The play is set in 2077, in a military dictatorship. Everything happens in the cellar of a common citizen – Joan. One day when she comes back from work, she finds Dummy in it. He broke into her apartment by breaking a window, as he was trying to hide from the army. He does not own papers and has been shoplifting to survive. At first, Joan believes that he wants to rob her and asks him to hand her his knife. But Dummy is homeless and undocumented: his knife is his only means of defence. What is more, he is emotionally attached to it. Joan then agrees to feed and hide Dummy. He relates his past and confides that he was forced by soldiers to kill one of his parents. Joan and Dummy call on a smuggler, Jack, who promises to forge papers for Dummy, which would allow him to cross the border. However, the money Dummy was keeping in a box has disappeared. At this point, Jack declares that he has links with the army and threatens to report them. Despite the help Joan offers him (she goes as far as trying to request a loan), Dummy turns down her offer to run away with her: he says he wants to leave with Jack and to continue to steal for a living. Joan’s life has radically changed since meeting Dummy, for whom she says she has sacrificed everything. She does not understand his decision and launches into a xenophobic monologue, during which she inflicts extreme violence on Dummy. She stabs him several times, steps on him and tears him up. At the end of the play, the actor dubbing Dummy’s voice walks among the “debris” of the puppets and speaks in a fictional language.

Actor and puppet

Mannequin

Young audiences

Bond Edward

Great Britain

London

Northampton

Printed

Dystopia

Migrant

Murder

Escape

Money

Foreigner

Dramatic

Tragic

Fantastic

Edward Bond, The Chair Plays, 2012.

English

Host

Murderer

Puppet

Emigrant

Thief

Soldier

Puppeteer

Smuggler

Crook

Recounting of memories

Sleeping character

Imaginary language

Argument

Fight between an actor and a puppet

Murder on stage

Stabbing

Destruction of a puppet

The Under Room

Sous-chambre

A human narrator, Giafar the magician, addresses the audience. One of his spirits tells him that he found the pure-hearted child Giafar was looking for. Giafar needed the child to capture the powerful genie of a magic lamp. At a marketplace, the narrator recounts the story of Scheherazade to some children. Among them was Aladdin – the pure-hearted child. Giafar pretends to be his uncle, and then leads Aladdin down into an underground cave to retrieve the magic lamp. But Aladdin does not give it to him, and so Giafar abandons him in the cave. With the help of a magic ring, Aladdin goes back to his mother’s house, bringing with him many precious stones as well as the lamp. He frees the genie, who helps him and his mother earn enough money to support themselves for years. Later, as a grown-up, the Sultan agrees to let Aladdin marry his daughter, thanks to the precious stones he found in the cave. But Giafar the magician finds out that Aladdin is still alive and that he grew rich with the help of the genie. He does everything in his power to retrieve the lamp and the genie. But in the end, Aladdin defeats Giafar. The genie seals him in the lamp and Giafar is doomed to come out only to tell the story of Aladdin to children.