Stage Directions
On the stage: a single tree blossoming over a single gravestone. The tree is a young apple tree in full blossom, almost flamboyantly alive, the blossoms cartoonishly large. The tree sort of leans over the stone, and the stone, almost imperceptibly, but perceptibly enough to make it apparent, leans toward the tree, as if neither would be there if the other weren’t. The stone and tree are atop a grassy hill, artificially round, that falls off into darkness on all sides. There is a bouquet of old, dead flowers leaning against the gravestone, in stark contrast to the livid blossoms of the tree.
Behind the stone and tree: a screen of brilliant dusk-light: this light somehow fades from yellow to orange to red to violet and to the deepest, supernal blue of late evening and finally into purplish dark pinpricked by stars, this change timed somehow to match the length of the play, so that the last words are uttered in almost utter darkness.
As the light strengthens and the play “begins” so too do the songs of birds, which should be a true recording of Midwestern birds singing at dusk, as well as all the other night sounds: the sounds of crickets, the occasional hooting of an owl. The recording of birdsong should be ten minutes long: for ten minutes the audience must sit and listen and watch the tree in stillness bend over the still stone as the light gradually fades: as much as possible the effect achieved must compare to the effect such a scene would have on earth, so that the audience forgets that they are sitting in a theater.
Finally a man comes onstage, walking up the round hill. He is holding fresh flowers. He leans down and takes the old flowers up from the grave, so that he’s holding both the new bouquet and the old. By the way he looks around, it’s clear he doesn’t know what to do with the old bouquet. Finally, he sets them in the crux where two branches branch, then leans the new bouquet against the gravestone, setting them upright, so that they appear to be growing.
The man is wearing a long peacoat and hat. He looks like he has just gotten off work at a job that requires him to arrange other people’s lives all day. He’s middle-aged, but the ponderous way he moves makes him seem older, as if the grief he has suffered over whoever’s grave this is has made him age faster. He takes his hat off and hangs it on a branch, then takes off his coat and hangs it from the same branch in such a way that hat-and-coat look like a man who has hung himself from the tree. It seems we are seeing some premonition, a scene from the end of the play. He is considering the coat-and-hat, as if he sees it too, but then, as if remembering why he came, turns towards the grave as if towards a living person and says: