Lesson Plan Two
Look again at scene six P34 Simon: ‘So what you thinking Roofie?’
to
P38 Lights fade out completely on the image of Roelf digging.
As in Lesson One take roles and read the passage aloud, or in groups with one member of the group reading the stage directions and others (if there are more than three) offering constructive criticism of the performance. Make sure you record your responses.
Starter Activity
'Nobody else wanted her, Simon… I do, and that’s the end of it’.
What exactly does Roelf mean here and how does the developing exchange with Simon prepare us for it?
For Roelf things are not finished or consummated although he has made progress from the point at which we first saw him. He feels that he wants (and indeed is ready to) go home to his family but he cannot: there has to be a final act: perhaps a symbolic act which will clear his mind of confusion and his heart of guilt. He has accepted that ‘we are never going to find her grave out there’ and as a result the anger and hatred have dissipated. ‘She’s mine. I claimed her’. (Note the finality the diminuendo of the sentence structure creates here.)
For Simon, this is simply bizarre and he tries to react to the literal sense of what Roelf has said. In a simple way, to Simon, Roelf’s talk of ‘ownership’ can only mean ‘marriage’ the standard white man’s approach to women: but to a corpse? He’s confused by Roelf’s utterly untypical stance. But by the time Roelf has completed his next monologue Simon understands him: he knows, instinctively, what he must do. Like the best friend he has become he sees that Roelf must go through the processes: and faith of comital and burial in order to close with his bereavement symptoms.
In contrast to the violent, vengeful Rolfe we saw at the start of the…
