FROM WITHIN THE BUNGALOW...(A PLAY IN THREE ACTS), 2010
A short experimental fiction written for the exhibition From Within the Bungalow at 6 Lodway Gardens, Pill, Bristol on 2 July 2010, curated by Marcus Jeffries.
This book is an edition of 25 and is available to buy for £10 from the exhibition and afterwards through contacting me directly.
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TOBY HUDDLESTONE
FROM WITHIN THE BUNGALOW...
(A play in three acts)
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For a few people, probably not you.
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FROM WITHIN THE BUNGALOW...
First presented in England at 6 Lodway Gardens, Pill, Bristol on 2 July 2010, on the occasion of the exhibition 'From within the bungalow' curated by Marcus Jeffries.
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FROM WITHIN THE BUNGALOW...
A brief synopsis
by Toby Huddlestone
The real imagined as the non-real through the real.
For the exhibition From Within the Bungalow, I have decided to produce a piece of written work with the same title.
This work is part-play, part novel, in which the visitors to the exhibition are asked to activate the work by circulating the bungalow whilst reading the play.
Through each window in the various rooms of the house, a fiction takes place through the reading of the text. The actual view from the window is ignored in favour of the prose, which has been written in various locations and moments through my experiences since being invited to make a work for the exhibition. Among others, these include the witnessing of moments outside cafes in Melbourne and Wellington, musing in my London studio, through to remembered ideas for possible cinematic scenes. Through the context of the exhibition and focusing on the notions of how we experience 'place', there is an intention to shift fact (the written accounts of actual experiences and events) into fiction (the imagined visual in this instance being viewed through the windows), which is probably closer to Marc Auge's 'Non-place' or some kind-of Baudrillardian reality.
Through this layering, or more specifically, shifting process, the visitor is taken a step further by being part of an event taking place: the now - another 'real' event. The resulting construct is as follows:
The visitor imagines the real as the non-real through the real.
Another thing that kept up my interest in this work is the role relating the viewer and the performative.
Whilst the prose is not written as a play to be performed; it's actually much more akin to short fiction or that of memoirs or biography; I believe there to be an activation of a potential play (or plays) through the visitors' (conscious or other) performances, which I consider to be two-fold:
One, physical - the physical movements of the visitors, and
Two: psychological - how the work is brought into being through reading.
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Drawing of bungalow provided by Marcus Jeffries to assist with the writing of the book.
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Act one, scene one: Living room (front window), mid April 2010
Flat white
In the cafe across the road, on the corner of Scotchmer Street and St. George's Road, the waitress who colours her hair varying hues of red is typically wearing her apron skew-if. She repeatedly wipes the interior of the large window in large and small circular and half-circular motions. This window also serves as a majority part of the cafe's facade. She does this with a greyed yellow cloth that has definitely seen better days. I think how I'd like to buy her and her colleagues a new cloth, maybe one of those longer-lasting spongy ones.
She takes her customer a flat white. The customer, an attractive girl in her early twenties, puts a measure of sugar into it from one of those awkward American diner-style canisters. She looks frustrated. It's obvious she has poured too much sugar into her drink. She beckons the other waitress over, the tall surly one who has an extreme undercut hairstyle on the side of her head corresponding to the side of her face sporting the most amount of moles - the thin lengths of hair that remain partly cover these (considered) imperfections. The customer, who wears a plain green t-shirt and was until now reading the paper, is complaining that the sugar canister is a bad design. In return, the waitress, who, clearly does not want to make another coffee, is demonstrating how to pour less than a single measure.
A friction builds between them, a friction we know only one will benefit from.
Two mustangs dressed with wedding ribbons briefly but abruptly steal the attention of everyone in the locale. They roar city bound heading for Brunswick Street. One, red, containing a crammed six people, its windows open for extra 'space'. The other, black, has only two passengers extra to the driver. Neither the bride nor groom seem to be in these flying machines, all are male. Why aren't more people in the black mustang? There are, of course, multiple answers to this question, but the one I like most is that the driver is a dick.
It starts to drizzle with rain. The droplets seem happy to have so big an area to run down on the cafe's fronted windows.
The red-haired waitress brings the girl reading the paper her new coffee. The girl carefully pours a more measured sugar into it. The surly waitress looks on from behind her, not refraining from scowling.
The rain picks up.
It reminds me there are three ways of watching rain fall from behind a pane of glass.
The first - to keep a fixed gaze on a small area of the glass, logging temporarily the droplets running through the chosen point and partly observing their direction and volume. This is restful, but difficult not to succumb to following a particular raindrop further outside of the designated zone.
The second - to do just this; to begin by selecting a satisfactory looking droplet, one of sufficient mass and potential to gather. This, a more neurotic experience, consists of following the droplet, expanding in size. Starting. Stopping. Shifting. Pushing. All its way to its goal the window sill, where, after making its journey, blends hopelessly into the gathered pools sitting on the sill, and, over more time, running to the pavement and ultimately underground. This latter process, un-identifyable and lacking in interest seems to relate much more to death, in contrast to the short, eventful passage down the window pane.
The third - probably the least-observed but most frequently practiced method. To gaze beyond the pane, unaware of the multiple journeys being made on the transparent playing field. Instead, a focus on beyond the pane, of watching cars and trams passing, people taking shelter in the bus stop. I liken this process to hearing but not listening to a loved-one on a rainy weekend day whilst reading the paper, your effortless response just enough to satisfy them but not engage. This is not mean or cruel; it's a weekend thing.
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Act one, scene two: Living room (back left window), mid June
Economic Apology
So fuck, I've just found out that if I want this thing printed and made properly before the exhibition opens then I'm really pushing it. I've been told that if I get everything to the publishers today then there may be a chance. I've still got four chapters to write, although two of them I have in my head already 'written'. I'm going to go for it, gonna try get everything to them tomorrow. With this in mind, please forgive me if some of the chapters; the ones that are chronologically of the latter, are rushed. It's because they are.
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Act one, scene three: Living room (back right window), mid June
Fizzy drinks
In Bermondsey Square, a donut is being eaten opposite. It was 25p to buy, which is reasonable. There are few things one can buy for 25p these days. Mars Bars used to cost this much, and a can of Pepsi.
It reminds me of that game you can play with friends whereby you try to eat the whole donut without licking your lips. If you've tried this, you'll know it's almost impossible. If you haven't, I suggest you try.
Most of the modernist designed benches in the square are in use, by a mixture of suited office workers, and some more casually dressed. Are these people at work today? It seems naive to ask such a question in an era where many of us work in casual attire, but it still begs the question.
Two girls, who quite clearly have the current exhibition in the windows skirting the South East part of the square in what is called 'Vitrine Gallery', sit and watch people receive their work, whilst producing more. They work on multiple cross-stitch patterns. They are at work, whilst everyone else are on their lunch breaks.
A suit pulls a can of Coca Cola from his leather satchel, one of those clearly suitable for carrying laptops. The can has clearly been shaken up, as he taps it firstly on top, at the sides, then finally on the bottom.
He opens it.
It fizzes, causing him to react.
The tapping may have worked to some extent, but not entirely. It makes me wonder how much this practice is effective. I remember being told in my youth that by tapping a fizzy drink's can 5 times on each side will surely eradicate any possibility of explosion. But not plastic or glass bottles. Why?
Who's done the research on this, if any? I'd like to think there is a research position dedicated to this somewhere - a team of people spending their days shaking, tapping, opening, re-shaking, flicking, tapping, opening, all the time logging each result. And the same process being applied for various fizzy drinks - cream soda, dandelion and burdock, real lemonade, ginger ale, etc. Maybe an expensive machine even exists that agitates the cans in a controlled and consistent manner, so as not to produce biased readings. And another machine to provide consistent tapping.
One can always hope for such things.
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Act one, scene four: Kitchen (back window), mid June
Dog
Through the trees a couple kiss laid out on a green tartan rug. They have finished a picnic consisting of (amongst other things) smoked mackerel and salad. Crusty bread is strewn on the grass off the rug waiting for a lucky gull or magpie to swoop down and pluck it from the floor, taking it to the safety of their nest in the surrounding trees.
Their kissing becomes stronger; he laid partly across and on top of her. She wears a short skirt, knee-high socks and a tight yellow polo shirt. He, rolled up black jeans and a simple white t-shirt.
A woman approaches left, walking a small dog that is off its lead. She carries with her a screwed-up orange plastic bag, most probably a Sainsbury's one, ready for the dog's public soiling. She knows, as do we, that if no one is around to see her, she will conveniently forget to scoop up the mess and walk on quickly, beckoning her labrador on with her.
They stop kissing. The labrador approaches them whilst the owner harshly calls his name. Bobby. Bobby...Bobby.
Bobby gets bored, and moves on.
The couple have been disturbed. They do not kiss, but lie down and talk to each other privately.
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Act one, scene five: Kitchen (side window), end April
Drink
Outside, a plastic container filled with water waits for thirsty dogs. Abruptly, an old man, definitely not a tramp, but not tidy either, takes four or five hurried handfuls and slurps, quickly moving on out of sight. At first, this is repulsive, but after further thought, it doesn't seem so bad. The old man didn't know this, but no dogs have yet to stop to slurp from the container.
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Act two, scene one: Bedroom 2 (side window), mid April
Bread/routine
This isn't the house I usually live in. I'm visiting my brother who has just got married.
There is a strong smell of yeast coming from the kitchen. I used to routinely make bread every Sunday when in an old relationship. I have always very much avoided the practice of routine, so strangely this became the only routine in a relationship in which the other partner I think yearned for more regularity. No wonder it didn't work out. I used to enjoy making bread every Sunday though.
I don't think bread is being made, but I've got a taste for it now.
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Act two, scene two: Bedroom 2 (front window), early May
Car park
Just by the sign for the car park outside, a young kid, probably around six or seven, plays alone. The freedom within his movements suggests naivety - not in the negative sense, but a naivety that conjures freedom. Whilst the train of passers-by walk ordinarily past, the boy moves almost dance-like, erratic and stilted, yet flowing with spontaneity and energy. To be so unaware is a (psychological) space to be envious of.
It makes me reminisce. It reminds me of the 'scenes for a film' work I still haven't made. As an artist; not a filmmaker, I am lucky enough not to commit to making a thoroughly structured and lengthy film, so look more towards filmmaking as a breaking down of this process, rather then adhering to it. I prefer the idea of moments rather than a digestible or consumable 'whole'. I currently have three cerebrally rehearsed moments. The first of which takes place from the bathroom.
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Act three, scene one: Bedroom 1 (front window), early May
When the kissing started...then stopped (Scene for a film No.1)
A high escalator on the London Underground. Our protagonist is singled out through the camera frame and focus. He is good-looking, not hugely so. He carries a certain air about him, a kind of nervous confidence, think Godard's leading roles or similar.
The following shots track potential victims on the other side of the escalator travelling in the opposite direction. These are all female, not all the people, but on whom the camera focuses. Some are incredibly pretty, some not. Some notice the attention of our protagonist, some do not. A few pass by until we are focused on our co-star (several shots from differing angles (some close-ups) but mainly shots from the point of view of our protagonist), ascending toward him. He makes eye contact; there is an air of concern about her, but also an interest. The mood intensifies hugely and quickly, almost dangerously. They are now about 5 people apart, ascending and descending towards each other.
He leans out in her direction, blinks (through this motion we see slight doubt and fear about him, yet still that same air of confidence), moves back quickly, then beckons her to lean in toward him.
"You", he entices, nearly demanding, then signals with his finger to come close as if to whisper something in her ear.
She leans.
He pounces and kisses her, firstly across her lips.
She turns her head toward him as they both want the embrace to linger, and in perfect synchronicity, their lips smear gently across the others cheek, he with her hair over his lips.
They brush free through the opposing direction of their movements.
They stare at each other through the crowds of commuters, only a few of which witness the moment. Half smiles of recognition appear on their faces as they loose eye contact, passing towards the rest of their separate days. It will be one of the most beautiful moments ever to happen to them both, only ever between them, yet never meeting again.
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Act three, scene two: Bedroom 1 (side window), mid May
Supermarket penis (Scene for a film No.2)
A large supermarket, the fruit and veg section. Our protagonists are a couple amongst other actors who go about shopping in a usual manner. The female in our couple is quiet and tentative looking, dressed quite smartly although still casual enough for the supermarket. She wears a pretty patterned light blue summer dress under a grey cardigan. He wears black tracksuit bottoms and a grey t-shirt. We see they are doing their shopping for just a couple of days as the camera scrolls and picks up on certain details. She is sifting through the red peppers to find one of satisfactory shape, colour and texture.
He's bored. It's she who does the shopping. He moves in front of her towards the courgettes. We see a close-up of his eyes - they look mischievous. Something is about to happen.
He picks up a large courgette, signals towards her, and holds it against his groin discreetly. With this, he outlines a look that suggests a mix of outright genius and monumental hilarity. She outlines a look that says the exact opposite. She rolls her eyes, shakes her head and exhales a hopeless breath aimed piercingly at him.
While this would usually deter any further continuation of such behaviour, it has the reverse effect. He is now spurred on. His self-perceived genius pushes him to keep hold of the courgette where it is, only this time simulating a gradual erection. She, understandably, moves away from the courgettes, and him at pace. He, astonishingly, turns round to face her, and the rest of the shoppers, still sporting his vegetable hard-on. He keeps it exactly where it is and begins to swagger towards her with a wild expression on his face, wobbling the green phallic penis as he goes. She, clearly horrified, continues her movement away and at a greater pace. He continues, only now is grunting alongside his absurd and manic motions. Until this moment, the shoppers’ attentions were keenly fixed on sourcing their next few days healthy eating. Now, there is not one who isn't watching with surprise and astonishment at this quite odd disruption.
Our penis-wielding maniac realises enough is enough, and with absolute normality, places the courgette into a basket full of onions and continues on toward the cooked meat section.
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Act three, scene three: Study, mid May
Toro y toreros
A queue in the Post Office or similar. About five or six people are in line waiting in turn down the right hand-side of the shop. Most are elderly, apart from two, a shy looking lad in his twenties, and a woman in her thirties or thereabouts. The atmosphere is one of irritation at having to queue, but of respect and also the need to queue.
Abruptly, a woman enters in her forties. She wears a garish dress, and, oozing in confidence, talks loudly and senselessly into her mobile phone. She walks straight to the left and to the front of the queue that has formed. The people in the queue are immediately disgruntled. They mutter, murmur, in disgust, but not audible to the woman, who easily drowns out the stir with her robustious and inane waffle. The woman in her thirties, already mentioned as making up part of the younger demographic forming the queue, approaches this rounded bull of a woman. In an instant, she grabs the mobile phone from her and says loudly and very clearly:
'Your friend is a fucking idiot, call her back later.' The bull, we will now refer to her as such as it really is the best possible way to describe her, is stunned by this, both physically and verbally. The members of the queue are too stunned, and are finding it hard not to display their joy at this intervention.
As we witness this, our torero is listening acutely to the mobile phone. We presume she is hearing a confused and upset friend of the bull.
'There's no one there. There's no one on the other end of this phone.'
Whilst pointing to the phone and directing her vitriol toward the bull, which still cannot stir, almost paralysed by the torero's spear.
'You're using this as a fucking strategy to get to the front of this queue, you strategic...'
'Yeah yeah whatever', the bull stirs
'Whatever? You're saying to me 'whatever'? You're a fucking disgrace. You act a mess, you sound a mess and you look like a fucking mess.'
This is the moment at which I can't think of a good enough ending, so, in true idle spirit; I leave the ending up to you.