Back to Archive
screenplay January 1, 2012 20 min read Previously Unpublished

ADAM - The Play

A stage play about the first man, reimagined. Adam is not in a garden but in a room, not with Eve but with questions. A theatrical exploration of creation, free will, and the weight of being first.

Genre: Stage Play, Philosophical Drama

By: Athul DeMarco

For people who like Beckett's existential traps and Stoppard's wordplay. A play that reads better than most novels.

ADAM Athul DeMarco

102, MS Homes, 4th Main, G.M Palya, Bangalore, 560075 +91 9886720869 HYPERLINK “mailto:Don.osiris@gmail.com” Don.osiris@gmail.com CHARACTERS Amul: Boy aged 10, looks younger than 10, bald and dressed in pajamas Amul’s Father: A smart looking man in his late 20s Amul’s Mother: A beautiful looking woman in her early 20s Anita: Girl aged 10, tom boy with short hair. Anita’s Mother: Middle aged woman in her early 30s. Miss Rosie: Woman in her late 20s. Colin: Boy aged 10 but looks more like 15. Has a thin line of pubescent mustache and a big set of unruly and curly hair

SETTING Split Stage 1 Lights - Early morning, just before day break. Amul’s bedroom, his bed is near an open window. Birds are chirping loudly.
Split Stage 2 Lights – Several suggested settings

ACT I SCENE 1 [PLAY OPENS to Amul in Split Stage 1 Lights (on the right) – lying down on his bed with his eyes closed. There is loud chirping of birds drifting in from the open window and loud ticking of the wall clock. Amul sits up holding his ears.] AMUL (V.O): It is morning again. Those birds are chirping again. And that clock is so loud. It is as irritating as a dripping water faucet. (He takes his hands off his ears and brushes his hair) I couldn’t sleep again. The water faucet never drips in my house, because I don’t like it dripping. Mum’s head was dripping blood like the broken water faucet. It flooded the floor and spoiled the carpet. I don’t like it when things get all wet and messy. I like everything neat and clean. (Picks the crust off his eyes and washes his hands with a hand sanitizer by his bed stand.) (Lights Fade)

SCENE 2 AMUL: (Split Stage 2 Lights. Amul addresses the audience) My name is Amul. My mum told me that my father loved the utterly butterly delicious girl. She said that when I was born, I reminded dad about the Amul girl. Because of my chubby cheeks (pulls cheeks and makes faces) and so he named me Amul. But I am not a girl. I am boy. I study in the 5th grade. And I like my school. My favorite subject is mathematics. I don’t understand why people don’t like mathematics. I love my mathematics teacher, her name is Miss Honey, and she is supposed to be a doctor or something, not the kinds who use stethoscopes. She is pretty and funny and she reminds of my mother. I like Miss Honey, because she likes me, she thinks am smart. And I like it when she kisses me on my cheek, especially when I solve some of the questions she gives only to me. She always gives me questions to solve and only me. All her questions to me are named after old men who thought of all these questions and they died trying to solve it, which I find really funny. Today, she gave me some old man’s problem called the Fermat’s theorem. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 3 (Amul moves back to Split Stage 1 Lights. Split Stage 2 Lights dimly lights up to see Amul’s father push Amul’s mother.) AMUL (V.O): My mother died when I was 5 years old. My dad hit her when he was in one those not so good drunken moods and she fell. And then she died. My dad did not tell me anything and I understood that I was supposed to act like Gandhi’s monkey. (Lights fade out in Split Stage 2 Lights) (Split Stage 1 Lights, AMUL Mimes Gandhi’s monkeys) I always wanted to ask this question to Miss Rosie. I wanted to ask her, why the monkey uses two hands to cover one part of their body? It just doesn’t make a good ratio. What it really should look like is two monkeys; one covering its eyes and mouth with either of its hands, and the other covering the first one’s ears. Why would anyone have three different monkeys doing three different things when you can have just two monkeys doing the exact same thing? (Takes out his coloring book and begins drawing) The main monkey would be me. The monkey covering my ears would be my father. What I really love about this picture is that the father monkey is not drinking. I find old people to be so damn funny. And I find them even more hilarious especially when they cry. Everybody cried at the hospital that day when my mother died, even my father. I could draw graphs for all the different frequencies they were crying in my head for each person.

SCENE 4 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage1. Stops drawing and looks at the chessboard on his table) My favorite game is chess. I think I can beat Kasparov. I think he is highly over-rated. But my best friend Anita doesn’t think so. She thinks I just think too much of my mental capabilities, but that’s why I like Anita, she can be so stupid at times. (Lights Fade) AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights lights up to show Anita talking to Amul and both them making sex noises) She told me about this funny video which her mum hides and keeps in her computer, where men and women are naked and are making funny noises. (Lights Fade) (Split Stage 1 Lights) Both of us tried making those sounds but she sounded better than me, maybe she practices them before she goes to sleep, she denied it but I still have my doubts. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 5 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights. Classroom bench with Anita and Amul) She is my class-mate and she sits beside me in class. Whenever she forgets to get me lunch, we fight and the aisle turns in to a war zone. (Makes lines on the study table with the back of his coloring pencil) But she is funny, and teaches me all the bad words her parents use to call each other. Her favorite swear word is bitch this, she had said, is what her mum calls her grandmother. (Keeps moving his lips to make bitch sound differently every time)

(Lights Fade)

SCENE 6 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights. Living room with Amul and Amul’s father serving food and later watching television) After I come back from school, I go and play with Anita at her place till my father rushes to pick me up and then we sit in front of the TV. After dad makes dinner, it’s his turn to watch TV and he asks me to go to my room and sleep. (Exists to Stage 1) On some days dad watches something on the television which I think is something like the funny video Anita’s mum watches. (Split Stage 1 Lights lights up. Amul covers his face and tries to see through his fingers) I try to take a sneak peek, but I can’t really see anything, except for the blue light. (Takes out his school bag and takes out thick books and his slim notebook and inspects his notebook) So while dad watches TV, I try and solve the problems which Miss Rosie gives me. It’s pretty simple actually. I rewrite everything because Miss Rosie can’t understand my handwriting. She says I need to write bigger instead of writing so small. (Keeps scribbling in his notebook while seated on his study table while playfully swinging his legs) Anita told me that she heard her mum speak to her dad about my dad going to see mum on the days when he lets me play for some more time with her. Anita is such a stupid girl, nobody can meet dead people. But if dad could go meet mum, then even I want to go see her. Mum always smelled nice, she smelled like the food she cooked and the clothes she made me wear. And she always sang songs when dad left for office and Jim used to come. The songs had a harmonic function as its frequency, and they were nice. After mum would give me breakfast, she would send me to Anita’s house to go play and then call me back when Jim left and lunch was ready. Jim doesn’t come home anymore. I calculated this when dad was dropping me to school today morning. If Jim was ‘x’, and his arrival at home was a constant function dependent on variable ‘t’, where ‘t’ is for time. Then if you integrate the past data and do time series analysis after mum died, then the limiting function tethers off to zero. (Lights fade)

SCENE 7 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights dimly lights up again to show Jim knocking on the front door. Amul’s father watches this secretively) It was the day when dad came back home to pick up something, Jim had just entered the house and I had just finished having my breakfast and was about to go to play at Anita’s house. (Jim leaves. Evening time. Amul is watching television. Amul’s father saunters in drunk. Argues with Amul’s mother and pushes her.) That was the day when dad came back from office drunk and pushed mum and she fell and she died. They shouted a lot that day, more than usual. I tried watching this math program on the television, but I could see mum and dad fighting reflect on the television. (Split Stage 2 Lights lights fade out) (Split Stage 1 Lights lights up) I did not understand what they were fighting about, mum was crying, dad’s eyes were red, but that’s how his eyes always are whenever he drinks. Like last week, when I went to drink some water after being sent to bed, but last night he was wiping his eyes. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 8 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. A hospital room with lot of people dressed in black. Some sobbing and others wailing. Amul’s father is talking to him. Amul stares blankly into space) After mum died and everybody came home dressed in black, dad tried to sit me down and explain things to me, about how mum won’t be coming back from the hospital and how he was sorry and how helpless he felt when he looked at me and how he did not know what to do with me. But I was at that point of time solving “P Vs NP” and he kept interrupting my calculations I was doing inside my head and I had to keep erasing them and starting all over again. I wanted to solve “P Vs NP” because if I could solve it then I could find the best possible way to bring mum back home from all the feasible solutions available. (Lights fade out) AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Rosie enters and talks to Amul) Miss Rosie was the one who told me that mum won’t be coming back, and that mum was dead. I did not know what happened to people when they die. There is no mathematical equation or theory which explains the concept of death. She told me that death is like dividing any number by zero, it results in infinity, even if you wish to see it or feel it, you can’t. But, you can think about it. Mum had become infinity. That’s what Miss Rosie said. And Miss Rosie never lies. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 9 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Amul’s mother and father kissing each other goodbye) I can tell when people are lying. I knew mum was lying when she used to kiss dad goodbye, when he went to office and told him “I love you”, and I knew she wasn’t lying when she kissed me goodbye and whispered “Love you” when I went to school. Colin always lies to Miss Rosie about him not taking my lunch. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 10 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. School playground and Colin bullying Amul and Anita) Colin is a bully, nobody calls Colin by his name, and we all call him Colin the Cabbage head, because his hair looks like a cabbage. Anita keeps telling him to leave me alone during recess, but he pushes me and takes my lunch anyway. So I decided to give my lunch to him in the morning itself and share Anita’s lunch with her. (Lights fade)

SCENE 11 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Amul’s bedroom. Amul’s father enters and sits by Amul’s bedside while Amul pretends to sleep. Amul’s father sobs silently) I think on some days when I pretend to go to sleep, dad comes and sits next to me and whispers. One night when I secretly opened my eyes, I saw him crying like mum. It was funny and weird. I had never seen a man cry before, mum always told me that I should never tell secrets and that I should be brave and never cry over things. Maybe dad is not brave. (Lights fade)

SCENE 12 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Amul and his father slowly eat cereal. Both of them stare into the space) Dad and I don’t talk to each other much. He makes me breakfast, lunch which Colin eats, and sometimes dinner. He doesn’t ask me how is the food, like Lilly does, and I don’t tell him that sometimes he puts too much salt or sometimes no salt at all. (Exit Amul. Enter Amul’s Mother)(Amul’s father and mother arguing and fighting physically) I don’t tell him because he doesn’t ask me and I remember that both dad and mum used to fight whenever he used to say something like this to mum, and then dad would proceed to hit mum and she would run and come into my room and lock it from inside. She always used to tell me that this is how adults play. (Beat) Adults can get very confusing sometimes. (Lights fade)

SCENE 13 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 1 Lights. Amul is still scribbling into his notebook.) I don’t like it when people shout, at me or at other people. I can’t think when people are shouting, because when people shout, their voices change frequency, which leads me to make changes in the equation I have assigned for the person, and I can’t do it properly when they are shouting. I don’t like changes. I don’t take too kindly to them. But according to Miss Rosie, change is the only constant. It makes sense, especially when things are non – linear which are mostly equations like people or events which don’t make sense are to be balanced by an ever changing variable. If you are not open to accepting the presence of this variable then things get very puzzling. But that still doesn’t mean that I like change. I know for a fact that Anita also doesn’t like change, she told me this, when she got a new dad because her old dad went away with a new mother, who she said was a bigger bitch than her new father. I did not know mothers and fathers could act as variables, I always thought they were constants. But maybe all constants in our life and equations are variables which are dependent on time. Another couple of hours before dad wakes up and comes to my room to wake me up, sometimes after he goes off to sleep, he wakes up in the middle of the night and comes to check on me if I am still there, and if I am sleeping and I pretend as if I am. I haven’t been able to sleep ever since mum died. (Lights fade) SCENE 14 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Doctor’s room. Amul and Amul’s father seated opposite the doctor. The doctor administers lot of tests) Dad took me to the doctor to get me checked and find out why am I not able to sleep. The doctor took a lot of tests. he took my blood test, urine test, it’s a bit difficult to pee – pee inside a small cup when you have such a big commode behind it, even took a sample of my poo – poo. I don’t think he found out why, because he told my dad to keep bringing me every fortnight for checkups and he gave a long list of pills for me to take. Pills for me to take after I woke, pills before breakfast, after lunch and pills to taken before dinner. (Lights fade )

SCENE 15 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 1 Lights Lights. Amul stops writing and looks lovingly at the photo his mother on his study table) I miss chasing mum around the house threatening to put my booger on her hair, and she would laugh hysterically as I chased her around the house. It was always such a pretty sight with her dress flowing in the air behind her. (looks outside the window) Won’t these birds ever get tired? I am tired now, more from listening to them than anything else. (Beat) Dad smiles from time to time, he looks nice when he smiles. His eyes become small and race tracks come out from the corners of his eyes. When I was very little, he used to carry me around and keep smiling and I used to trace the race tracks around his eyes and the finish line would be me poking his eyes and he would close his eyes and laugh.

SCENE 16 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Amul’s father and Mother flirting, talking, hugging and kissing each other) Every time I see or remember dad smiling, I always get reminded of mum and my dad telling me the story of how they met. Mum used to work in a supermarket as the checkout girl, and dad said lot of people used to check her out because she was so beautiful and then dad and mum would smile at each other. (Amul’s father tries talking to Amul’s mother but is hesitant and walks away) Dad used tried his best to talk to mum but he always ended up making a complete fool of himself. (Lights Fade) AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. It is raining heavily. Amul’s father is protecting himself with a newspaper. Waiting for somebody) And then one day when it was raining cats and dogs and mum was the last person to leave the supermarket. She saw dad standing at the corner of the supermarket with a newspaper covering his head, trying to hide from the big rain drops, they were as big as the tennis balls. AMUL (V.O) (contd) (Enter Amul’s Mother with an umbrella) Mum asked him if he would like to share the umbrella with him, mum told me she asked him because she thought he was extremely good looking and she found his attempts at talking to her cute. The rest they said was history. (Amul’s Mother and Father are smiling and hesitantly reach to hold each other’s hands) (Lights Fade)

SCENE 17 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights Lights. Jim entering and exiting. Amul’s father is drinking and arguing with Amul’s Mother.) It’s been a long time since I heard dad laugh. I think it’s been a long time since anybody heard dad laugh. He stopped smiling and laughing like he used to when couple of months before Jim started coming over. That was the time when he started coming home very late and very drunk. That was the time when both mum and dad started fighting daily. Before when they used to fight, they never threw things at each other or use the words which made me write them down and remind myself to ask Anita for their meanings. Words like “Slut”, “Whore”, “Fuck”, “Bastard”, “Motherfucker”, “Bitch”. I knew what “asshole” means, it’s from where you do poo – poo, never understood why anybody will call someone names after a body part. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 18 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 1 Lights Lights. Amul holds his head. Gets up from the study table and rolls on his head on the bed.) If only the birds outside can stop chirping and singing, we all know that its early morning, there is no need to sing about it. All these birds chirping around, is giving me a headache. Maybe if I can find my catapult I can scare some of the birds away and then they can go chirp outside somebody else’s window. Anita’s mum, in one of the stories she was narrating couple of nights ago said that, birds come and chirp outside the old king’s window to tell him that his time was up and he was about to die. And I remember mum was singing along to the birds that day morning when she came and woke me up, the day she died. But the birds have been sitting and chirping all morning for the last couple of days and nobody has died. Maybe she forgot which animal was outside the old king’s window and made up birds. But they did chirp on the day when mum died, I heard them and I heard mum singing along with them as she gave me milk in my baby bottle.
Maybe… (Beat) (Amul goes to the window and tries shooing the birds away. They don’t stop chirping) (Amul lies down) This is better. (Amul sits up) Head hurts if I sit up. I knew all this shrill chirping of birds will give me a headache. I better not tell dad about it, otherwise he will rush me to see the doctor who will then do that thing with my blood which he does every time I go there. (Beat) Don’t these birds get bored of chirping and singing the same note? Is it me or are they getting louder by the minute. It would be nice if the birds came with a remote, then I could just mute them and look at them, jumping about in patterns on the telephone wires. I like birds as much as I like cats, which is not much. I love dogs. They are nice. They have nice hair. (Amul feels his bald head) (Lights Fade)

SCENE 19 AMUL (V.O): (Stage Split 2 Lights. Amul and Amul’s father in a car. Radio plays feebly in the background) I started losing my hair after the first couple of visits to the doctor, one of the many reasons why I don’t like it when dad takes me to the doctor. Every time I get out of the bathroom after a bath, the entire bathroom floor looks as like the barber’s shop. The whole hospital smells so weird. It smells like when dad cleans my bathroom with that orange liquid. Dad usually goes more quiet than usual when we return from the hospital. He doesn’t even play the car radio then. Otherwise he switches it on just to replace the silence with something anything. I keep looking outside the window, and sometimes I see his face in the reflection of the mirror and I can see and feel him staring at me and then he proceeds to look straight ahead and from time to time he wipes his eyes. I wonder what dad thinks about. Everybody thinks something or other always. I know this because I keep thinking of something or the other. I have thought a lot about what he might be thinking, but I really don’t know what he thinks. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 20 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 1 Lights Lights. Amul is still rolling on the bed holding his head). I think Anita is bunking school today, she and her parents are going somewhere, not sure where though. I heard Anita’s mum telling dad couple of days back. When he came to pick me up… And… Before both of them went silent and dad told me to go inside and wait for him… I wish I could go with them, but I don’t think dad would like me going somewhere with somebody else’s family. He did promise that this weekend he and I will go someplace together and if I wanted I could ask Anita also to come with me. I was thinking we will go to beach, the waves are always so interesting to watch, as they rise and fall and if you stand on the lifeguard’s tower you can see the different colors of the sea. But you need to go there early, if you go there late then it gets very crowded and very messy. And I don’t like things being messy. I like things being neat and clean.
(Lights Fade)

SCENE 21 AMUL (V.O): (Split Stage 2 Lights. Amul’s father talking to Anita’s mom. Amul and Anita play a game of hide and seek behind Anita’s mom’s back) Off late, dad has been coming home earlier than usual, I wonder if something is wrong with him. Though, couple of days back when he came back later than usual. I heard him tell Anita’s mum that he had gone to collect some reports and that it was time. On hearing this, Anita’s mum went as silent as dad and then dad whispered something to her, he stopped mid sentence, saw me standing behind the door and told me to go inside and wait while he finished talking with Anita’s mum. (Amul’s father picks him up. His face wet with tears) I don’t know what dad told her, but he just picked me up and went home. Anita’s mum and dad’s eyes were red and wet. (Lights Fade)

SCENE 22 AMUL’s MOTHER (O.S): (Split Stage 1 Lights.Amul is sleeping)The birds have stopped chirping Amul. Come to me baby. Sleep on my lap… Sleep my baby. Sleep… (Beat) AMUL: Mommy? (Beat) I am feeling sleepy. Can we go to the beach when I wake up? AMUL’s MOTHER (O.S): (Whispers) Yes baby. We will. I will wake you up. (Blackout) CURTAIN