The Certified Marvelous:

A High Budget Theatrical Adaptation of the Abridged CO 142.3 Syllabus

In Answer to Essay Question 3B

Scene: Stage is flooded with white smoke and bathed in red light. Stage is backlit red.

enter LONNIE , in a wheelchair in silhouette (Percy 163-165)

LONNIE: (in a droning, half-retarded Southern voice) It has to be a real beating up, like
Akim

Spotlight goes up on LONNIE. ‘His hand curls like a burning leaf’ but exaggerated
movement, so his whole body curls up

enter BINX BOLLING and KATE.

BINX: To LONNIE Envy is not merely sorrow at another’s good fortune: it is also joy at
another’s misfortune.

LONNIE: I am still offering my communion for you

BINX: But Euchrarist is a sacrament of the living

LONNIE: I love you

BINX: I love you, too.

enter LYMON on the dark stage right. Again in silhouette, with a hunched shuffling step.
(McCullers 41)

LYMON: my appetite is poor tonight. There’s a sourness in my mouth A second

spotlight comes up on him. He puts snuff into his lip, and chews it as juices flow down
his lip.

enter MISS AMELIA stage right, puts her hand on LYMON’s hump.

MISS AMELIA: Just a pick. The breast, the liver, the heart

Lights fade out. Lights come up on an old woman, GRANNY, sitting at the head of an
elaborately laid out table with a white table-cloth. Colored plates sit at each plate
setting. Balloons surround her, stirring silently in the breeze. She sits for a moment.
Silence. Lights fade out on her.

enter LA MANUELA in a spotlight surrounded by lascivious men, one of which is

OCTAVIO. Spotlight on her. She is a man in a red dress. Flamenco music plays. LA
MANUELA whirls about. (Donoso 193)
MAN 1: She’s hot.

MAN 2: She’s steaming

MAN 3: Let’s throw her in the canal.

MAN 1: We’ve got to cool her off

They grab her and carry her offstage. There is a splashing sound, flailing, drowning.
pause. then, offstage:

MAN 1: Hey, this guy’s well hung!

MAN 2: Wow, he doesn’t look like a fag to me

Laughter

SUSANA SAN JUAN, only a small child, is lowered onto the stage from above, stage left,
holding a lantern. She is lit. There is a SKULL on the ground before her (Rulfo 91)

SUSANA: ‘I don’t see anything, Papa’ Is lowered further.

SKULL: Really a voice from offstage: ‘keep looking, Susana. For money. Round Gold
coins. Look everywhere. Susana’

SUSANA: She reaches the ground, picks up the skull ‘It’s a human skull!’ The skull
disintegrates to dust. Light fades out on her.

enter MONTIEL’S WIDOW dressed in black

MONTIEL’S WIDOW: ‘Imagine! They put the biggest and prettiest carnation in the
pig’s ass!’ (Márquez 121)

In the dark, unnoticed, SUSANA SAN JUAN is replaced by a grown woman actress.
Illuminate BINX. He comes forward and address the audience

BINX: A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the
experiencing of the new. (Percy 126)

Illuminate SUSANA SAN JUAN, enter BARTOLOME, with coal soot on his face (Scene
taken from Rulfo 84)

SUSANA: I told you. I never dream. You have no consideration. I scarcely slept a
wink. Why did you come to see me, when you are dead? (Rulfo 81, 91)
BARTOLOME: So you’re prepared to go to bed with him?

SUSANA: Yes, Bartolome.

BARTOLOME: Don’t you know that he’s married, and that he’s had more women than
you can count?

SUSANA: Yes, Bartolome.

BARTOLOME: And don’t call me Bartolome! I’m your father! I’ve told him that
although you’re a widow, you are still living with your husband…his gaze grows hard
when I talk to him, and as soon as I mention your name, he closes his eyes. He is, I
haven’t a doubt of it, unmitigated evil.

SUSANA: And who am I?

Fade out. Offstage a booming ECHO

ECHO: You are an echo (Echoes) (Rulfo 80)

Illuminate BINX

BINX: What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward

the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time,
can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like
peanuts in brittle (Percy 79-80)

Fade Out.

flamenco music plays. Enter LA MANUELA, looking haggard, older, wet. Her red dress
is torn by branches, and she has chicken feathers stuck to her. She dances. OCTAVIO sits
in a chair watching her. PANCHO chases her around the room trying to kiss her. She
slowly gives in to him, she becomes ‘all eye sockets, hollows, spasmodic shadows, that
thing which is going to die despite its cries, that incredibly repulsive thing” They get
closer and closer, and PANCHO’s hand goes for LA MANUELA’s crotch. Suddenly
PANCHO rears away, angrily, and roars. The music stops as if the victrola is broken,
ending with that strange slowing down deepening sound. MANUELA is holding
PANCHO’s hand. PANCHO tries to kiss MANUELA, which OCTAVIO is shocked at.
Scene from (Donoso 219-223)

OCTAVIO: Come on, pal, don’t you be a fag too

PANCHO: I didn’t do a thing

OCTAVIO: No excuses, I saw…

PANCHO: You think I’d let this cruddy fag kiss me, are you out of your mind? Let’s as
Manuela, hey, did you kiss me?

Silence

PANCHO: Threatening Manuela with his fist Answer, come on fag, answer

PANCHO hits MANUELA. OCTAVIO holds her down, and PANCHO continues beating
her. Lights fade out on them. Come up on BINX

BINX: Kierkegaard said, “the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware
of being despair”

Lights fade out on BINX, come up on GRANNY, still sitting alone at her table, same
setting. Now a giant knife sits next to a sad chocolate cake by her right hand. Pause.
She suddenly grabs the knife with her right hand and brings it down hard through the
middle of the cake, splitting it in two with a thud.1 Lights fade out on GRANNY.

Lights come up on LYMON, wiggling his ears furiously. MISS AMELIA watches from the
shadows. (McCullers 40)

LYMON: Hump wagging I walked to Rotten Lake today to fish, and on the way I
stepped over what appeared at first to be a big fallen tree. But then as I stepped over I
felt something stir and I taken this second look and there I was straddling this here
alligator as long from the front door to the kitchen and thicker than a hog.

MISS AMELIA spits. Fade out on them. Lights come up on the entire cast, gathered in
clumps according to their own texts, apparently talking to them. MONTIEL’S WIDOW
stands front and center, silently.

Suddenly, a giant real pig carcass with a huge plastic carnation coming out of its
posterior comes swinging off of stage left, and apparently bowls over the entire cast as it
swings off stage right. Everyone falls to the ground as the pig hits them.
END.

Adaptor’s Statement

Like any piece of art, I believe that this high budget stage adaptation of a few of

the texts I have been exposed to in this class can stand alone, marinating in its own

richness of meaning. However, to play it safe, I thought I’d include a statement of my

intentions in creating this pastiche.

1
I know that’s not exactly true to the text, but I liked the effect.
 The basic idea of this adaptation came from Carpentier’s notion of the marvelous.

Carpentier offers: “the marvelous, procured through slight-of-hand tricks that bring

together objects not usually united.” This is exactly what this adaptation tried to do: to

bring together in uncanny ways the highly disparate elements of the texts we’ve read to

highlight some of their universal themes and show that they create revelations. But many

of the scenes in of themselves demonstrate how southern texts create the marvelous. I

chose to especially focus on how relationships between grotesque characters create the

marvelous. In Miss Amelia’s love for Lymon, or in Binx’s love for Lonnie, we get an

aesthetic notion of how incredibly different people can create the marvelous in their own

love.

The play relies on Percy’s notion of framing to move the marvelous into the realm

of revelation. The idea is that the marvelous must be moved into the unfamiliar realm of

the stage or the screen in order to be seen anew and to be taken as a lesson. A corollary

idea from The Moviegoer is that of certification, where reality when put in a theatrical

context, becomes more than itself, it contains truth beyond itself. Binx acts as a sort of

philosophical narrator for the action: he presents the ideas of repetition and rotation to

frame the action in a context by which the audience is forced to read more than the

surface action onto the actors.

Each line of the adaptation was chosen intentionally, and although I do not want

to go into a discussion of every theme I put into the piece, I will say that I tried to focus

on themes of love and sexuality, especially as they relate to the grotesque, and especially

as they rely on power and violence. I tried to demonstrate the seething, violent power

behind many of the texts I used. I also tried to highlight the despair of solitude alongside
the despair of social life.

Although the ending justifies itself (what is cooler than a pig carcass swinging

across the stage?) I’ll offer a closing comment on why I chose to end the scene that way

and what thematic purpose it serves. In the story “Montiel’s Widow” by Gabriel García

Márquez, the pig with the carnation in its posterior demonstrates the absurdity of a

desperate life lived in poverty and sorrow, and provides juxtaposition to Southern life of

Northern or European opulence. In the play, the pig served as a final frame around the

text, and demonstrated the absurdity of the entire production. Significantly, that is the

only part when the texts are treated as a group, not only in isolation. I wanted to

demonstrate that although the texts are each very different, they deal with common

themes and each benefit from a comparative reading in opposition to the other ones. And

in the end, they must all deal with the same despair that is the Southern condition.