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Instructions for a Stage Set where the Audience is the Play.
First, a soft beige/pink ear cushion, massive on the floor, yellowish in the artificial light.
Then, a faint trail of sooty ash drifting diagonally from a marching tack stitch to a meandering red one on the supine spine of the recumbent book.
Turning the page, drifting back down, darker now. (Ash accentuates a hesitant triangle, held together with transparent force which, nevertheless, cowers next to the vertical dominance of the duct tape that holds the ephemeral together).
Varifocal Bowler hats float above a rifle.
A series of bullet holes pierce the page, leading to plucked screams, Beckett cries — and a sutured wound
(he gazes on, approvingly.)
The ash has blackened and now coats the armies of bare feet forced to walk through the greasy dryness, but victory is denied at the last minute, with the introduction of colour into the ensemble:
Orange.
The colour of change, of transition. Confidently cool, it stamps its professional optimism onto the increasingly cowed paper surface.
Sure enough, turning a page, here are the life-size, juddering portraits of those who have arrived.
