BARNESTORMING
Red Noses

Flote: One third of Christendom lies under sod. Men waking healthy are dead before noon, stripped and dragged to plague pits where they lie pickled like game in a barrel, quicklimed instead of salted. There's no pity, faith or love left, when breath, touch or look of a loved one's pestilential, and suckling babies drink up death instead of mother's milk. Let me be chosen, Lord, to mend it...

Flote: I hear you, Lord, in the sound of their laughter. I hear and obey. I now know what I must do. Heaven's to be had with my humiliation. God wants peacocks not ravens, bright stars not sad comets, red noses not black death. He wants joy. I'll not shrink from the burden, Lord. Only turn away thy wrath. Give us hope...

Viennet: Aren't you frightened?

Flote: I'm so frightened the water on my knee's splashing. I feel like Philip the Fair's new jester, Bosco Gide. 'Make me laugh, Bosco, or I'll rack and bastinade you,' said Philip. 'Sire, sire, my wife's dying, my six children're starving, my house's burnt down and I've lost all my money. I've nothing left. Spare me! Spare me!' 'Heee-heee-hee, that's very good, Bosco, you're hired,' spluttered Philip....

Viennet: The final degradation, to face lifes supreme test surrounded by an incompetent clown.

Flote: I know. But tell me, Master Viennet, is it true lawyers believe all men innocet till proved penniless? (Vinnet stares at him, lets out a thin whinnying laugh and dies. Evaline clutches at Flote, who takes her hand.)

Evaline: Are there still young men outside? Is it wrong to love?

Flote: The commandment is, love thy neighbour only don't get caught doing it. (Evaline smiles and falls back. flote singing.) 'Life is just a bowl of cherries...'

Madame Bonville: Father, Father!

Flote: Did you hear about old Dubois? he told the marriage broker he wouldn't marry the girl without a sample of her sexual powers. 'No samples,' said the girl, 'but references he can have...'(Singing) 'So live and laugh at it all.' (Madame Bonville stops dancing, shakes with laughter and collapses.)

Bonville: She's dead. There's nothing I wouldn't have done for her and nothing she wouldn't have done for me. So we ended by doing nothing for each other.

THE BONDAGE SCENE--you have to read the play for that ...

Flote gathers his first 'Nose' for his troupe of 'Red Nose' clowns, a mute named Sonnerie who only communicates through mime and tinkling bells. The two to the Archbishop Monselet's court for official approval of the Red Nose order.

Monselet: ...There are too many footloose clerics about like you, Father Flote, preaching indiscriminate Christianity. It's natural with whole congregations dead and the ....DEAD, you hear me? I could be dying even as I say this! Dead before I end this speech! Kill the plague worms! Vinegar the air! Yet Flote's Noses could be useful to the Church. The people'd see there's no panic in the Teple of God. But the Holy Father, Pope Clement, must give confirmation.

Toulon: Most Reverend Father, is this wise?

Monselet: I don't have to be wise, just decisive...

First Attendant: Hoo-hooo-ooooh.(He pours a bottle of vinegar over his head and shrieks.) I've got the boils, the black buboes! I'm stricken. (The others shrink back.) Mother of God, I'm not ready. I've only just been born nd now I have to die. All the fault of writers, cock-pimping scribblers. They've prepared the way. Always writing stories where some characters are important and others just disposble stock--First Attendnt, Second Peasant, Third Guard. Stories're easier when 'tisn't possible to care for everyone equal. That's how itty-bitty-bit people like me come to be butchered on battlefields, die in droves on a hoo-hooo-ooooh. But we First Attendants are important too. We've lives. I've lodged in the chaffinch, lived in the flower, seen the sun coming up. I've discovered unbelievable things. I'm an extraordinary person. I'll tell you a secret.....(He dies.)

Archbishop Monselet assigns skeptical Father Toulon to keep an eye on the Noses...Mercenary soldier Brodin enters murdering and raping as he goes. Brodin kills Rochfort and grabs for the nun Marguerite who starts screaming causing Flote, Sonnerie and Toulon finally to stop praying Upstage and come forward.

Flote: If you attack that Bride of Christ, I'll stand here and make uncouth noises with my mouth. The Church can't make you stop sinning but it can stop you enjoying it.

Toulon: Remember, the pleasure's transitory, the price excessive, the position ridiculous.

Brodin picks up Mistral's sword and thrusts it into Flote's belt.

Brodin: Defend yourself, priest. I give you ten seconds to draw a sword. One, two, three, four, five...

Flote whips out a crayon and parchment and quickly draws on it. Brodin slowly turns to the audience and looks heavenwards.

Flote: Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. It's done. (He hands te sketch to Brodin.) Gitto couldn't have drawn a better sword in ten seconds

Brodin: You bacon-faced gullion, I'll...(Looking at the drawing.) Phswk. Call that a sword? You don't know a sword from a ploughshare. Give me that crayon.

He starts sketching on the other side of the parchment as Margaurite finally scrambles up.

Margaurite: I'm supposed to be raped! What of the raping, spindle-shanks? I was promised marauding prickmen. There'll be atrocities, they said. Rape and ravaging, they said. I want to be first.

Brodin: I'm not in the raping mood. Raping means taking a woman by force. You're giving it free.

Rochfort: I've never been given anything free by a woman. I always found I had to pay for it one way or another in the end....

Flote takes three coloured balls from a bag and juggles them, he throws them to the others and miraculously they can all juggle.

Margaurite, Brodin, and Rochfort: Clowns?! You want us to be clowns?!

Toulon: Flote, you're preaching vile equality and love again. Look at'em. One blood-soaked berserker, one renegade chicken-eating aristo and a nun waiting to be raped for a penance. Three fools don't signify and a thousand fools only turn one rightous man into another fool. How do you know God is intersted in our laughter and joy? Perhaps he wants our tears and suffering? I know He wants our tears and suffering. I sad with one foot in Heaven and the other gloriously in the abyss. Compromise is for the weak, concessions for cowards. I never yield or compromise. I obey. Obedience is the first vow of releigion. Our task shouldn't be to make them smile, make them sleep easier in their beds, but to make them tremble. The link between God and man, man and man, is fear. God wants to be feared not loved. Make them bow down and tremble.

Flote: If that is life, I don't want it. I'll go through it as a stranger, curl up and die...

THE BROTHEL SCENE--you need the play for this one...

Flote and the troupe hold auditions

Toulon: The new recruits are here. Every halfwit and quarterwit left breathing.

Flote: The bright-eyed and hopeful?

Toulon: The dull-eyed and hopeless. They come for free food and lodging not for love of GOD.

Flote: It's always Ash Wednesday with you, Father, neve Easter. If they've skills, we need them in our troupe. The loving can come later.

Toulon: Let's judge them then.

Flote: Never judge, Brother Toulon. We're here to see if Christ can use them. Who's first?

Toulon(reading from the list): First is Jean Le Grue and Charles Bembo....

Flote: Could you tell us what you can do?

Le Grue: Le Grue's the name, the great Le Grue. You've heard of me? Speak up, damn you, can't you see I'm blind? Take out their eyes, Lord, as mine were took.

Flote: It would be best if you started.

Le Grue: Do? I juggle. I'm the best stone blind juggler in the French and Norman lands.

Bembo hands him three wooden clubs and plays another drum roll. Flote and the rest move back instinctively as Le Grue throws the clubs into the air and misses them. hey fall on his head and he slumps down with a groan. Bembo picks up the clubs, bows to acknowledge the nonexistent applause and drags off the unconscious Le Grue, Stage Left. Sonnerie rings his bells, dazed.

Margaurite: Le Grue must be to juggling what Attila the Hun is to needlework.

Brodin: If I'm not back by Wednesday, break down the door and let me out.

Toulon (reading): Pierre Frapper--quick wit and stand-up jibster, singer of songs and sender of frolics. Pierre 'I-suffered-for-my-art-now-it's-your-turn' Frapper.

Frapper enters Stage Right

Frapper: S-s-s-sires a f-f-f-funny thing h-h-h-h-er-er-t-t-t- m-m-m on the w-w-w-ay but I c-c-c-can't r-r-remeber w-w-w'twas. I-I-I-I m-m-m-ay be slow b-b-b-ut m-m-my act is s-s-sloppy. E-e-e-e r-r-r...

Brodin guides him out Stage Left and returns.

Rochfort: Someone should throw a shoe at him and forget to take out their foot.

Toulon (reading): Alain and Jacques Boutros. The Boutros Brothers!

The Boutros Brothers enter Stage Right on crutches to the tune of 'When You're Smiling', thumping down on their one good leg as they tap-dance across the stage and exit Stage Left.

Brodin: Don't panic.

Toulon: Did you ever see such Satanic pride? ...That blind wretch acting as if he could see, the dumb one speak, the one-legged dance...

Flote: It wasn't pride but hope, hope shining anew despite of eery discouragement. Brother Toulon, we just saw the very apotheosis of Christianity: the triumph of hope over experience.

Margaurite: Father, what of the Triple Threat--Le Grue, Frapper and he Boutros Brothers?

Flote: They join us, of course. Did you not hear the laughter? Failing to be good they succeeded in being completely bad.

RED NOSES STUDY GUIDE, from the Contemporary Playwrights and Productions university course, Rose Bruford College, London.