plays

	first plays
	early plays
	later plays
	for television & radio
	translations
	man and boy: dada
	love counts
	home

Man and Boy: Dada

I sat down one day in 2003, and wrote 19 scenes about a boy who loved to make complete sets of tickets and 'ciggy' cards, and about an old man (Kurt Schwitters) who relished the beauty of chaos. Michael Nyman immediately set the scenes to music, adding a few lines, marking out where the arias should be, and in some cases improving the structure of scenes. We exchanged notes regularly about Prokofiev, Charles Ives and Eric Coates. It was a first attempt at libretto, and both of us shared memories of collecting London bus tickets and the destroyed streets of blitzed Britain. I've never experienced before such a warm and gentle collaboration.

The DADA artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) spent his last three years in England. He fled Germany where he left his wife and son, and eventually escaped from Norway to England. Schwitters lived in London in extreme poverty, and died in Cumberland where a farmer provided him with a barn to work in. Schwitters lost most of his own studio in Hamburg, but some of his works have been collected in the States. Although a DADA-IST, who believed in the intrinsic ‘uselessness’ of art, he maintained a constant fear that the spirit of DADA could be used for evil ends.

The old artist was haunted by an early image of Jews on a German pavement being forced to clean the stones with toothbrushes. This was also a form of DADA, evil DADA.

Schwitters was a poet, collage-ist, singer, performer, magician and dancer; he has greatly influenced the modern movement of  ‘installation art’, and has now begun to receive proper recognition alongside the artists Arp and Klee.

In London, the elderly artist collected discarded bus tickets for his collages. A single collage often reflected every scrap of paper he’d found on that day. The old man met a boy of twelve who also collected bus tickets. The boy’s father died in the war.

He now lived with his mother. The boy and the artist almost fought over a
particular ticket. The boy looked around him and saw nothing but bomb sites and ruined city walls and streets, and he dreamed of an England rebuilt and thriving. In his conservative manner the boy wanted to make a complete collection of bus tickets. But Schwitters, the old artist, wanted bus tickets and fragments of paper for his collages because he believed in the random beauty of chaos.

At first, the boy’s mother was suspicious of this unusual friendship. But the artist charmed her with his unusual gifts. Schwitters did not know the boy’s father was killed by a ‘Doodlebug’ whilst on night watch duty. In his well-meaning ignorance Schwitters performed a  ‘Doodlebug song’ for her. The ‘Doodlebug’ rocket was a  Nazi rocket which cut out over London and fell on random houses. Later, the mother agreed to go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais with Schwitters. It was a ‘Latin American’ night, and Schwitters loved to tango.

When the boy went down with flu, Schwitters arrived at the house with a ‘Sneeze poem’. He duly performed the wordless but explosive ‘Sneeze poem’ in front of the startled boy. But Schwitters also mis-judged the boy and the mother. On the boy’s birthday, Schwitters arrived with a bike so twisted and broken nobody could ride. The artist tried to explain this was a DADA bike – it was a bike which could not be ridden. The boy burst into tears.

The boy and the old knew a bus garage where the old red monsters slept at night. They broke into the garage and searched for used bus tickets before the cleaners arrived. The old artist was clearly afraid. He looked at the iron walls and barbed wire surrounds – it looked exactly like a Concentration camp.

Another day, when the boy visited Schwitters’ room in north London, he found the old artist now ill and alarmingly unbalanced. The old man seemed to be aware death was not far off. He crawled on the ground scraping the pavement with a tooth brush. Schwitters said he now knew DADA art can be appropriated for evil reasons.

He begged the boy to understand. But the boy was too conservative and logical to take in DADA messages. Schwitters asked the boy what does the toothbrush need to take away the horror of its meaning?

The boy, without hesitation, said - ‘toothpaste’.