To everything I feel…? BABS It will move forward. Into the world... I know it's hard to see when you're in the middle of it, but this is just a part of the… shape of things. Have a little faith. Have a little gratitude for all the things you've got and… move on… SONIA But Pickles always says… BABS She's wrong. I love her dearly, but… consider the source. Move on… Move forward. Move further into life… It really is the most wonderful adventure. SONIA Wow… [VANYA enters…] BABS Hey. How are you?
  • 65. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 65 VANYA I have one more thing to tell them. Can I have the room…? BABS Sure… SONIA [To VANYA] Are you / okay? VANYA [To SONYA, a tad abrupt] I'm fine. SONIA Okay. BABS Vanya. VANYA Yeah? BABS Don't do anything stupid. VANYA No more than usual. BABS Okay, then… [To SONIA as they go] Let me make you one of my special concoctions. SONIA I've had your concoctions… BABS Not this one. This one, you'll like… [And they are gone…] 4.2 GONE VANYA [Directly, even urgently, to us] The Joy is Gone. Gone. Oooooops. Bye-bye "Joy". I hardly knew thee… She used to come and go regularly, good old "Joy". Gone for the holidays. Here one odd, rainy morning for a few hours, away for a month, back during nearly all of DOMBEY & SON, gone for my birthday month, back a for crisp weekend in October… fleeting little visits after good meals or a nice chat with an old chum or whatever, but now… Done. No more Joy. Makes getting out of bed on cold mornings nearly inconceivable. Chilly, lonely breakfasts might be the worst first-world problem ever.
  • 66. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 66 [Quick beat…] So, what's the worst thing about your life? What's the hardest thing you have to slog through…? That makes the thought of more endless, impossible days approximately tragic. [And going on, really before anyone has a chance to say anything, which they are unlikely to do quickly…] Come on, it might make us all feel a little better. Perspective. Grass is always greener, etc. [Tiny beat…] No one? Gosh, this must be the happiest, most content group of [actual approximate headcount] people in the world. Oh right, how stupid. You're all here with other people. And while you might think about telling a group of total strangers about the deepest, hardest part of your life, you can't admit it in front of Michael. Or Megan. Or Greg and Susie. Or Mrs. Finkelstein. Because you had dinner with them an hour ago and you never told them that three mornings a week you wake up in despair. Or that if you had to sum up your life in one word it would be… disappointed. Or lost. Or… Or maybe it's just me. Maybe you're all fine, and… Tom and Tim and Terrence and Tabitha and Tariq and Tamisha and Tong Il Han already know everything there is to know about you… Shit. Life life life, huh? Can't live with it, can't… [the next part is implied.] [ASTER enters…] ASTER Hey. VANYA Hey. ASTER So… What's going on here, pal? VANYA Isn't it… painfully obvious? ASTER No. So tell me: What's really wrong? VANYA Everything. ASTER Wow. That's a lot… VANYA Yeah. But there it is. I've been taking a good hard look at my life and
  • 67. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 67 ASTER …yeah? VANYA as far as I can tell I've done everything wrong. ASTER Everything? VANYA I think so. I think everything… ASTER Not everything. VANYA Yeah, I think so… ASTER C'mon, you can't have done everything wrong. VANYA Everything that matters. Everything real… Yeah, fucking everything. [Quick beat… small change of tone and energy…] ASTER And therefore…? VANYA What? ASTER And therefore…………??? VANYA I heard you, I just don't know / what you ASTER "And therefore, my dear Doctor, I am going to do X… or Y… or Z to change my life. [Beat. Nothing…] "And therefore, my dear old friend, having now finally fully realized the depth of the wrongness of my choices over the past X many years, I now resolve to Y. Or Z. Or W. Or some fucking thing, because I gotta tell you, Vanya, with all due love and respect and genuine affection in the world, there is a limit to the amount of… self-indulgent angst-y wallowing even your nearest and dearest can endure if you don't… you know… at least try to DO SOMETHING / ABOUT IT! VANYA What?! What am I supposed to / do? What the hell… ASTER [Entirely improvised…] Move! Quit your job! Study Egyptian basket weaving or or or Hindu macramé. Buy a bike. Learn to bake. Sell all your belongings on ebay and move to Kenosha, Wisconsin or East Jabip or outer fucking Mongolia! But, Heavens to Murgatroyd, man, IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR LIFE, THEN FUCKING DO SOMETHING / TO MAKE IT BETTER!
  • 68. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 68 VANYA I'VE TRIED! You think I haven't tried All Those Things? Trips and books and on-line dating and diets and exercise plans. Gyms rejoice when they see me coming because they know I'll pay their exorbitant fees and go exactly three times before I… get a cold or pull something in my groin or just… you know… stop going! Lose energy. Lose momentum. Lose… lose… lose… ASTER …what? VANYA …belief. Okay!? BELIEF!!! Lose the motherfucking BELIEF that I will ever really change, that I will ever be anything other than the over-educated, under-motivated, grumpy, pudgy little troll you see before you, trapped in the endless cycle of his own failure and… lack of will, and and and and... ASTER Give them back. VANYA What? ASTER Give them back. Now. VANYA I don't know / what you're ASTER Don't fuck me around on this, they're prescription pills, you don't have one, I'm your friend, they'll assume I gave them to you and it will be horribly bad for me, so if you really are thinking of doing the stupidest, stupidest, stupidest, stupidest, STUPIDEST fucking thing you could ever do, you are going to need to steal a car and drive off a cliff or or or self-immolate or somefuckingthing, but you are NOT going to do it with pills that can be traced back to me, and you are not going to do it at all because it is ridiculous and insane and there are those of us who actually love you, impossible as you are, and would miss your troll-ish self, so give me back both bottles… take a long hot bath or go for a walk or make some fresh peach ice cream or something, and, you know… buck up. Buck the fuck up and get on with living. This is your ONE LIFE, this is it, this is all you get, EVER. This is not a dress rehearsal for some stupid fucking play or a a a rough draft of that novel you started, the the the "Daily Turtle" or-- VANYA The "Quotidian Tortoise"! ASTER Whatever. This is not some placeholder for life. This is it!
  • 69. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 69 This is YOUR ONE, OWN, ONLY little life. And you—and only you—can make it better. Surely you can do that. And I will NOT quit calling you Shirley. So deal with that, too, bucko. [It has landed, but not fully. Not well enough. On to step two…] [Calling off stage…] Hey, can you all come out here, please…! [Suddenly the rest of the cast appear en masse and move into positions for the scene that is about to take place. Someone places a chair downstage center facing upstage for VANYA. The rest gather upstage at the table.] VANYA Oh, God. This can't be good… 4.3 WHAT, AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL SORRY FOR YOU? ASTER It's for your own good. This is called "What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" Ready? VANYA As I'll ever be… ASTER Okay then… VANYA Let the games begin… PICK I'll go first. What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? My life is just ridiculous. Everyone calls me Pickles. And has forever. But my real name is Penelope. Do you even know that? Penelope Pickford Grunen. My mom wanted me to be a myth… or a movie star… Not a Pickles. I wanted to be a mom.
  • 70. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 70 I wanted to be a great artist and make those huge paintings that fill whole walls in museums, not just… stupid wall hangings… and sock puppets and oven mitts to sell at bake sales… but none of that happened. I live above a garage, I lost the only woman I ever loved, and I became… Pickles. SONIA What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? You might be a troll, but I'm a frog. I'm an Un-Bewitched Frog! You know in Fairy Tales the Frog is always bewitched. They were once a prince or princess, but they get bewitched and turned into a frog and then at the end they get turned back into the glorious thing they were… but better now, lesson learned, or whatever... Well, I'm an UnBewitched Frog, because you can kiss me or hurl me against a wall, but there's no turning me back because… I was never something else. I'm just this awkward, uncomfortable, odd little frog… with nice hair and nice eyes. And that's about it… ASTER What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I work my ass off! At my job... and for the world! I work and work and stress and contribute and volunteer for causes, and run 5k's and 10k's for This Disease and That Disaster… and do you know why? Do you? Because if I allowed myself to fully live in relation to how comprehensively fucked everything is, I wouldn't get out of bed in the mornings. So I drink too much and work out too much and sleep with the wrong people and compulsively try to fix everything so I just… won't think about anything. Ever. That's no way to live. VANYA But you just said--…! ASTER I know what I said! Why do you think I want you to get your shit together? Figure it out and send me a fucking map… ELLA What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I'm unhappy, too, you know. And I've done all the things I was told would make me happy! I read, I studied, I went to church and therapy. I have a BA from Amherst, a Masters from Duke, and a PhD. from Northwestern. And I fell head over heels for this brilliant professor; the smartest one, the one I should never have been able to get, and I got him… I got it all…
  • 71. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 71 And none of it has made me happy. So, here I am with a half finished book on phenomenology no human being would ever want to read, a seriously floundering marriage, $150,000 is student loans, and most of the time I just feel lost… just… irretrievably lost. PROF So, what am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I'm on the downhill slope. Of my life. Of my whole fucking life. My health is … not so good, and will not get any better, it seems, so it's all just downhill from here. Which just seems… shocking, and horrible, and utterly unfair. Like someone somewhere has gotten something terribly wrong somehow. Of course we all know death is coming eventually, but knowing it theoretically is one thing, and actually feeling it… slowly encroaching… well that's another thing all together, and… and… and it's scaring the shit out of me, if you want to know the truth. It's scaring the fucking shit out of me. BABS What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Vanya. Bubbie… Life is just life. Life is just exactly life, you know that, right? And we should be grateful every day for the great and mysterious gift that it is. And yet… we find the most extraordinary ways to fuck it all up for ourselves. But I don't think it has to be as hard as we make it, I really don't. Spoiler alert: Most of us won't get everything we want. Most of us won't ever find our beshert... Bad things will happen to good people… and, worse, maybe, visa versa… And yet… I'm trying to live every day like my grandfather—my Zadie Oscar—and eat every morsel of Life I can before I'm through. As my dear friend, Dr. Aster would say… Why not? Why the fuck not? 4.4 ROUND & ROUND [That scene is now over. Light or sound shift. They all sit there a minute, taking all of this in… some wander away… PICKLES picks up her uke…]
  • 72. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 72 PICK IMAGINE THERE'S NO HEAVEN IT'S EASY IF YOU TRY NO HELL BELOW US ABOVE US ONLY SKY IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE-- VANYA [Interrupting, abruptly to THE PROFESSOR] Robert, I'm sorry. PROF For what? VANYA I'm sorry… I'm sorry… PROF Yes? VANYA That I tried to kill you. I'm sorry that I tried to kill you, all right? PROF Forget it. It's past. You're not going to try again, are you? VANYA No. PROF All right then. Let's move on… VANYA Thank you. I'm an idiot… PROF Yes, well… VANYA Oh, thanks. And you… you're such a schmo, you know that? I mean-- ELLA Vanya. PROF Let's not, okay? VANYA Yeah, okay. Okay. Sorry... [Beat…] PICK IMAGINE THERE'S NO COUNTRIES IT ISN'T HARD TO DO-- VANYA Yeah, okay, so… [To everyone, actors and audience…] Sorry everyone. Sorry for the… you know… shooting… and kvetching and whatnot…
  • 73. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 73 PICK That's okay. VANYA The thing is… [He finds it hard to go on…] ELLA …yeah? VANYA The thing is… ASTER … what is it, pal? VANYA Okay, look, so… Right, so here's the thing… I think it was my third therapist who said there is only one question in life you ever really need to ask… or answer… And that is: "What Do You Want?" ASTER It's a good question. BABS It's a great question. PICK It's a hard question. ELLA It's an impossible question. SONIA It's an easy question… PROF It's the quintessential question, actually… VANYA So, you know what I really, really want, when all is said and done? Under all the ridiculous moaning and and and… tsuris… you know what I really want? PICK What? VANYA I want to be loved… by everybody… all the time… no matter what. SONIA But… that's not possible. VANYA Since when does that matter? We want what we want no matter why we want it. The last thing that makes any difference is how much sense it makes. PICK That's for sure. ELLA True… ASTER Yeah, that's fair… BABS Amen
  • 74. LIFE SUCKS 3.3 • 74 VANYA And the truth is… I want everyone I meet to love me, totally and entirely, day in and day out, just because I'm me. I want to be loved, just as I am, on my own terms, by everyone, all the time. That's what I want. SONIA But… you can't have that. VANYA I know. That's why life sucks. SONIA No it doesn’t. VANYA Yes it does. SONIA No, it doesn't. VANYA Yes, it does. SONIA Well… I don't think it does. VANYA Well, you're wrong. SONIA No, I'm not. I don't think life sucks. PROF I think it kind of does. ELLA I don't. I don't. I just SO don't want that to be true… PICK I don't think life sucks. I might suck sometimes, but Life doesn't… SONIA Well, I don't think life sucks. I don't. I really don't. And I don't think Pickles sucks, and I don't think my ridiculous Uncle Vanya sucks and… and… and I don't even think I suck. PICK YOU MAY SAY I'M A DREAMER— [SONIA stops her from playing…] SONIA I just think life is … I think life is just… Life is just… Oh, how should I know? [To the audience] What do you think? [Beat. Beat. Blackout…] END OF PLAY