[Exit JOHN TURTURRO]
STAGE: conservatory auditorium
This is a stimulating learning environment for creatively-minded youths; your child should be feeling a sense of accomplishment that performance provides.
Your child doesn’t want to perform for an audience.
Your child is crushing her own fingers
with a grand piano’s fall board
in front of an audience.
Your child has been ordered
to clean the blood off the keyboard;
it’s not her property to mangle.
Someone else has been ordered
to clean the blood off your child’s hands,
they’re not her property to mangle.
Someone else scrubs the ivory clean.
Your child scrubs her own hands.
Your child is fleeing the auditorium
vowing to never step on a stage again.
STAGE: hospital room
This is a controlled environment for clinical trials of psychoactive drugs. The participants were asked to bring familiar stimuli as a sensory tether to reality should they experience distressing dissociative side effects. They are contractually free to leave but unlikely to find their way to the exit while the effects last.
Your test subject doesn’t know
how to be a person without a script.
Your test subject is method acting
a way out of his own life.
Your test subject must die
for the sake of believable performance.
When you think a lover is
strangling your test subject,
remember that his stunt double
knew what he was signing up for.
If you can’t tell them apart,
it means the treatment is working.
Told with genuine affection
but without compassion, Turturro uncovers
someone else’s newspaper clippings
in your test subject’s childhood memories.
Your test subject can see the door.
Your test subject doesn’t want to leave.
STAGE: subway carriage
This transit network is at the service of the general public; it has been designated accessible by the city government, as every passenger should be able to exercise their autonomy regardless of physical ability.
Your passenger is trying to paint a home
out of a stranger with bloody hands,
bricks-and-mortar in his eyes
where the living room TV used to be.
It’s so bright in here;
why are your pupils still huge?
The door is right there.
Can’t you see it?
I think this is serious;
maybe you should go to the doctor.
I think you should start looking
into other hobbies before it’s too late.
I guess you can’t watch
as many movies as you used to.
It’s so bright in there;
why are his pupils still huge?
He said he had a cataract.
Your passenger can’t see the door.
Your passenger wants to leave.
STAGE: shared mythologies
This is a retelling of an ancient myth about humanity’s acquisition of the light of storytelling from the gods; the audience should find themselves relating to Prometheus’ plight and feeling gratitude for his sacrifice in the name of art.
An eagle pecks at Prometheus’ liver,
appointed-scripted-punishment
that it doesn’t know it’s performing.
Prometheus weeps in truth no longer borrowed:
you can't quell the hunger with light.
Still he pleads
I need to buy my mushrooms.
Still the eagle must hear
Enjoy your meal.
Lights out, a man loses the props
but not the hunger.
Lights out, the audience leaves
with a stomach on fire.
They will be here again come tomorrow,
until the gods grow bored,
until their freedom can be a punishment
for someone else.
STAGE: a series of electrical impulses
This is a chemically induced coma to speed up recovery from an [unscripted stage exit]; your patient might be unresponsive to outside stimuli but activity in the pons is expected if he finds himself dreaming.
Your patient dreams that John Turturro
is refusing to sacrifice his life
for the sake of believable performance.
Your patient dreams that John Turturro
knows exactly where the exit door is
and makes a run for it under the halogens.
Your patient dreams that John Turturro
has a dinner of eagle liver waiting for him at home
and that hunger is enough to make a meal fulfilling.
Your patient dreams of giving John Turturro a standing ovation
for the times he wanted to flee the auditorium,
for the times it wasn’t his choice to return to a stage.