the hard problem

man and superman: fiennes and shaw

TANNER [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly conquer shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing youre not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that only means that you're ashamed to have heterodox opinions. Look at the effect I produce because my fairy godmother withheld from me this gift of shame. I have every possible virtue that a man can have except—

George Bernard Shaw
MAN AND SUPERMAN (1903)
Act I - Tanner

• that script
• that actor
• that act III

a bear called ketch-up!

a passage to india vs indian summers

calm and analytical to the end

"I must remain calm and analytical to the end. I always wanted to snatch at life with twenty thousand hands. Was that wrong? Are they to say at the end of a year's trial I want to begin it again? I don't want that to be said..."

THE TRIAL
Adapted from Kafka by Berkoff
Act II - Cathedral - Voice

no lawyer, no council

"Pay no heed. He's a finished man. He has no lawyer, no counsel, nobody to represent his case or defend him, or love him, or care for him, or tease or worry about, or go on walks with on Saturday after the Bank closes, or sit by the river with, or make his bed, or change his sheets, or wash out those understains, or argue with, or soothe, or mollify in the dark hours, or squeeze his fingers under the table, or smooth his brow, or lighten heavy days when nothing's been achieved. When nothing seems certain and an intervention could only be made with the encouraging nudge of a friend, which might just put the case back on track. Nobody to make him a cake, or wait outside the Bank and be disturbed when he's late. Or take the stain out of his hat, or a grey thread from his hair, or brush the dust from his suit, or bite him on the ear or welcome the police in when they come to arrest you for crimes so vile they dare not be named."

THE TRIAL
Adapted from Kafka by Berkoff
Act II - Block - Voice