THE TRUMPETER

ASHTON ELDER

SYNOPSIS:

The play, inspired partly by Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, is set in New York City. It is 1958 in Manhattan at the infamous Birdland jazz club, known to attract writers, beats, musicians and artists of all walks of life. A woman unusually solo, becomes enraptured with a stranger-a jazz musician. Already in a mood for the unreal, slowly her interest in his mystery and desire for something amazing to wake up her sleepy world causes her to be seduced by the trumpeter in a dreamlike exchange between a jazz musician and his fan become almost erotic.

CHARACTERS:

ELLA: A twenty-something raven haired, fair skinned, classic beauty has been left in Manhattan alone when her fiancé goes to D.C. to work on a political campaign. Feeling curious and enticed by the scene and music, she has stayed at the Birdland to hear an amateur trumpeter play a set. She unknowingly becomes bewitched by him.

THE TRUMPETER: A beatnik musician. He is handsome and alluring with unique features and stylish with his jazzman's dress and demeanor. He is silent but for his playing in the piece.

FRANCIS: Ella's fiancé, mentioned, but not in the scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LATE HOURS AT THE INFAMOUS BIRDLAND CLUB- WE SEE THE INTERIOR OF BIRDLAND, A GRAND NIGHT CLUB WITH BIRDCAGES AND ELABORATE FURNISHINGS, VIRTUALLY EMPTY. A FEW PEOPLE LINGER BUT THE SPOTLITE LEAVES THEM IN THE DARK AS IF ONLY ELLA REMAINS. ELLA IS SEATED AT A SMALL TABLE AT THE CLUB, IT FACES THE GRAND BIRDLAND JAZZ STAGE WHICH IS MADE TO BE A MOCK STAGE ON A STAGE, ELEVATED BY SEVERAL FEET AND PLACED BACK STAGE LEFT DURRING THIS SCENE. IT IS HERE THE TRUMPETER WILL ENTER WHEN HE BEGINS TO PLAY. FOR NOW HE REMAINS ALSO OUTSIDE THE SPOTLITES.

    [Ella begins to speak. She gets out of her chair and faces the audience]

                 ELLA:

It was a cold night, a night like any other. The hour was mad for someone like me, way past the usual hour for even the most self proclaimed fashionable quartets, duos and solos. [SHE PAUSES] The headlining band had long since played their last set, and the club had this sleepy familiar air about it-like early morning hours in a bohemian Parisian opium den…. it was intimate, cool, like a dirty catholic school girl who was not ashamed about it. Perhaps it was the looks of the place, that bedroom intimacy, it created an environment for an intensity of feelings to suddenly poor through me… first hot, and then cold, which married itself with a rhythm of both the rapid and painfully slow.    [SHE SITS DOWN AT HER SMALL TABLE THAT FACES THE BIRDLAND STAGE, WHICH IS HIGHER UP, AND PLACED BACK STAGE LEFT DURRING THIS SCENE].

                 ELLA:

 

It had been a while since Francis had left for the campaign in Washington, trading in the glorious New York City world of the engaged and beloved in which we shared for a intense and riled up room full of boys yelling poll numbers and answering phones, talking about the future of America. He had traded our world for the campaign trail, and whatever wild lustful thrills it possessed in contrast. I-decidedly bored after the initial few weeks had found myself wondering around places like Washington Square Park, or the MET, gazing at essentially nothing and feeling bound to nothing, not even him anymore. It was something of a shock to come to Birdland without him, different from the very beat of every note that passed through the smooth hum of the sax into my very open ears. It was this man; or boy, a gentleman of an age where either word could be used and neither was quite fitting, well, it was him that had caused this strange longing and awakening in me that night. He had taken me aback in such an odd way. He wasn't playing all night, it was that witching hour-almost dawn-most of the seats empty and the stage as well, it was then that he began to slowly walk to the stage in a shroud of mysterious vigilance, and he began to play. He was beautiful in a distinctive way [THE TRUMPETER ENTERS INTO THE SPOTLIGHT AND WALKS ONTO THE BIRDLAND STAGE. ELLA PAUSES AND TURNS UP TOWARDS THE TRUMPETER, HER BACK MOSTLY FACING THE AUDIENCE] He was young, smart looking, slightly virginal, and a wide-eyed hipster of the Manhattan brand. There was nothing outstanding about his particular brand of jazz in his dress or person. He was not a Dizz-type or a Thelonious Monk…

[SHE FACES THE AUDIENCE AND THERE IS A DRAMATIC PAUSE]

                    ELLA (CONT.):

 

He put his tongue and lips on the tip of his trumpet.

[THE MUSICIAN SUDDUCTIVELY BEGINS TO PUT HIS MOUTH ON HIS TRUMPET, HIS EYES SEEM TO STARE DISTINCIVELY AT BOTH ELLA AND HIS TRUMPET]

                    ELLA (CONT.):

 

Inside I began to tremble and shiver slightly at the sight of him, as he carefully and longingly danced his cold fingertips along his trumpet, silver in the light of the stage, his lips and tongue following gracefully in a beautiful and meticulous waltz which turned wild and staccato and sighed deeply with a haunting rhythm.

[THE MUSICIAN BEGINS PLAYING, NOT LOUDLY AS IF TO DROWN OUT THE NARRARATOR, BUT AS IF TO DEMONSTRATE THE SCENE IN WHICH SHE IS DISCRIBING. THE NARRARATOR LOOKS UP AT HIM, TOUCHES THE BACK OF HER NECK GRACEFULLY WITH HER HAND AND DIPS HER HEAD BACK, AS IF TO SOAK IN THE PLEASURE OF THE SIGHT. ELLA BEGINS TO SPEAK AT A MORE RAPID TEMPO, AS IF SINGING HERSELF, THE TECNIQUE REACHES ITS PEAK AT THE END WITH A DEEP SIGH]

                    ELLA (CONT.):

 

He utilized all the provocative tools in a trumpeter's repertoire to slowly seduce me. The Flutter tonguing, rolling the tip of his tongue ever so slightly to produced a 'growling' tone. Then another, the double tongue technique, he tongued so lightly that the articulation was almost indistinguishable. Finally, he pressed his lips down hard, soft and everywhere in between, this is called the Glissando, sliding the notes.

[ELLA LOOKS UP AT THE CEILING AS IF STARRING AT THE HEVENS, SHE SUDDUCTIVELY GETS UP FROM HER SEAT, PUTS HER HAND ON HER HIP AND BEGINS A ROCKING MOTION WITH HER HIPS, AS IF SHE IS DIGGING THE MUSIC AND KEEPING TIME, SHE TURNS PARTWAY TO THE TRUMPETER AND PARTWAY TO THE AUDIENCE, HER ADULATION OF HIM KNOWN].

                    ELLA (CONT.):

 

His mouth, tongue and hands so exquisitely skilled creates the music, that mad hot ballroom rhythm, through his instrument, handled by him as if the sole recipient of a handling only comparable to that given to the most sublime of female lovers…it sighs, moans and howls in pleasure! [ELLA TAKES AN OBVIOUS DEEP BREATH, ALMOST A SIGH]. As the sun began to rise and his playing became slower, slower to almost a whisper [LONG PAUSE] he and I were the only two people in that room, the only two people on Earth as far as I was concerned, and he looked at me longingly, or perhaps he wasn't looking at me at all but simply in a solemn dreamlike jazzman's state. A million miles away from whoever I was before and whoever I was to become after, in Birdland, this jazz god, this angel headed beauty; had touched, kissed, swept up and penetrated me through his music.

[ELLA STOPS ROCKING HER HIPS AND TURNS DIRECTLY TOWARDS THE AUDIENCE, MAKING A ROMANTIC GESTURE]

                    ELLA:

            

In a dizzy jazz hallucination of one exotic, heart racing, flights of fancy of a midnight hour, like Romeo and Juliet we spent one solitary night in ecstatic embrace.

[THE JAZZ MUSICIAN LOOKS DOWN AT ELLA, SHE TURNS TOWARDS HIM, GAZING, BACK TO THE AUDIENCE AND HE PLAYS A HAUNTING LAST LONG NOTE. LIGHTS GO DARK].