DOC: Sergeant Jackson? (DALE JACKSON DJ- nods) Well, they seem to be keeping a pretty close eye on you.

Transcription

1 Audition Side #1 DOC: Sergeant Jackson? (DALE JACKSON DJ- nods) Well, they seem to be keeping a pretty close eye on you. DJ: Where s the other doctor? DOC: (Settling back in his chair) Sit down, please. DJ: They keep changing doctors. DOC: Would you rather see the other doctor? DJ: No, man it s just that I have to keep telling the same story over and over again. DOC: Sometimes that s the only way to set things straight. DJ: You re not in the Army, huh? DOC: (twinkle) How can you tell? DJ: Your salute is not the snappiest. DOC: I came down from New York today. To see you. DJ: I must be a really bad case. DOC: You re a complicated case. DJ: Like they say, a special case. I am a special case. Did you know that? DOC: They keep a pretty close eye on you noe. DJ: I went AWOL twice. From this hospital. DOC: Oh? DJ: But they ll never do anything to me. DOC: I understand. DJ: You understand, huh? DOC: I understand your situation.

2 DJ: Yeah, well, mind telling me what that is? DOC: You don t need me to tell you that. DJ: So what do I need you for? DOC: I don t know maybe I need you. DJ: That s a new one. That s one they haven t tried yet. DOC: Oh? DJ: every doctor has his own tricks. DOC: Oh? DJ: That s one of yours. DOC: Oh? What s that? DJ: When it s your turn to talk, you get this look on your face kind of like an old owl who s been constipated for about five hundred years, you know, and you say (imitation of DOC s face), oh? (The DOCTOR laughs at this, a little, but he is watching DJ very closely. Sudden anger.) Man, this is a farce! (DJ turns away- as if to go AWOL or to charge to the door but he gets immediate control of himself. He is depressed.) DOC: (calmly) What should we do about it? DJ: Who s this we? DOC: Who else is there? DJ: We just going to keep asking each other questions? DOC: I don t know What do you think? DJ: What do you think, man? Do you think?

3 Audition Side #2 DOC: Here s an interesting story a case study I ve been working on trying to write it out for myself about a certain man who was an unusual type for the world he came from. (reads from or refers to folder, as if in discussion of a neutral matter) Rather gentle, and decent in manner almost always easygoing and humorous. Noted for that. As a kid in a tough neighborhood, he had been trained by his mother to survive by combining the virtues of a Christian and a sprinter: he turned the other cheek and ran faster than anyone else This man was sent by his country to fight in a war. A war unlike any war he might have imagined. Brutal, without glory, without meaning, without good wishes for those who were sent to fight and without gratitude for those who returned. He was trained to kill people of another world in their own homes, in order to help them. How this would help them we do not really know. He was assigned to a tank and grew close with the others in the crew, as men always do in a war. He and his friends in that tank were relatively fortunate for almost a year they lived through insufferable heat, insects, boredom, but were never drawn into heavy combat. Then one night, he was given orders assigning him to a different tank. For what reason? There was no reason. It was the Army. The next day, his platoon of four M-48 tanks were driving along a road toward a place called Datko, which meant nothing to him. Suddenly they were ambushed. First, by enemy rockets, which destroyed two of the tanks. Then enemy soldiers came out of the woods to attack the two tanks still in commission. This man we were speaking of was in one of those tanks. But the tank with his old friends, the tank he would have been in the tank that he might have been in that tank was on fire. It was about sixty feet away, and the crew he had spent eleven months and twenty-two days with in Vietnam was trapped inside it. He hoisted himself out and ran to the other tank. Speaking of standing up in a firefight Why he wasn t hit by the heavy crossfire we ll never know. He pulled out the first man he came to in the turret. The body was blackened, charred, but still alive. That was one of his friends.

4 Audition Side #3 DOC: All right. All right I wasn t born here. I m from Poland. I had a Jewish grandmother, but I was brought up as a regular kid. All right? Life in Poland tends to get confusing. Either the Russians or Germans are always rolling in, flattening the villages and setting fire to people. You ve got the picture? Anyway, World War II came, the Nazis, the SS troops, and this time the Jewish kids were supposed to be killed sent to Camps, gassed, starved, worked to death, beaten to death. That was the program I didn t think of myself as Jewish. We didn t burn candles on Friday night, none of that. I wasn t Jewish. But my mother s mother was. So, to the Nazis I was Jewish. So, I should be dead now. I shouldn t be here. You re looking at someone who should be dead, like you See? They sent me to one of those Camps. But I was saved, by an accident You understand what I m saying? Someone came along a businessman and he said he would buy some Jewish children, and the Nazis could use the money for armaments or whatever. A deal. One grey morning it was quite warm they just lined us up, and started counting heads. When they got to the number the gentleman had paid for, they stopped. I got counted. The ones who didn t my brother and sister and the others they all died. But not me. For what reason? There was no reason So, that s is. Eventually, I ended up over here, I lied about my age, got into the Army at the end of the war. I thought I wanted revenge. But Now I know that I wanted to die, back over there. To get shot. But I failed. Came back, and I even marched in a Victory Parade with my unit! So I was luckier than you DJ But still, I didn t know why I hadn t died when everyone else did. I thought it must have been magic, and that it was my fault the others were dead a kind of trade-off, you see, where my survival accounted for their deaths. My parents, everybody. Became quite sick. Depressed, dead-feeling

5 Audition Side #4 DOC: And what did you do? DJ: What do you mean, what did I do? DOC: Well, did you report them to a superior officer? DJ: (explodes) Superior Officer?! What superior officer? Their fucking lieutenant was right there in the fucking truck, he was the first one to open fire! I mean what are you talking about, man? Don t you know what is going on over there? DOC: Why get mad at me? I didn t shoot those children. DJ: (confused, angry) God damn! (glaring at the DOCTOR) I mean, what are you accusing me of, man? DOC: I m not accusing you of anything. DJ: Well, I m asking you! What would you have done? You think you re so much smarter and better than me? You weren t there, man! That s why you can sit here and be the judge! Right? I mean look at you sitting there in your suit with that shit-eating grin on your face! DOC: You re getting mad at my suit again? You think my suit has caused these problems? (DJ Can t control his rage any longer. He blows up, grabs his chair as the only object available and swings it above his head as a weapon. The DOCTOR instinctively ducks away and shouts at him to stop; shouting improvised. After DJ has torn up the room, he stands exhausted.) DOC: Are you all right? (a beat) How did you feel about being a killer? DJ: I didn t kill those kids, man! DOC: I didn t say you did! Did I? Did you ever tell people at home about any of this? About Datko, about the truck? DJ: No. I didn t. DOC: Didn t they ask? Didn t anyone ever wonder why you came home early?

6 DJ: Yea, they asked. DOC: Who asked? DJ: My mother. Little kids, sometimes. My girl, Bea DOC: Sounds like everybody. DJ: No, not everybody. A lot of people didn t give a shit what happened. DOC: And you pretended you didn t give a shit either? DJ: What do you want me to say, man?

7 Audition Side #5 DJ: You come down here, you sniff me out. Because in your world, I m probably a famous case. Because of my medal. Am I right? DOC: I think we re back to where we started the hour. None of this will be easy, DJ. But I will be here the day after tomorrow, and as you say, we ll see what happens DJ: You want to take that medal away from me, don t you? DOC: No. Why do you say that? DJ: Now be honest with me, man. Otherwise you re going to turn my head around backwards for good (They look at each other for a long beat) DOC: No, DJ. I don t want to take that medal or anything else away from you. But when the time is ripe, when you re ready, you may not need it any more. That s why you spoke, early this hour, of wanting to get rid of it, sometimes, and of throwing it in their faces. You see, part of you already wants to throw it away while DJ: Throw it away?! (angrily) You re the one who s crazy. You know what I d be without that medal? I d just be another invisible Nigger, waiting on line and getting shit on just for being there! I told you about that, man! You just don t listen! DOC: that s one of the very things that s driving you crazy. DJ: What is? DOC: That once again, in Detroit, you have been singled out from all the others. DJ: What are you talking about? DOC: You know what I m talking about! It s the same story as the tank, all over again. Why are all the others suffering, on the strests, and only you have been spared? But you haven t been spared and you are suffering

8 DJ: So what are you doing? You going around telling every dude who haw the Congressional Medal of Honot to just throw it away? You just dropping out of the sky into every hospital and nut house in the country, scrambling up the brains of everybody who DOC: You think, then, that everybody with the Medal of Honor must be in some kind of hospital? DJ: Did I say that? DOC: You did. You let it slip out In some way, you agree with me. DJ: That what? DOC: That the medal can make a man sick drive him into a hospital.