1st place in Derby #289: Literary Classics, with 363 votes!

"The Raven" By Tennessee Williams

ACT I

(At the rise of the curtain a young man sits in an green leather chair of solid but not outré manufacture. Outside night has fallen -- the type of night typical in its atypicality. The young man, whose forehead shows the first signs of care and age, sighs in tortured contemplation and drops his chin to his chest. Sleep beckons but will not come.)

THEDUS (to himself)
Aw... Aw, hell with it, then.

(A sharp rapping is heard at the chamber door [a heavy, oaken affair]. The man starts -- a glimmer of hope smoothing his brow before it is overcome by worldly cynicism.)

THEDUS
Who there? (a pause) Who's that a-tappin'?

(THEDUS opens the door with affected insouciance. Only darkness lies without.)

THEDUS
(Very much under his breath. Nearly inaudible) Lenore?

(Suddenly a RAVEN, unkept mid-molt though genteel in its way, swoops in. This swooping should communicate not only the RAVEN's old-world, hard-nose affect, but the early loss of a parent or spouse -- the scar tissue from some impossible breaking of emotional bonds.)

THEDUS
Hey now! Git outta here, now. I said git!

(THEDUS shoos the bird out the door)

THEDUS
I sure do miss my ex-wife, even though I'm a closeted homosexual.

FIN

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