(This one we had to take either one of the previous two assignments and turn it into a play.)
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La Boucherie
Scene opens with PALAIS, who stands behind her father, LORENZO. LORENZO holds a long, thick knife. They are in “Boucherie Rue Atélier,” the family butcher shop in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. It is 1881.
LORENZO stands in front of a large chunk of meat. The meat rests solidly on the wooden cutting table which is behind the display of cured wares. The cutting table is stained deep brown from blood that will not come off.
The boucherie is covered in red and purple and blue. Sausages hang in front of the windows. A cured cow's head is placed among the other cured meats in wooden crates that have been risen to hand-level with wooden crates stacked below. Pig's ears, feet, snouts, and jerky strips are lined up in the display crates. As an attraction to get customers to come into the store, LORENZO has cured an entire piglet and dressed it up in a child's clothes. It stands in front of the door, one arm raised in the direction of the shop, beckoning.
LORENZO
It is time, Palais, for you to learn how to be a proper bouchère.
PALAIS
Papa, I told you before. I will cut meat, but I will not be a bouchère. I want to be a novelist.
LORENZO
Novelists! Novelists write lies! And besides, everybody knows novelists are all gypsies and sodomites.
PALAIS
Papa!
LORENZO
Eh, but it is true. You do not understand, you are young. Come! Stand beside me. Watch.
PALAIS stands at her father's left arm.
LORENZO (ct'd)
It is of the most importance to find the way the cow wants to be cut. You must listen when the meat speaks. This piece of meat, here, you see it? On the table?
PALAIS
Yes, papa.
LORENZO
I know this meat. I can hear it. As I cut--
PALAIS watched her father's wrist begin to move in twisting, up-and-down motions. It pierces the meat, and she hears the sound of the meat's resistance against the knife, a soft tear, like paper ripping. Her father's knife slides through easy and clean.
LORENZO (ct'd)
I hear this meat. It comes from the fields, it eats grass all day and shits out round pies that heat in the sun. The cow lies in the shade where flies buzz and it flicks them with its tail. Palais, you must remember the meat for what it was, and listen as it whispers to you how it must be cut. There are many ways to cut a cow, but a true boucher will know just by the whisper of the meat.
PALAIS
But papa, I have been cutting meat for years. I have never heard it whisper. Dead things do not talk.
LORENZO stops cutting and puts down his knife. LORENZO puts his left hand on her shoulder.
LORENZO
The meat will tell you if you will just listen. I know. I am the greatest boucher in all of Paris.
PALAIS
(wryly)
Yes papa, you have said.
LORENZO
And now, it is your turn.
LORENZO hands PALAIS a clean knife. There is still have a large chunk of the original slab of meat that has not been cut. PALAIS takes the knife and stares at the meat.
PALAIS
I can't, papa.
LORENZO
You can, my daughter. You must.
PALAIS
I will hear nothing.
LORENZO
No! Lies! You will hear. You know meat. You are no stranger to it. Tell me, Palais, tell me, how does it look?
PALAIS
Like the setting sun.
LORENZO
And how does it smell?
PALAIS
Like iron. Sweat.
LORENZO
What is its taste? Its sound?
PALAIS
It tastes of roasted hazelnuts. And the sound, like... like sucking up water.
LORENZO
And how does it feel?
PALAIS
Like flesh.
LORENZO
You know meat, Palais. The meat will speak to you, all you must do is listen, please, Palais, take the knife and slice the life so that we may hear it sing!
PALAIS, a determined look on her face, cuts into the meat. COW enters, a woman wearing thin white cloth over her naked body and a large black-and-white papier-mâché cow's head as a mask. COW stands and stares at LORENZO and PALAIS, still cutting, who in turn watch COW. Off-beat music, with drums and cow-sounds, begins.
PALAIS
(amazed)
I hear it, papa. I hear the meat, like a whispered ghost on a grassy hill with others black-and-white stinking hides, while the calves were all taken away, grass like life itself like the sun herself, with prying hands, milk that should have been for babes and gone away into buckets, human hands clutching, perverse, overgrown fetuses, sucking and slurping the white life, cycles that seemed to never end... until the milk ran dry, and they carried her away to hang upside-down, blade along the throat, watching the life spurt out in gushes of thick red juice...
PALAIS drops the knife and it clatters to the floor as COW exits. There is a long moment of silence. PALAIS begins to tremble.
PALAIS
(whispered)
I heard it.
PALAIS looks at her father.
PALAIS
You are not the best boucher in Paris! Only the cruelest, to know of such horrors and to continue anyway! The meat tells me what it has suffered, but I will never be great!
LORENZO is silent. He does not meet his daughter's eyes.
PALAIS
But now that I know, now that I have heard... what else is there for me to be but a bouchère?
LORENZO looks at her and PALAIS looks at him. As they stare at each other, the lights fade to black.
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