tablesonatina

props :
a little table with a metal plate, matchbox, sparkler, bottle of piccolo sekt, slender sekt glass; microphone(s) to amplify the sound.

1. movement
the bottle of sekt is opened. the glass is slowly filled, the bottle put back in place.

2. movement
two matches are removed from the matchbox. one is bent in the middle, the other is used to light the sparkler.

3. movement
before the sparkler goes out, it is dipped into the sekt glass. the sekt glass is knocked over and breaks. the sonatina ends when no more drops fall onto the ground and it is quiet.

each movement is announced.

*

transference

lying on a piece of white cardboard, i outline my body in black pen. then the drawing is attached to a wall and lashed with a five-tailed whip, the tips of which have been hung with pencils, until the latter are blunt.

*

nature study

curtain rises.
defloration.
curtains fall.

*

a comedy

a number of people sitting onstage.
as if noticing something strange, one person looks a little more closely at another, then points and laughs. then the person laughed at points at a third and laughs in turn (when the next person is pointed at, the previous one falls silent). the previous person laughed at now points at another and laughs, etc., until each person has pointed and laughed at everyone else.
a moment of awkward silence.
then everyone laughs.
curtain falls.

*

a drama in five acts

curtain rises.
on the darkened stage five people standing next to one another. each of them holding a burning candle in their hand.
after a little while, the second person (from the left) blows the first person’s candle out. exit first person.
now the third person blows the second person’s candle out. exit second person.
the fourth person blows the third person’s candle out. exit third person.
the fifth person blows the fourth person’s candle out. exit fourth person.
the fifth person looks around for a little while, at a loss. then blows their own candle out. total darkness.
curtain falls.

*

memory piece

while sitting in the open compartment of a high-speed train halfway between two stops stand up on your seat and say, quietly but assuredly, “now” and then sit back down. when you reach the next stop, change trains and repeat the action at the same point while traveling in the other direction with the word “once.”

*

cake

his (thick) fingers fumble for the razorblade. yes, he says, yes, it’s in the dictionary. in the morning her mouth tastes like toothpaste over and over. yes, those are his fingers, with their black-edged nails. and oily. back then, in the garage … he keeps on thinking. the glittering shards of glass. light: long across the naked mannequin. close enough to grab. parasol. utterly useless. mannequin. his fingers, the same ones which were fumbling for the raz … blade. in the dusky void of a display window (bombed-out shop). judge this activity. monday afternoon the … year-old … came upon a horrific death. sunrise: 3:57, sunset 7:51. “bring them back alive!” one dispenses with all formalities and hammers in one’s nails. the ones outlined in black. his fingers clutch a soaked volume of the dictionary. first scare off the rats. rats – fingers … hardly any difference to the lecture. run over by the ambulance. the 49-year-old railway official h.s. was found yesterday at the intersection of … and every morning he grabs the shaving kit. please visit our advertising department, you will find a lot of new and beautiful things. asleep his fingers glide out from under the blanket, creep along the walls and all the protrusions that can be confused with a light switch but aren’t. only his nails become a bit lighter in the process (scraped brick lime), nude matte photos. on the basis of this unique opportunity you must not miss … yes, he says. every one of these movements is graceful. wire, papier-mâché and plaster. don’t break it, you all! (yes.) even the flowers on the piano are cut by the falling glass pane. yes, and he smiles inexpressively. stares into the puddle. images images images – he walks the entire wharf pointing his submachine gun at the dark facades. later on his fingers (fingers!) rummage through the garbage clinging to the sewer grates. stubbornly. his fingers knead figures. something. out of bread. echoes from out of long dark halls … will officially be announced – – –. the hours trickle past. nails. dictionaries. mannequin stolen from a fashionable clothing store! use odol mouthwash. yes, he says. in the morning her mouth tastes like toothpaste. and every morning his fingers fumble for the razorblade, touch it, pick it up – he shaves. yes, he says. every morning. every morning.

Cake & Prostheses: mini dramas and short prose is available now from Twisted Spoon Press.

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Gerhard Rühm was born in Vienna in 1930. A writer, composer, and visual artist, he is one of the key figures of the postwar European avant-garde. With his earliest work dating to the late 1940s, he was one of the first practitioners of concrete poetry and a founding member of the legendary Wiener Gruppe in the 1950s. His lifelong study of music has had a lasting impact on his multifaceted work with its amalgams of music and language and image and text. The result has been a decades-long exploration of a broad range of forms drawing on a lineage that can be traced to Dadaism, Surrealism, and Dark Romanticism.

Alexander Booth s a poet and translator. His translations from the German include work by Friederike Mayröcker, Alexander Kluge, Lutz Seiler, and a new translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.