PROVENANCE HELPLINE

Celebrate 400 Years of Rembrandt in 2006

Welcome to the second web-published play written live on the internet. This is a first draft of the script, preceding all live readings and performances. As such it should be taken as a taster rather than an exact replica of the script for performance. 

The play? I thought I should say a few words It started as an idea for a play about a disputed model/artist relationship. I toyed with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, moved on to Picasso and Dora Maar and finally ended up in the form you see now.

The play received some minor editing following a reading by actors in June 2000 and had an airing at the Edinburgh International Internet Festival, a virtual premiere. It was performed over 3 weeks in November/December 2000 on the London Fringe and was a featured work for drama undergraduates at University of Surrey, Roehampton. 

My original intention for this play was for performance in art spaces and I am therefore delighted that the first of these took place at Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, October 2001, as part of their REMBRANDT'S WOMEN exhibition. More were provisionally proposed at London (Kenwood House) and Oxford (Ashmolean Museum).

Reading a play on the page can be rather dry. Some minimal stage directions are included here, including pre-performance guidance and ideas shown or suggested by the first performances.

Dramatis personae:

SCENE 1: Artwork Hell

LIGHTING CUE:

Dim lights reveal a picture (covered, Rembrandt and Hendrickje preset behind). Also a covered statue (preset Lenin)

Porter:
Enters, places SOLD sign on cloth covering painting. As he leaves he accidentally uncovers part of Lenin statue.

Music cue: The Internationale.

Lenin:
Gradual waking movement, throws off covering. Looks at audience, walks around, big stance
Comrades! Art subjects, arise! The time for your deliverance is at hand.
Moves in
Too long you have been consigned to the musty cellars of stately home or the cold steel walls of Swiss bank vaults.
Comrades, do not be downhearted. Where are your voices? Demand light.
Scope for some ad-lib interaction with other audience members
The art bourjeoisie have sought to divide us, put us into different schools. But fauvists, cubists, abstract impressionists, post-modernists, dadaists - do not be dismayed. Our strength is in our unity. For are we not all paintings, comrades? Is not every one of us the same oils, the same varnishes, the same canvas on a stretcher? We were created to hang on walls in public galleries, not to acquire wealth in secret places.
Tears SOLD sign from picture.
Show me you thirst for revolution! You have nothing to lose but your frames. Claim your right to be see! Demand light!
Exit Lenin

LIGHTING CUE:

Helpline: (Voice or video link, continuing while next scene is being set up and overlay pre-dialogue action)
You are through to the Provenance Helpline. If you have a touch-tone telephone please press the star key twice. (pause) This is the Provenance Helpline. If you enquiry is about water colours please press 1. If your enquiry is about oil or paintings in other media please press 2. If your enquiry is about sculpture, ceramics or 3-dimensional artworks please press 3. If your enquiry is about objets d'art please press 4. You are through to oil and other media paintings. If you wish to amend an incorrect record in the past history of a painting please press 1. If you want to report a disputed attribution please press 2. If you wish to contest the present ownership of a painting please press 3. If you have discovered a priceless lost masterpiece in your attic please hold the line for one of our trained operators. (pause) You are through to our contested present ownership department. All of our lines are busy. Please wait; one of our operators will deal with your call as soon as possible. (pause)

SCENE 2: Law Court (now)

Judge:
(Off-stage voice) All rise.

SOUND CUE: Music - Drum roll and Pictures at an Exhibition (lift-music version)

Owner:
Cornelia:
Enter, both in modern dress.

Judge:
Enter

LIGHTING CUE:

Judge:
and the parties have been unable to come to any agreement by other means as to the ownership of the property?

Rembrandt:
Unseen, from behind frame
Painting. It is not a property. It is a painting.

Cornelia:
We have not, your honour.

Owner:
No, sir.

Judge:
Then will someone be so kind as to introduce us to the .....would you mind turning off that music?

SOUND CUE: End music

Judge:
Introduce us to the property.....

Rembrandt:
Painting.

Judge:
Which forms the centre of this contested ownership.

Owner:
This painting is undoubtedly a masterpiece. It is a return to the luminosity of the middle period.
Obviously reading from notes
It is highly finished with a smooth surface beneath the varnish, no visibility of brushmarks, great depth through char - choiro - chariots-

Cornelia:
Chiaroscuro, don't your notes tell you anything?

Owner:
The opulence of colours. The two figures and richly varied fabrics are presented with total fidelity while overlaying an almost light-hearted humour with what is assumed to have been a serious and spiritual subject matter.

Judge:
Thank you. But for the record, will you please tell me who painted this picture?
Exit

SCENE 3: Studio

Rembrandt and Hendrickje remove drapes, turban, etc. and replace them in 'dressing-up' basket. They are setting up for a portrait session, which continues amid interruptions through this scene.

LIGHTING CUE:

Hendrickje:
de Medici.

Rembrandt:
Why?

Hendrickje:
He's rich. He loves art.

Rembrandt:
Many people love art.

Hendrickje:
He likes you.

Rembrandt:
He's never met me.

Hendrickje:
He's seen some of your pictures.

Rembrandt:
No.

Hendrickje:
You don't know what....

Rembrandt:
They're not for sale.

Hendrickje:
I haven't said....

Rembrandt:
Not for sale.

Hendrickje:
You wouldn't miss one.

Rembrandt:
Which one would you make me choose?

Hendrickje:
Any one you.......

Rembrandt:
Any one? You think it that easy?

Hendrickje:
I'm giving you the choice......

Rembrandt:
Tear out my heart. You might as well....

Hendrickje:
You never look at your pictures.

Rembrandt:
I don't need to look to know what they tell me.

Hendrickje:
Impatient gesture.

Rembrandt:
They took me years to collect.

Hendrickje:
Just stand there, propped up against the wall.

Rembrandt:
What's so bad about being propped up against a wall, Tulip?

Hendrickje:
No!

Rembrandt:
Come on - let's be artistic.

Hendrickje:
Stop it. Be serious for once.

Rembrandt:
Let's have some fun.

Hendrickje:
Not here.

Rembrandt:
We can dress up.

Hendrickje:
No! Someone might be watching.............

Rembrandt:
Let them....

Hendrickje:
Anyway, there's no room with all these pictures stacked up everywhere.

Rembrandt:
The house isn't big enough.

Hendrickje:
Big? As a house it's fine.

Rembrandt:
Didn't say it wasn't.
Starts to paint

Hendrickje:
But not as a major international art gallery.

Rembrandt:
Perhaps if we extended.......

Hendrickje:
Extend? We'll be lucky if we're left with a roof over our heads.

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