Resurrection Blues

Table of Contents

 

 

PENGUIN BOOKS

RESURRECTION BLUES

ARTHUR MILLER (1915-2005) was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include
All My Sons
(1947),
Death of a Salesman
(1949),
The Crucible
(1953),
A View from the Bridge
and
A Memory of Two Mondays
(1955),
After the Fall
(1964),
Incident at Vichy
(1964),
The Prince
(1968),
The Creation of the World and Other Business
(1972), and
The American Clock
. He as also written a novel,
Focus
(1945),
The Misfits
, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for
In Russia
(1969),
Chinese Encounters
(1979), and
In the Country
(1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. Other works include
Salesman in Beijing
(1984);
Danger: Memory!
(1987);
Timebends
, a memoir (1988);
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
(1991),
The Last Yankee
(1993); and
Broken Glass
(1994), which won the 1995 Olivier Award for Best Play, and a novella,
Homely Girl, a Life
(1995). Recent plays include
Mr. Peters' Connections
,
Resurrection Blues
, and his last play
Finishing the Picture
. He was awarded the Avery Hopwood Award for Playwrighting at University of Michigan in 1936. He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, received two Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards for his plays, as well as a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also won an Obie Award, a BBC Best Play Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, a Gold Medal for Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Literary Lion Award from the New York Public Library, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Algur Meadows Award. He received honorary degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University and was awarded the Prix Moliere of the French theatre, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Lifetime Achievement Award and the Pulitzer Prize, as well as numerous other awards. He was named the Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001. He was awarded the 2002 Prince of Asturias for Letters and the 2003 Jerusalem Prize.

BY ARTHUR MILLER

DRAMA
The Golden Years
The Man Who Had All the Luck
All My Sons
Death of a Salesman
An Enemy of the People (
adaptation
of the play by Ibsen
)
The Crucible
A View from the Bridge
After the Fall
Incident at Vichy
The Price
The American Clock
The Creation of the World and
Other Business
The Archbishop's Ceiling
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
Broken Glass
Mr. Peters' Connections
Resurrection Blues

 

ONE-ACT PLAYS
A View from the Bridge,
one-act
version, with
A Memory of Two
Mondays
Elegy for a Lady (
in
Two-Way
Mirror)
Some Kind of Love Story (
in
Two-Way Mirror)
I Can't Remember Anything (
in
Danger: Memory!)
Clara (
in
Danger: Memory!)
The Last Yankee

 

OTHER WORKS
Situation Normal
The Misfits (
a cinema novel
)
Focus (
a novel
)
I Don't Need You Anymore
(
short stories
)
In the Country (
reportage with Inge
Morath photographs
)
Chinese Encounters (
reportage with
Inge Morath photographs
)
In Russia (
reportage with Inge Morath
photographs
)
Salesman in Beijing (
a memoir
)
Timebends (
autobiography
)
Homely Girl, a Life (
novella
)
On Politics and the Art of Acting

COLLECTIONS
Arthur Miller's Collected Plays
(Volumes I and II)
The Portable Arthur Miller
The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller
(
Robert Martin, editor
)
Echoes Down the Corridor:
Collected Essays, 1944-2000

 

VIKING CRITICAL LIBRARY
EDITIONS
Death of a Salesman (
edited by
Gerald Weales
)
The Crucible (
edited by
Gerald Weales
)

 

TELEVISION WORKS
Playing for Time

 

SCREENPLAYS
The Misfits
Everybody Wins
The Crucible

PENGUIN BOOKS
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80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Penguin Books 2006

Copyright © The Arthur Miller 2004 Literary and Dramatic Property Trust, 2006

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005
Resurrection blues : a prologue and two acts / Arthur Miller.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-143-03548-0

1. Politicians—Drama. 2. Power (Social sciences)—Drama. 3. Women motion picture
producers and directors—Drama. I. Title.
PS3525.I5156R47 2006
812'.52—dc22 2005053506

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C/R TK

A NOTE ABOUT THE PLAY

Resurrection Blues
received its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, in August 2002 with John Bedford Lloyd as General Felix Barriaux, Jeff Weiss as Henri Schultz, and Laila Robins as Emily Shapiro, directed by David Esbjornson.

CHARACTERS

GENERAL FELIX BARRIAUX,
chief of state
HENRI SCHULTZ,
his cousin
EMILY SHAPIRO,
a film director
SKIP L. CHEESEBORO,
an account executive
PHIL,
a cameraman
SARAH,
a soundwoman
POLICE CAPTAIN
JEANINE,
Schultz's daughter
STANLEY,
a disciple

 

SOLDIERS, WAITERS, PASSERSBY, PEASANTS

 

 

PLACE

 

PROLOGUE

 

JEANINE: Nothing to be alarmed about. I finally decided, one morning, to jump out my window. In this country even a successful suicide is difficult. I seem to be faintly happy that I failed, although god knows why. But of course you can be happy about the strangest things . . . I did not expect failure in my life. I failed as a revolutionary . . . and come to think of it, even as a dope addict—one day the pleasure simply disappeared, along with my husband. We so badly need a revolution here. But that's another story. I refuse to lament. Oddly, in fact, I feel rather cheerful about it all, in a remote way, now that I died, or almost, and have my life again. The pain is something else, but you can't have everything.

 

Going out the window was a very interesting experience. I can remember passing the third floor on my way down and the glorious sensation of release. Like when I was a student at Barnard and went to Coney Island one Sunday and took that ride on the loop-the-loop and the big drop when you think it won't ever come up again. This time it didn't and I had joined the air, I felt transparent, and I saw so sharply, like a condor, a tiger. I passed our immense jaquaranda tree and there was a young buzzard sitting on a branch, picking his lice. Passing the second floor I saw a cloud over my head the shape of a grand piano. I could almost taste that cloud. Then I saw the cracks in the sidewalk coming up at me and the stick of an Eskimo ice cream bar that had a faint smear of chocolate. And everything I saw seemed superbly precious and for a split second I think I believed in god. Or at least his eye, or
an
eye seeing everything so exactly.

 

 

My father has returned to be of help. I am trying to appreciate his concern after all these years. Like many fools he at times has a certain crazy wisdom. He says now—despite being a philosopher—that I must give up on ideas which only lead to other ideas. Instead I am to think of specific, concrete things. He says the Russians have always had more ideas than any other people in history and ended in the pit. The Americans have no ideas and they have one success after another. I am trying to have no ideas.

 

Papa is so like our country, a drifting ship heading for where nobody knows—Norway, maybe, or is it Java or Los Angeles? The one thing we know for sure, our treasure that we secretly kiss and adore—is death—

 

 

—death and dreams, death and dancing, death and laughter. It is our salt and chile pepper, the flavoring of our lives.

We have eight feet of topsoil here, plenty of rain, we can grow anything, but especially greed. A lot of our people are nearly starving. And a bullet waits for anyone who seriously complains.

 

 

In short—a normal country in this part of the world. A kind of miraculous incompetence, when you look at it.

I had sixteen in my little brigade, including two girls. We were captured. They shot them all in thirty seconds.

 

 

My uncle Felix, the head of the country, spared me. I still find it hard to forgive him. I think it is one of the contradictions that sent me out my window. Survival can be hard to live with. . . . None of my people was over nineteen.

 

 

I have a friend now. When I woke on the sidewalk he was lying beside me in my blood, embracing me and howling like a child in pain. He saved me. His love. He comes some nights and brings me honor for having fought.

 

 

Up in the mountains the people think he is the son of god. Neither of us is entirely sure of that. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

 

What will happen now, will happen: I am content.

 

SCENE 1