circus animals in hell

(JEAN-PAUL SARTRE stands at center stage, sulking. ANDRE rushes eagerly onstage)

ANDRE: Jean-Paul! I have news!
SARTRE: Andre, leave me. I am busy hating God.
ANDRE: Has God done something to you?
SARTRE: No. That's the whole point. Do you not read any of my works?
ANDRE: You pay me to sell your babble, not to read it.
SARTRE: I hate you.
ANDRE: Are you working on anything new?
SARTRE: I am contemplating a new play.
ANDRE: What is it about?
SARTRE: Cheesecake.
ANDRE: Sartre, no more plays about cheesecake. Nobody wants to see them.
SARTRE: It is a thing of beauty! You know nothing of beauty! You know only of ratings and capital! I love cheesecake! It is a thing I can feel! Your tin god television, it makes me feel only indifference!
ANDRE: Have you not heard the cries of your fans, Sartre? "Once he believed in nothing", they say. "Now he believes in cheesecake. He is old and weak. Camus, he was hard core. Sartre has sold out."
SARTRE: I have no fans. I have only monsters that eat my words for dollars.
ANDRE: This is all irrelevant. Have you heard the news?
SARTRE: What news?
ANDRE: You have won the Nobel Prize for Literature!
SARTRE: I have?
ANDRE: Yes!
SARTRE: I don't want it.
ANDRE: You must accept it!
SARTRE: It is meaningless.
ANDRE: Ah, but if the award were cheesecake you would accept it, no?
SARTRE: I hate you.
ANDRE: Sartre, I have been your agent ever since the beginning. I have sold your work while you have done nothing but sulk. It was good sulking, yes, but you are old now. You have a wife and children. You are no longer the "it" philosopher. And existentialism is not so hot anymore! The kids these days are into nihilism. The French scene is dead. It's all about Germany now. Nobody buys your work anymore! Camus accepted his awards and his book sell well. The Nobel Prize will put you back in the limelight.
SARTRE: It will also make sure that I can no longer visit prostitutes. You know what they do with those Nobel Prize winners. They follow them around with cameras and history books, writing down what they do. No privacy. I will not accept.
ANDRE: Think about it, Sartre. I will return.

(ANDRE leaves. SARTRE resumes sulking. ELISE enters)

ELISE: Sartre, have you taken out the garbage?
SARTRE: (to her) Eh. (musing to himself) Look at me. Andre is an ass but he is right. I am uninspired. My work is empty.
ELISE: Wasn't emptiness always the point of your work?
SARTRE: We have been married for decades and you are still so stupid.
ELISE: Take out the garbage, Sartre. Now. (exits)
SARTRE: I am burdened with these conventions. The wife, the children. The garbage. Now they want to make a Nobel Prize statue from me. They give me an award so I will be their statue. How can I refuse? I have become dependent upon money and I have none. The Nobel Prize will give me money but it will make me a statue. I am trapped.

(HUGO and LOUISE, Sartre's childen, enter. they are dressed in pajamas)

HUGO: Papa!
LOUISE: Tell us a bedtime story, Papa.
SARTRE: Why? Do you think a story will relieve the crushing meaninglessness of existence?

(HUGO begins to cry)

LOUISE: Mama!
ELISE: (offstage) Tell them a nice story, Sartre!
SARTRE: (to her) Eh. (to the children) Fine. I will tell you a story. Louise, fetch my wine. (she goes)
HUGO: Will the story have animals, Papa?
SARTRE: Yes.
LOUISE: (returning, with bottle) And a circus?
SARTRE: Who is telling this story? You or me? (silence) Okay. So there are these circus animals and they are very bad. For example, there is a bear. He is a very mean bear.

(the BEAR comes onstage as SARTRE and the CHILDREN move to the corner)

SARTRE: The bear always growled when he saw children at the circus. "Grr", he would say.
BEAR: Grr.
SARTRE: The children would drop their cotton candy and scream in fright. One day, the bear became very sick. He was old. The cruel people at the circus did not like the bear. They said "Perhaps a lion would be better than a bear." So they did not take the bear to a doctor, and he died.
HUGO: Why was the bear sick?
SARTRE: He visited too many prostitutes.
ELISE: (offstage) Sartre! No stories about prostitutes!
SARTRE: (to her) Eh. (to HUGO) You betrayed me, Hugo.
HUGO: I am sorry, Papa.
SARTRE: Because the bear had been very bad during its life, it went to hell.
LOUISE: Papa, how do you reconcile the essentially religious nature of a concept like hell with the nothingness that you also frequently refer to?
SARTRE: (angry) Go to your room, Louise.
LOUISE: But...
SARTRE: Now. Go. (LOUISE begins crying) Shut up before your mother hears you. Fine. You may stay. (she stops) Now, when this bear went to hell, he met the devil.

(the devil, ANDRE, comes onstage)

ANDRE: Hello, bear! Welcome to hell.
BEAR: Grr.
SARTRE: (speech slurred) Do you want to be in the story too?
CHILDREN: Yes!
SARTRE: Okay. Go. Hugo, you are a chipmunk. Louise, you are a dolphin.

(the CHILDREN run and stand with the bear)

SARTRE: And you don't like the bear. So you growl at him.
HUGO: Grr.
LOUISE: Papa, do dolphins grr?
SARTRE: They wiggle around angrily.
LOUISE: Okay. (wiggles)
SARTRE: And in hell, they have a circus too! They want to make the animals be in a circus again!
ANDRE: In hell, we have a circus too! We want to make you animals be in our circus!
SARTRE: And the chipmunk and the dolphin, they think it is good. They cheer and they want to be in the circus. Be the animals! Cheer!
HUGO: Yay!
LOUISE: Papa, how does a dolphin cheer?
SARTRE: It flaps its wings.
LOUISE: Papa, a dolphin has no wings.
SARTRE: Who is telling this story? I! I am telling this story! Now, the bear, he did not want to go back to the circus. He thinks circuses are bullshit.
BEAR: Circuses are bullshit.
SARTRE: But they want to make him be in the circus.
HUGO: Papa, why do they want to make the bear be in the circus? I thought you said the bear was mean and he growled.
SARTRE: It's not so bad to be mean! Perhaps the evil little children should have been growled at! If it is all bullshit then you are supposed to growl! So they try to convince the bear, but he says "No!"
BEAR: No!
SARTRE: And this bear, he used to be a cowboy, so they bring out the famous American actress Rita Hayworth to tempt him!

(ELISE enters, dressed seductively as Rita Hayworth)

ELISE: Bear, you should come to the circus.
SARTRE: It is very tempting for the bear! The American woman, they are so nubile! But they are evil! So the bear says no!
BEAR: No!
SARTRE: No I will not dance for you!
BEAR: No I will not dance for you!
SARTRE: So they, the devil and everyone, they get wax! And they make a statute out of the bear! The pour the wax on and they get Rodin or some other sellout to make a statue out of the bear and fucking Camus writes a plaque to go in front of the statue and it's all bullshit!

(ELISE tickles the BEAR under the chin while ANDRE sneaks behind him and puts a bucket over his head)

ANDRE: Ha! Ha! Now we have a bear for our circus in hell!
ELISE: Ha! Ha! We can make our bear take out the garbage, too!
BOTH: Ha! Ha!
SARTRE: And that is the story! That is how it ends! Now go to bed.

(all of the people in the story leave)

HUGO: But Papa, does the bear ever escape?
LOUISE: It would be a better story if the bear escaped.
SARTRE: But they made him into a statue! He cannot escape!
HUGO: He could escape if you made the chipmunk pour anti-statue magic potion on the bear!
LOUISE: Yes, Papa! Change the story so that happens!
SARTRE: How can I do that?
LOUISE: You just say so!
SARTRE: (thinks, long pause) Alright. It is so.
CHILDREN: Yay!
SARTRE: Now go to bed.
CHILDREN: Goodnight Papa!
SARTRE: Eh.

(the CHILDREN leave. SARTRE ponders, then smiles. he stretches his arms out wide and does a gigantic pelvic thrust at the audience)

SARTRE: No statues for you, fuckers!

(SARTRE gives the audience the middle finger and walks offstage)

VOICE: Jean-Paul Sartre refused the1964 Nobel Prize for Literature and continued to exercise total creative independence for the rest of his life, although he never shook his preoccupation with cheesecake. He died in 1980. Today, his works outsell Albert Camus' by a 2-to-1 margin.


circus animals in hell by marc heiden september 1999