“Helen
Don’t you have anything to say to...
Kerry
...end this? That’s not up to me. What are we, where are we going? Good questions, only stupid answers there. What piece of flesh is man? I don’t know. (Pause) It’s amazing what we can do for and to each other. (Pause) I have to go.
”
It is either fate or irony that brought Helen to this post office. It could be fate because she is looking for the owner of a letter wrongly delivered to her address, assuming that this person has gotten a letter for her. It could be irony because she is looking for her future in a place that itself has no future. Yes, the post office is about to close. Forever. It is here, in this place of too many yesterdays and too little tomorrows, that she meets Kerry, the caretaker. Together, they start to tell the stories of the post office, stories of lost people, hidden hopes, of buses and love, inevitable travels, cats and newspapers, of tears and laughter. Little do they know the question they will have to face: How can a story ever live up to the reality around us?
Close your Eyes, Tell a Story is a bittersweet play, an exploration of which stories we tell and why we tell them. It also asks the question as to which stories we can't tell - those stories of moments when words are just not good enough anymore. It is a play for nine actors (4 male, 5 female).
The play was first performed in 2012 at the Theater Remise in Bern, Switzerland, produced by The Caretakers.
Read a sample of Close your Eyes, Tell a Story