Was there ever a real San-cho Panza or your Sir John Falstaff? But they will live forever because they had the luck to be invented by great imaginative artists.

TOMMY: Excuse me, are you a drama professor on some sort of weird field trip with your group? I mean, what do you want here?

FATHER: We want to live!

TOMMY: Forever, I suppose.

FATHER: No, only for a few moments—through you!

KAREN: What do you mean—live through us?

WILL: That’s no way to make a living.

CHUCK: (pointing to the Stepdaughter) I wouldn’t mind living a little with that chick in the high heels.

FATHER: Listen, our play is all ready to be pasted together. If you actors would help, we could make it all happen.

JEREMY: Excuse me, but I don’t understand what you want from us. We don’t do improvisations here. We do plays, scripts.

FATHER: That’s why we’re here.

JEREMY: But where’s the script?

FATHER: In us, sir. (the actors laugh) The play exists in us. We are the play. And that is why we’re in such a passion to show it to you.

STEPDAUGHTER: (scornfully, but tantalizing and seductive and impudent) Passion, is it? This is about passion, all right. My passion! For him! (points to the Father and pretends she is going to embrace him, then stops and breaks into high-pitched laughter)

FATHER: (angry) Stay out of this, will you? And stop laughing at me like that!

STEPDAUGHTER: Ladies and gentlemen, my own father’s been dead only two months now. But if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll show you there’s still life left in this little girl, (sings and dances “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” with suggestive looks at the Father, flirting a little with Chuck, who says, “I’m in love”; the actors applaud heartily)

CHUCK: Karen, I think she’s really got something.

KAREN: Yeah, be careful you don’t catch it, Chuck.

SCOTT: What is this, Jay, some kind of audition?

JEREMY: I don’t know … it’s like her version of Rent… (to the Father) Excuse me, sir, but is she … uh … has she got a little problem?

FATHER: No, it’s worse than that.

STEPDAUGHTER: (to Jeremy) You bet your life it’s worse. Listen, please do this play now! Then you’ll see, at the crucial moment when I—when this sweet little girl here—(taking the Little Girl by the hand away from her Mother and crossing with her to Jeremy). Isn’t she lovely? (holds her in her arms) My sweet, sweet darling! (lets go of her, very deeply moved almost against her will) Well, when God takes this lovely little girl away from her poor mother, and this young imbecile (taking the Little Boy roughly by the sleeve), like the idiot he is, does the stupidest thing—oh then you’ll see me take off! Yes, run away! But not quite yet, not yet! Because after the things, the intimate things, that have happened between you and me (pointing to the Father, with a suggestive leer), I can’t stay with them any more and watch this woman being humiliated by that stuck-up character there (pointing to the Son). Look at him! Just look at him! Patronizing, aloof, because he’s the legitimate one! Him! Contemptuous of me, of that boy, of that little girl—because we’re bastards. Now you know! Bastards! (embracing the Mother) And you won’t even acknowledge your own mother—the mother of us all. He looks down on her like she was nothing more than the mother of bastards. The son of a bitch! (she speaks this rapidly with great excitement, raising her voice on “bastards,” and half spitting out “son of a bitch”)

MOTHER: (with deep anguish, to Jeremy) Sir, I am begging you, in the name of these two little children … (grows faint) Oh my God …

FATHER: (rushing to support her, as the actors grow more bewildered) Get a chair someone…. Quick, a chair for this poor widow.

TOMMY: Has she really fainted?

CHUCK: What’s going on here?

FATHER: Look at her! Please look at her!

MOTHER: No! Stop! Please!

FATHER: Let them look at you.

MOTHER: (lifting her hands and covering her face in shame) Please, I beg of you, stop this man from doing what he is trying to do. I can’t stand it.

WILL: This is getting way beyond me.

JEREMY: Excuse me, sir, but are you two married?

FATHER: Yes, she’s my wife.

KAREN: But you just said she’s a widow—and you still look pretty lively to me, daddy, (the bewildered actors find relief in loud laughter and sniggers)

FATHER: (wounded and resentful) Please don’t laugh. Stop laughing at us! You see, that’s her drama. She had a lover. A man who should be here with us.

MOTHER: No! Stop!

STEPDAUGHTER: He’s dead—lucky for him. Died two months ago, like I told you. That’s why we’re wearing black.

FATHER: Yes, he’s dead. But that’s not the reason he’s not here. He’s not here because—well, just take a look at her and you’ll understand—we’re not talking about a passionate love triangle. She’s incapable of love, she can’t feel a thing, except maybe a little gratitude—and not for me, for him. She’s not a woman; she’s a mother, that’s all. And her drama—you’ve got to believe me, it’s a powerful piece of theatre—her drama is totally involved with these four children she’s had by two different men.

MOTHER: Did I want two different men? I didn’t choose to have them! It was his choice. He forced that other man on me. He made me go away with him.

STEPDAUGHTER: (leaping up in anger) Not true!

MOTHER: Why isn’t it true?

STEPDAUGHTER: It isn’t. That’s all.

MOTHER: You don’t know anything about it.

STEPDAUGHTER: It’s just not true, (to Jeremy) Don’t believe a word of it.