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The other now-annoying thing about this (besides having to do it at all) is that the original script only contained scene headings and dialogue, with the latter attributed to the actor speaking it - no character names. No stage directions at all. I had described the piece in detail to the cast members (we were already working on the piece that ran with Succubus originally, David Finkelstein's Sojourner Truth's Hatbox), so they didn't need directions.
Now, of course, I'm going to be sending it to people, asking them to be in it, so I have to add in character names and stage directions as I go, explaining the whole damned thing. So I'm doing it. Here's the first couple of pages of stage direction in the script right up to the first line of dialogue . . .
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NECROPOLIS 0: KISS ME, SUCCUBUS
(after Jess Franco and Radley Metzger and others)
a nightmare-collage-play by Ian W. Hill
This play is performed, as the movies it is based on were, “dubbed.” All voices, music, and sound effects are pre-recorded and mimed to. For this play, it is preferable if the actors do not quite seem to be accurately lip-syncing the dialogue – as if they are all actually speaking a mix of various European languages. When the films this play is based on were made, usually in Spain or Italy, the actors, often all from different countries, knew they’d be dubbed by different actors later, and learned their script in their own languages, so you might have four actors in a scene all speaking different languages to each other, not really knowing what the others are saying except by the translation in their own script, which might in fact be written slightly differently in each language, too – so one actor might think they are making a horror movie, one a spy movie, one a comedy . . . whatever.
It was just important that the actors look good, seem to know what they are doing, and that there was plenty of vibrant, lurid, eye-catching color.
The makers of these movies were a mix of businessmen only interested in money and filmmakers who wanted to make “art” movies but instead were stuck in the exploitation genres, where they still could sneak in all the “art” they wanted as long as there was enough blood, violence, action, and nudity to please the bosses and make a quick buck. Which creates some interesting pulls in different directions – most of the films aren’t very good, but they are far more interesting to watch than “regular” movies, because they keep to no formula, and are unpredictable – anything could happen in them . . .
So here we are . . . somewhere, sometime in the past, probably 1969 or so. Somewhere in what was once a castle of some kind, now the impressive if crumbling residence of a rich, indolent couple and their friends and lovers. We meet The Decadent MAN, his bored, alcoholic, and sexually-frustrated WIFE, his MISTRESS of many years (younger than the wife, but beginning to show wear beyond her years, from her service to this amoral, empty MAN), and the MAN’s GUEST, a vulgar American businessman expecting to be shown a good time in some wild “European” way, who has been “given” the MISTRESS during his stay.
They will shortly meet the SUCCUBUS, a beautiful queen of a demon realm, her MANSERVANT, a tall, creepy, mostly-silent figure, her PROTEGE, a younger female demon, and the INCUBUS, a younger, male demon in service to the Queen.
The meeting will not go well for the humans involved.
1. THE FILM
Furniture around the stage – sparse, but potentially suggestive of several possible locations that can be completed with light. A couch, stage right. A fully-stocked bar, stage left. Chairs and tables, elsewhere. Down center, almost even with the front row of the audience, a movie projector. Upstage center, a movie screen, or sheet, or white panel onto which film can be thrown (NB: for this production, the “films” will be shot on video, mastered on DVD, and projected from the house projector for reliability – unlike the original production).
A minute before the play begins, 1960s “hip” soundtrack music begins to fade in, the house lights fade out, the movie projector turns on and images begin to appear on the screen. First, several titles appear, red on black:
NECROPOLIS 0
. . . then . . .
Kiss Me, Succubus
. . . then . . .
Europe, 1960s
As these titles go by, slowly, the voices of IAN and BERIT are heard, prerecorded, split-stereo, slow and deliberate. By the end of their speech, the music has become much louder, and the MAN, WIFE, MISTRESS, and GUEST have entered in the dim light and positioned themselves on stage.
IAN and BERIT
Hello, and welcome to The Brick, and Gemini CollisionWorks’s productions of NECROPOLIS numbers zero and three. Please turn off all cel phones before the performance. There will be one ten minute intermission after the first piece, which will last exactly XX minutes and XX seconds. Thank you for coming to The Brick. Ladies and Gentlemen, Necropolis number zero . . .
And with a musical climax, lights up onstage. The MAN is by the projector, the WIFE on a chair by the bar, the MISTRESS and GUEST on the couch. They all hold drinks, and it looks to be not the first for any of them. With this, the projection has changed . . .
We are now looking for a little while at a strange, artsy, black-and-white, almost-incompetent but somehow interesting softcore porn movie featuring two couples, who we will later see onstage as the SUCCUBUS and her MANSERVANT, and the PROTEGE and the INCUBUS. No nudity is actually shown. Everything is suggested through movement, body parts, and facial expressions. The film seems to be all jumbled up and out-of-order – a corrupt print. Foreplay is suddenly interspersed with fucking and back again. It’s impossible to tell what relationship, if any, there is between the two couples, and hard to tell if this is meant to be porno or art – it doesn’t seem to succeed as either.
The four on stage watch the film with varied levels of interest and excitement (the men) and boredom or humor (the women). Music plays. The MAN finishes his drink and gets another, then begins to chuckle . . .
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NECROPOLIS #0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus/At the Mountains of Slumberland opens at The Brick on August 8 (most likely - schedule still being finalized . . .).
