Trials and Tribulations

(A Short Play)  

By Beth

(Sisyphus stands in a woollen grey suit, staring into space at his feet is a briefcase and at the far  end of the stage to the left, is an office cubicle.)  

Sisyphus: Hades…  

(Pause.)  

Sisyphus: You can see me, I know you can. I feel your eyes on me like the sun on my back. (A spotlight turns on above his head, he laughs.)  

Sisyphus: You’re funny today, feeling ironic. Your wife must have left you, when was it?  Today? Yesterday or before? I don’t know. You took time from me, I understand why. I tried to  steal it, and you stole it back. You mock me, everyday. Look, look, look at the  time. Tick, tick, tick, but never moving. I don’t know if it’s winter, summer, spring, autumn, who  knows? Not me. You have my soul, my body, my time all gone.  

(A clock on the back wall of the stage is illuminated, displaying the time of 9:00am.)  

Sisyphus: 9:00, 9:00 all time, every day.  

(Pause.)  

Sisyphus: I guess…. I must be on.  

(He listens intently, tilting his head.) 

Sisyphus: Be on. 

(Listens again.) 

Sisyphus: No echo, I make my own echo here.  

(Scoffs.) 

Sisyphus: Are you waiting?  

(Pause, he picks up the briefcase with difficulty and starts walking toward the cubicle. His steps  slow like a metronome.)  

Sisyphus: I sit here, I sit here, I open my case and there are numbers…..So many numbers. I type  them in. CLACK.  

(He hits the keyboard.)  

Sisyphus: Clack, clack, clack, I type numbers while my mortal body rots. It is easier on my  spiritual body than the boulder, oh you know that.  

(He laughs.) 

Sisyphus: But my mind no no, it rots like my body in the  grave, my brain, my skull turning into soil for your wife to grow her plants in. Her  pomegranates. You are cruel when she is not here to funnel away your pain and replace it with  love, but oh she is crueller, crueller than a funeral pyre. She burns me, she sets my spirit alight,  fills my office with biting bugs. They’re in my skin now.  

(Scratches his arms and neck.)  

Sisyphus: You don’t have skin.  

(Mocking high voice.)  

Sisyphus: I know that so shut up. That’s why she’s cruel. She makes me feel the impossible, my soul knows there are no bugs and nothing to feel them with but  they. Are. There. They are there inside. You know what she did? She put in nine, just like your  clock, one for each tick.  

(Loud tick, Sisyphus giggles and shushes himself.) 

Sisyphus: You didn’t like that, not one bit. I was the sharpest of men, you know that? The most cunning. My son also, and maybe his son too. How long did it take for  my cunning to leave my blood, how long did it take for my family to be absolved of my crime? 

(Long pause and Sisyphus looks around then shakes his head.)  

Sisyphus: CLACK. Another number. Another hour or a minute or a second I  don’t know.  

(Slams his hands down on the keyboard.)  

Sisyphus: Look, look, look, the phone.  

(A phone is illuminated, a bright red rotary phone.)  

Sisyphus: You mock me.  

(Spits the words and looks directly at the audience.)  

Sisyphus: I will not answer.  

(The phone rings.)  

Sisyphus: I learn. I know I will not answer. You can make it ring again and again and I  will not answer. I will not hear your voice, I refuse to hear your voice. I refuse to let you contort  my punishment and make it something new.  

(He rests his head in his hands.) 

Sisyphus: Have me run for miles, have me carry things that  will always crush me, no, no I will not.  

(Sits up sharply.) 

Sisyphus: You sound like wind in a graveyard, do you know? It’s a different wind. It’s colder, it screeches. I hear that wind every day of  my miserable death. CLACK.  

(Interrupts himself by yelling and slamming his hands on the keyboard. The ringing stops and he smiles. Long pause.)  

Sisyphus: Small victories.  

(He stands, reaches for the briefcase and drags it across the stage until he is back where he  started.)  

Sisyphus: It’s 9:00 tick, tick, tick, forever 9:00.  

(The stage goes black. But the phone is ringing again.)