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Skit of the 'The World's Wife' written by Martin Kirk

KATIE

Little Red-Darwin-away-dusa’s Bride-chee dice

At studio’s end, the papers petered out

into cream cloth, the CAST allotment

It was there that I first clapped eyes on the director.

The stage we rehearsed in was a freezing world

of black, now white; paper, trout, broken shells;

where we would dive for the glue to stick it all together

as we held in place that next best box.

I glanced at a buzzing phone

An audience member fell

to the ground.

I glanced at a computer

splash screens spattered down

Craig stuck sharp things on the floor,

little bells.

I didn't trip,

wasn’t blind.

He brought up things and more things and yet more things.

He called them girly ‘notes’.

Adam

played statue, shtum.

Big C was the boy. Legendary.

The blurb on the back of his programme was deleted

audience,

Attache to Zsuzsanna,

Flocked in late when he sang

31 March 2007.

Went to the party.

I said to Her

Something about this book over here reminds me of you.

(Guide to London Zoo)

ROISIN

Theti-modo-zarus-ope

I shopped for a suitable cloak.

Size classified. Wait.

Big Mistake.

Repeat five times I stitched it

Liz has too many parts, Penelope I nicked it.

Next I was:

generous bronchial throats

gargling, or coughing slowly,

I climbed the front door steps,

out of breath and sweating anxiously, yellow-cloaked,

and found the key in the door

Our latecomers - sullen Scots, fallen Flems, cowed culturists

raised their ticketed hands in pleading

I had gone home. Gutted the place. Slept in a single cot,

My will was dead. See, it was vanishing

Could I stand that evening in the tech

in a shawl of cold air, unheated, unable

to live. I saw the horror on Craig’s face.

I heard his crazy notes out of time.

Carsten trembled when Craig spoke to him.

He climbed up ladders with his claw-hammer,

His pliers, his saw, his clamp;

and, though it took agonizing weeks,

laid out the brillant rig

and let light fall.

Then Craig’s PC,

his least-favourite computer,

sometimes kept working its astonished, golden lips

or else F5.

The speakers. The speakers.

We had made them mute.

When I was done,

and knackered to the core,

I realised there was no music of the bells or otherwise and sang instead.

(Paris Monuments)

LINDA

Queen Faust van Demeter

Three cast at the theatre gates,

dressed in furs, sensible

with all the crew fast asleep, save me,

They were wise. Older than I.

We sat in the cold stone studio

choosing tough words, hammer, pick,

to break the ice.

Silver and gold,

the loose change of the bar.

Watch they said Carsten’s new star.

A tram screamed outside.

I sent for the director,

a literary man

with a (very long pause) caesura, like a tick

to the long start of his note.

Take men and women,

knives, scissors, razors.

Take paper from here

and cut each and every one.

Do it. Spare not one.

We do our best,

we crew, we cast,

cast and crew.

Behind our lights,

the putter of terrible programs

whirr and hum.

And while the crew slept

I found some hobbies for myself.

Acting. Seeing the sights I'd always dreamed about,

without leaving the studio.

Until the day

I came home carrying a pastel of cloaks

and Craig was sitting on the sofa with more notes.

I keep Faust's secret still -

the clever, cunning, callous bastard was plugging the FEATS bill.

(Get Rich Quick)

FIONA

from Delliah-circ-arus-vis

I, too, once knelt on that lighting desk

watching the lantern fade from the burning gobbos

Of course, I was younger then. And hoping for men. Now,

let us act in that sizzling light from the spot once again.

In the back gate with my stick,

Act two;

At the start I would hear

Noise back stage

I'd usually heard it

before they come in

but I never let on.

I'd heard one that evening

at about 8:30 p.m.

a faint sneer of six down in the street

and felt

a sudden swish

at the back of the curtain.

They were late getting in.

The curse, he said, the curse.

Of the late coming public,

he snapped the next day,

I don't want folk getting the wrong idea.

It got worse.

Teach me, Tom Jones said -

we were lying in bed -

how to sing like Elvis.

I let him slip and slide and sprawl, handsome and huge,

on the floor like a pillock.

And before we fetched and sharpened our scissors -

snipping first at the interesting articles

and fastened each to the floor.

That's the how and the why and the where.

Then with deliberate, passionate hands

We laid down the floor.

I want to end with a recipe from abroad

which uses couscous not pig.

(British Museum Guide)

LIZ

The Kray Sisters

Mrs Aes-yphus-Freud-ome- Kray

By Christ, she could learn for Purgatory. Her part was not small,

did prepossess. No need to impress.

Well, let me tell you now the next line,

the poem in the hand never mind the 29 in the bush.

Going out was worst. Craig would sit in the corner look, after we leap;

scour the curtains for a tiny leak

I'll cut off your fabric, all right, I said, to save my exit.

That shut him up. I russled last, longest.

That's him pausing the text in the book, the cert

I call it a novel - it's nearer the size of a kirk.

When he first started out, it didn’t seem to hurt

but now poems incenses me, no chance to shirk

No ad libs, no precie, no summary, the absolute work.

I could do something vicious to Duffy with a dirk.

Ladies, dear ladies for argument's sake, let us say

that there aren’t as many synonyms for vagina as there are for penis

I'd done it before

(and doubtless I'll do it again,

sooner or later)

acting I mean.

I rang for the crew.

I needed to clean up my act,

His head on a platter.

Oops, no love, pork sword in batter.

There go the twins! No-one would say

when we talked down the Bok and Dragon

in our East End accents, which were big, like the gaps in the gauze

No one could tell us apart, apart from those who met us

There is some dispute about a Grand National horse, name of

Ballytown Boy, was it the Derby was it on the flat or the jumps?

We wanted respect for the number of lines often in the right order

we entered a bar, or handled a cloak, or shrivelled

Adam before we came on with simply a menacing look, for Protection.

We hear what's being said backstage. That particular night

Leave us both there, spotlit, give Carsten a break.

(Tower of London)

ISABEL

Mris Midas’s-Wife-Pope-Kong-Beast

It was late March. I'd just poured a glass of cold medicine, begun

to cough, while the lights cooked. The studio

filled – well sort of.

Then he plucked a pear from a branch - and it sat in his palm like a three hundred and ninety Euro light bulb.

I thought to myself, I should move to Australia and become an artist.

The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,

‘Now Craig don’t let a few positive comments get to your head.’

He toyed with his fabric, then mine, then with the lights, the props.

How he'd had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.

But which director has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about paint?

What gets me now is the next poem has floppy hands.

During the show the crew crept out Friday,

bored stiff, undisguised, and joined the unfrenzied crowd.

The audience tripped, clutched the bridle of an trout, looked up

Was he God, the Director? Of course not. We knew Carsten was.

After I learned to transubstantiate my lines

and wear that stupid surplus under my cloak

I came to believe in my miracle

which was surviving on stage all week with flu.

These myths going round, these legends, fairytales,

The Bulletin’s plot summarys are getting worse each time

I could have told her - look, love, I should know,

What you want to do is find yourself a better reveiwer.

Myself, I came to the House of Carsten

knowing my own mind,

I want to open, decant and quaff

a bottle of Chateau Margaux '54,

no comment on the year of my birth.

Need I say more? Bring me the wine-cellar key.

I'd been in Manhattan a week,

making my plans; staying at 2 quiet hotels,

in the Village, I needed a map.

(New York City Guide)

LOUISE

Devils Wife Part One – Dirt

There was a great lady from Lasne

Who came to the Studio to help with the hang

Stayed too late in the day

And in many a way

Made the museum alive with props so it sang.

(Catherine the Great)

ZSUZSANNA

Devils Wife Part Two – Medusa

For smily help beyond comparison

This kind lady has kept her computer on

Night and day she emails

From whereever it hails

To create the support we all rely on

(Champagne)

SARAH

Devils Wife Part Three – Bible

New to theatre in Brussels was Sarah

Cast back stage not on stage this era

Helpful and bright

Even thrown into the light

An essential team member was her

(Europe since 1945)

CARSTEN

Devils Wife Part Four –Night

He said No not me I didn't I couldn't I wouldn't.

Can't remember no idea not in the room.

But Craig ignored him and Carsten did it anyway.

It would have been a long fifty-year night,

Without Carsten’s lights that crawlled on the wall:

Spectacular; Marvelous, Burning bright.

When evening ends,

You get your just applause

(Difficult Visual Puzzles)

CARAIGH

Devils Wife Part Five - Appeal

lf I'd been stoned to death

If I'd been hung by the neck

If I'd been shaved and strapped to the Chair

Caraigh would still have demanded the best from me and every one.

If wife means life means wife means life

What he did, the end result, speaks for itself

When we were the World’s wife.

(Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

END