Put simply, a ploem is a play in the form of a poem and a poem in the form of a play.

When I write a play I italicise and bracket stage directions, descriptions of sets, props, etc. Not much thought is usually given to the quality of this kind of writing, since it is merely formal.

In a ploem I give the spoken and the non-spoken text equal consideration. My reason for this is that both are intended to be performed as part of a whole.

Seen on the page, a ploem will look very much like an extremely short play. When read aloud, a ploem should be hard as a poem.

When performing a ploem, the narrator reads everything written in italic and the actor playing his part reads everything that isn't. I think of a psalm read aloud antiphonally.

The narrator tells us what we see, what sounds we might hear, what the characters wear and so on, leaving the characters to do no more than recite their lines.

The actors and the narrator perform behind four muslin screens that form a see-through box, which is lit from inside. This creates shadows of the cast on the screen, which is all the audience see.

Since ploems are an entirely original theatrical form, I have tried to understand what the influences might have been. Here are some of them.

My father painted extremely small watercolours, some were almost miniatures, and when I painted I tended to follow his example. I grew up listening to jazz music and pop songs on recordings truncated to three minutes and less. As a young man I read everything that S. J. Perelman published. More than anything else. I enjoyed his parodies written in the form of very short plays and film scripts. These could obviously never be performed, but they did work when read aloud, which I often did, with friends.

Drawing a cartoon demands all the skills used by the theatre. Each must contain his own story, cast, props and script. But whereas a theatrical production is the work of many, a cartoon is the product of only one. This thought is never far from me when I construct a ploem.

Chopin's preludes and etudes, and Scarlatti's sonatas are exceptional. There is such depth in their brevity. I listen to their compositions daily, treating them as a form of litany. Chopin at night. Scarlatti in the morning.

I have even considered that a life-long exposures to television ads might have helped the process. After all, some TV ads are minor masterpieces of short-story telling, no matter how meaningless the actual story.

I am also aware that Japanese Noh plays are similar to ploems, especially in their use of faceless (masked) characters, highly stylized writing, and almost abstract settings. Furthermore, I came to them at roughly the same time as I started writing ploems.

Rather than influence me, Noh plays, and in particular those translated by Ezra Pound, acted more as an encouragement to me to continue with my own 'original' work. In his introduction to Noh theatre, Pound said that Noh is an allusion, pointing back to the ancient Japanese court ceremony of 'listening to incense burning'. I would say the same of ploems.

I think of poetry as the tiny hole in a camera. If made too big, or too small, the light that passes through it will not effectively distil our vision of the world. Nor will our vision of the world be transformed, which I consider to be poetry's single purpose.

But perhaps the key influence is poetry itself, being the very art of selection, refinement and reduction.

Bruno Corsi

*

SALERNO

[Reading aloud everything in italics except the directions for speech, unless it seems absolutely right to do otherwise]

The scene is a hotel room overlooking the railway station at Salerno. It is an early evening in spring. The time is the present. ARNAUT DUPAZ, a highly respected painter of large minimalist abstracts, is sitting alone on the side of his bed. He is talking to his reflection, seen in a small portable mirror, which he holds with his right hand at arm's length at face level. He is an extremely thin, frail man, with an unnaturally large head. His most recent work is a suite of seven vast canvases, each composed of a single colour, which are being shown locally as part of an International Festival of Contemporary Art. There is a catalogue of the exhibition on the bed beside him. The catalogue is as fat as DUPAZ is thin.

DUPAZ

All the elements. The earth burned white. The silver lick. Eternal light. From your childhood onwards. Nothing they say. The same contradiction framed by the same reassuring smile. They say they know. But you know different. As fact. You freeze in the slightest chill. The weakest sun burns you to the bone.

[A sudden gentle gust of wind blows the net curtain that hangs in front of the open French window, which leads onto a small balcony. He shudders]

Poor you.

[He draws the mirror close to his face]

How many yellows are there? How many blues? The green leaves of the linden tree in May. So precise. The hue. How do you mix the two? Magic. Imagination. Chance. Hope.

[He puts down the mirror and picks up the catalogue. He opens it at a photograph of himself as a very much younger man. The image is in black and white and shows him sitting in a garden, writing in an exercise book. There are a few lines scribbled in pencil in the margin, beside the photograph. He reads them aloud.]

Godless. Senseless. Your work is the flame of purification and the germ of your disease.

[He closes the catalogue and picks up the mirror, looking at his reflection as before]

Your last birthday did nothing. You ate nothing. Drank nothing. Not even a cup of coffee. You sat alone in your studio. With the blinds drawn. From daybreak to midnight. You spoke to no one. You hardly moved. It was a perfect day.

[There is another gust of wind. The vision of a naked young girl stands in a pale soft light in front of the billowing net curtain. It is his first daughter, EMILIA, as she was as a child. He cannot see or hear her.]

EMILIA

[Calling softly] Pappa… Pappa… Please, Pappa. Look at me. I beg you. I try so hard.

[The vision fades. He picks up the mirror and looks at his reflection as before]

DUPAZ

You still weep for Robert. For Henry. For Maurice and Césare.

[Tears begin to fall from his eyes. He regains control.]

Is a pork chop more tasty than a pie? The courts can't help. There is no yardstick. Ask Medea.

[He draws the mirror close to his face]

And how are you today? Primary red. A swamp. A witch's death. Along song sung too loudly?

[At the window where his daughter stood now stands his first wife TILLY, in a vision, as she appeared on the night of their wedding. She too is naked. She looks exactly like his daughter. He cannot see her or hear her]

TILLY

It's me, Arnaut. Dead Tilly. Dear mad man. Love me… Arnaut… Love me…

[The vision fades]

DUPAZ

God isn't interested in death. He creates. That is all. What happens after is of little concern.

[He brings the mirror close to his face]

They show you. See. Heart. They take x-rays of your chest. Scan your brain. Where is your evidence, they say? Do you know the day of the week? Yes. Can you tell the time when you look at a clock? Yes. Do you know your own name? Yes. Yes. You tell them your father was mad. They say it changes nothing. Madness is not passed on. You say your father was perfectly sane. They say there you are. Nothing to worry about.

[The door of the room opens and a vision of EMILIO, his dead father, enters. He is as he as was a young man, dressed in the clothes of a nineteenth-century field surgeon. His apron, hands and face are covered with fresh blood. He stands looking down at his son, who does not see or hear him]

EMILIO

The hospital was on fire. There was a German officer on the table. I picked him up. Slung him over my shoulders and carried him two miles back down the line. Then I cut off both his legs and sent him home.

[He walks to the balcony passing through the net curtain and vanishes. DUPAZ puts down the mirror, gets up and goes to the window. He stands looking down at the busy piazza, at the people waiting for buses, and the crowds pouring in and out of the station]

DUPAZ

You are the world. The one. The only. No one ever completes a cathedral, and it is pointless building anything else.

[He moves onto the balcony and shuts the French windows carefully behind him. There is a long, silent pause and then a slow fade to black]

ends

*

OFFICIAL NOTICES

NARRATOR

[Reading aloud everything in italics from now on, except the names of the characters and directions for speech, unless it seems right to do otherwise]

The scene is a room in a town hall. CAPTAIN HERNANDEZ is sitting behind his desk reading a printed document. The document is on the desk top. A second man, GUIDO, dressed in a formal suit, sits facing him across the desk. A worn leather briefcase is open on the floor at his feet. A phone is ringing in a room nearby. It remains unanswered. When he has finished reading the document, CAPTAIN HERNnADEZ picks up the document and looks at GUIDO. As he does so, the phone stops ringing. He shows GUIDO the document.

CAPTAIN HERNANDEZ

Unprotected, in unfit spaces. Attached with tape to glass doors. Pinned on walls. You see? It is all here. [He shakes his head] Even over other notices…

GUIDO

I have drafted new guidelines. Rest assured. I have insisted on glazing. Typed margins. Wooden frames.

[Outside the high windows a small crowd begins shouting angrily. CAPTAIN HERNANDEZ gets up and shuts the window. He leaves the office for a moment - to order, unseen, a small group of armed soldiers to disperse the crowd. This done, he returns to the room as it was. He smiles courteously, and points to a notice on the wall behind his desk]

CAPTAIN HERNANDEZ

They are to read and remember.

[The sound of gunfire is heard from outside and the shouting increases]

ends

*

DAYS WITHIN DAYS

NARRATOR

[Reading aloud everything in italics except the directions for speech, unless it seems absolutely right to do otherwise]

SCENE: We are in Berg's, a tailor's workshop in the basement of a brownstone block on New York's Lower East Side. It is the summer of 1942. Midweek. Around noon. NATHAN, a heavy, balding man in his middle fifties is at his work table. He is marking a suit from a length of dark serge with a straight edge and a slither of French chalk. RUBEN, his brother-in-law, is sitting on the only chai,r reading a racing sheet. He speaks without taking his eyes from the paper. Through a single window, we see the lower bodies of people as they walk by in the bright sunshine. NATHAN speaks first.

NATHAN

Days within days.

RUBEN

Dreams within dreams.

NATHEN

Songs within songs.

RUBEN

Loss within within loss.

[NATHAN stops marking the cloth. He puts the chalk on the table and picks up a pair of shears]

NATHAN

As God is. So God is.

RUBEN

And so we know.

[NATHAN begins cutting. Slow fade]

Curtain 

*

A LITTLE SPACE

NARRATOR

[Reading aloud everything in italics except the directions for speech, unless it seems absolutely right to do otherwise]

We are in the vast, airy reception room of Villa Bini, the country home of NELLO BINI, a celebrated composer of mainly church and military music. It is is July 23, 1953, the morning of his ninetieth birthday. Through open garden windows we can see the band of the local military academy assembling on the lawn. Later that afternoon, when the party begins, they will play a selection of his best known pieces, finishing with a new composition, a setting of the Gloria. Wearing a wine-red velvet dressing gown, NELLO BINI stands in the middle of the room. He is looking down at ROLLO, his large dog, who is sleeping on the cold marble floor.

NELLO BINI

Remember, Rollo? How we fill this house with flowers? Every room? Every day? Flowers I pick from the garden. Flowers the maid places in vases, in every room.

[The sound of a trombone is heard, a short single low note. Then laughter]

The tiny cuts that cover my head. The dreams that stain my pillow.

[A female servant passes hurriedly through the room carrying an empty silver tray]

My death is not distant. An overflowing river to flee. It is the journey. From love to nothing.

[The dog twitches, disturbed by its dream]

Italy. Smelling of you. Your acceptance.

Empty of you.

[BINI takes a clean linen handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wipes tears from his eyes]

I promise. My leaving is a little space.

[A YOUNG OFFICER in dress uniform with a tri-colore sash across his red tunic enters. He salutes with a white, gloved hand and waits]

Curtain.

*