DEC 20, 2025
Hail Listen to Me Ensemble!
Below a collection of notes for the last pages of ACT V (pages 8 to 11), which we’ve discussed separately, but not together. Honoring what Gertrude was thinking of, we’ll echo the multiple characters of the Kiralfy spectacles in the massing of our actors, riders and horses into tableaus and a parade (potentially set to a Sousa march).
For now, let’s work from and refer to the version of Act V (11 pages with line assignments) dated November 28th. That version has been tweaked several times, finishing up yesterday, but I’ve kept the same lines on the same pages. Most uptodate line assignments for Act V here:
LTM Act 5 line assignments November 28 2025 tweaked Dec 19 – Copy
The progression of Act V is towards a Kiralfy Brothers spectacle:
meaning the multiple characters doing similar gestures, wearing similar costumes
(with the exception of Gertrude and Alice and Lillian).
Gertrude says (about halfway down page 8)
GERTRUDE: The play now ends in detection, they look alike and they look for one another
and they find it.
DK NOTE: We will work from a definition of “detection” as finding out, specifically, attempts to find out who is who, and what is what. Our “detection” is happening while who is who and what is what are dissolved and dissolving.
The lines that immediately follow on page 8 are said while Picasso, Dora Maar, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sweet William (and maybe Josephine), and the riders (and the horses) are dressed alike. For now I’m picturing them all as Harlequins with the same diamond patterns and Napoleon hats. Budget depending, they could all be dressed as something else, but the point will be that they look like those lines of Kiralfy characters. I haven’t assigned lines yet, but you’ll get the point that the characters are aware of the dissolution of their identity. The punctuation, of course, is my suggestion, not Miss Stein’s.
First Character. If I am the First Character how do they know I am not the Second Character?
Second Character. Who is?
Second Character. Not as loudly. Who is?
Third Character. If I meet a stranger how do I know he is a stranger?
Fourth Character. Who is?
Second Character. Quite as loudly. Who is?
Third Character. If I look like the Ninth Character how do I look?
First Character . Who can look?
All the Characters. We can look
The Ninth Character. If I look
Eighth Character. If you look
Fifth Character. What do you see when you look?
Fourth Character. The only one I know is not the one to know.
Third Character. No
Fourth Character. Oh no.
This stretches to the top of page 9 where Gertrude regroups them with
GERTRUDE. There is no no in no.
All the Characters who have been looking about see Sweet William he is nowhere to be seen.
DK NOTE: He is no where to be seen because Sweet William is dressed as they are, and they are all doing those raised arm gestures of his, except sometimes his stand out in some way.
GERTUDE: They count eight he is to be seen, they count five he is nowhere to be seen they count one he is nowhere to be seen.
ALICE: Sweet William is nowhere to be seen.
GERTRUDE: They count five one at a time he is nowhere to be seen.
Curtain.
DK NOTE: What I’m imagining next is that Josephine (as choreographer showgirl) organizes a Kiralfy-like tableau (with tableau movements) out of the similarly dressed people and horses. Josephine – egged on by Gertrude and Alice — rehearses the tableau, moves, and gestures.
Again, I haven’t assigned lines, which we will do together.
The first Character seems to like it.
The Second Character after he stops to think seems to like it.
The Third Character finally says that he is not likely to be added
The Fourth Character does not want to know added to what but is there any trouble about it.
The Fifth Character makes every one leave every one alone
The sixth Character finds it very happily that as any one comes in was it the one he saw.
The seventh Character says alright.
All the Characters together. After all there is or is not one who comes in and recommends another one although at no time is there not more than one.
DK NOTE: Alice, again, tries to make sense of what is happening.
ALICE?: So then All the Characters wish that they were detecting. So then Character one.
GERTRUDE?: It does not make any difference who is the other one because no one.
DK NOTE: I think the Kiralfy formations (which include the horses) proceed.
The Second Character. Because no one
The Third Character. Which is which
The Fourth Character. Neither any one.
The Fifth Character. But if they came
The sixth Character. But they do come
The seventh Character. Well nobody nobody nobody
The eighth Character. Yes indeed I saw them
ALICE: And so all this time what is all this time.
PICASSO: Well well even if we had not met we would have met.
DORA MAAR: Even if we had not met.
HEMINGWAY: Yes met
FITZGERALD: Even if we had
ALICE: Not met.
GERTRUDE: And so even if we had not met.
Fourth Character. We did
Second Character. Meet
Third Character. Not met
Fourth Character. Any yet.
Fifth Character. Not met
ALICE: And so that is what happens.
GERTRUDE: What happens is this
DK NOTE: A parade forms. Lillian appears on horseback in the midst of the parade. Alice and Gertrude somehow join the parade. Kathleen and Brenda and I experimented with setting these words to the music that John Philip Sousa wrote for the parade march for The Lion Tamer. We will all work further on this in rehearsal.
GERTRUDE: What happens is this
none of the characters have met
they have not met yet
if they have not met yet none of the characters have met
none of the Acts have met
none of the Characters and Acts have met yet
they have not met
none of the Characters have met
none of the Acts have met
and if they have not met
they have not met yet.
ALICE: And Sweet William
GERTRUDE: Sweet William has not met
ALICE: Sweet William has met yet
GERTRUDE Dear,Sweet William has not not met yet.
LINES TO BE ASSIGNED:
Dear Sweet William he has not not met yet
and Lillian well Lillian Lillian has met.
Has Lillian met ? yes Lillian has met yet
Sweet William, dear, Sweet William and Lillian
only Lillian
and the Characters each one has not met yet
and all the Acts have all of them not yet not met yet.
And the Curtain. The Curtain has met
not met yet
and the Curtain has met.
The Curtain has met.
Curtain.
DK NOTE: Gertrude brings up the rear of the parade.
GERTRUDE: [After the curtain] I like a curtain because a curtain has always a curtain to see.
If you see the curtain, then anybody can see that after it it is not one two three. [Gertrude exits]
ALICE: curtain is two syllables and as such it is a curtain
GERTRUDE: One syllable. [voiceover, or on her way out]
FOR NOW: Alice is alone wandering the stage by herself trying (as always) to detect what is what.
ALICE: How I would like that it could be that it could be said that it is true that one is too and two is three and three is four and five is two and one is one and a curtain can come and come, the only word here in two syllables is curtain, the only word in two syllables is William the only word in two syllables is Lillian the only word in three syllables is Characters and the only word in one syllable is Acts.
Acts
Curtain
Characters
Characters
Curtain
Acts
There is no one and one
Nobody has met any one
Curtain Can Come.
Curtain
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Some formation videos
(group action at 4:00)
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I’ve attached, the text of Act 4.LTM Act 4 raw
You will note that no lines are assigned yet.
But, I have been thinking about it and I want to try some ideas when we meet
I know this much:
*ACT 4 takes place after “Suddenly there is a War”
*ACT 4, then, carries the geniuses’ (and the audience’s) awareness that war is a possibility.
*Carrying on daily life in 1936 (and now) is interrupted by this awareness.
*Stein’s role in Act 4 is as story-teller and director. Her directions punctuate and guide the enacted events. In Act 4 Stein’s image base is derived from her experience in Paris and in Cornwall. This is different from Stein’s image base of our earlier acts (and prologue), which were inspired by riffs on paintings. The horses are walked in Act 4. The geniuses are in modern dress. Stein is telling a story (with her insight into what is there: seen and unseen).
*Alice’s role (for now) is as gossip (commenting on, and retelling the juicy bits of what is seen and unseen).
RELATED TO THE TEXT:
*There is an episode that begins
“It is Sunday afternoon and birds are singing some in small cages for sale.”
— which is interrupted by glancing up at the sky as if looking for/aware of the possibility of/ bombs, planes, (nowadays drones).
(Again, who says what will be what we play around with).
I’d like to extend this awareness of the consequences of war to
“The earth is all covered over with people and they do not care about it any more.”
As if they were aware that the surface of the ground covered buried bodies.
“It has happened so often that everybody is dead.”
How this is embodied in behavior we will figure out in rehearsal, but my thinking is that the geniuses’ behavior looking up (and down) will heighten the significance of what they say and in what direction they say it.
“After a quiet moment there is no quiet moment there is no quiet moment after or before.
All the characters. Why not
One syllable
All the characters. Because there is no after or before”
The scene shifts with
A dark day where side walks are unknown.
To Cornwall, where Lord and Lady Abdy are walking their horses.
AGAIN: who says what to be figured out, but I think the other characters have roles in commenting on the story, which is an image out of Stein’s personal experience. There is a sequence of lines that occurs at the end of Act 4 that begins with
Lillian. There is a wish.
Lillian. There is a horse.
Lillian. There is a head
Lillian. There is an eye.
Lillian. There is a kneel
Lillian. There is a wish when I kneel on the eye of the horse and wish
This corresponds to an excerpt from Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography:
— Bertie Abdy is not a painter I have made him in my play Listen To Me, he is the Sweet William who had his genius and who looked for his Lillian. He has his genius, his genius is in being that thing, in having his genius and looking for his Lillian, he dislikes with a violence that is disconcerting all modern art and all Americans, and to prove that the exception proves the rule he is very fond of me … when we were in Cornwall together his wife Diana, kneeled upon the eye of the big chalk horse there to wish what there is to wish for and so I have told in the play Listen To Me, I wrote that one after we had been in Cornwall.
—
ACT 5 (if you MUST know) is everybody’s varying ideas of how the play ends (Listen to ME!), but let’s get Act 4 up in some form first.
DK
The Luxembourg Gardens had been (and were to be) the witness to wars.) Images from 1871 and 1944.
