GOLEM: A 10-Minute Play

 GOLEM

A 10-minute play

Cast of Characters

DANNY: Late 80s, Jewish. Daniel, 70 years later. A storyteller.
DANIEL: Early 20s, Jewish. Danny, 70 years ago. A struggling writer.
YOSSELE: Early 20s, Jewish. Not American, but not much of an accent. A man of few words who has lived many lives.

FORMATTING NOTES:

A dash (-) at the ending or beginning of dialogue indicates that a character is being cut off/cutting someone else off. 

Additionally, any time DANNY is speaking with the other actors visible, they freeze in place unless

otherwise stated.

Place

The kitchen of a small, cramped New York City apartment. A comfortable living room.

Time

May 1944. The present.

Setting: The stage is divided in two. On stage right, a rocking chair. On stage left, hints at an apartment—a small kitchen table with two chairs. A teapot, cup of tea, sketchbook and drawing materials on it, and a few cardboard boxes under it.

At Rise: At first, only the right light comes on. DANNY sits in the rocking chair. He doesn’t rock back and forth much.

DANNY

Alright, alright, yes, I’ll tell it. It was late in the spring, or maybe early summer in ‘44, right after my mother had passed. I wanted to move on my own, to the east side. I lived in… well, what now we’d call a tenement. 

(The stage left lights come on. DANIEL is working on something in a large sketchbook).

I didn’t have much to my name, mostly my things for drawing. I didn’t know any of my neighbors, not well anyway, so it surprised me to hear

(a knock at DANIEL’s door.)

A knock at the door. 

DANIEL (looking up)

Come in. 

(Yossele enters from stage left, and stands in the doorway.)

DANNY

I was even more surprised to see someone about my age. Someone I hadn’t seen before. He said-

YOSSELE

-I’m sorry to bother you. Mrs Feldman’s light won’t turn on, and Albert-

DANNY

-the super-

YOSSELE

-is out for the weekend. Mr Walker-

DANNY

-our landlord-

YOSSELE

-won’t come out for this. I can fix it, but I don’t have a screwdriver. Mrs Feldman said you might.

DANNY

I did.

DANIEL

Uh, yes, I should. I do. I’ve been here a few months, but, uh… well, I’m still unpacking, I’m embarrassed to say.

(As he talks, DANIEL gets up and grabs a screwdriver from a box under the table.)

Daniel. It’s nice to meet you.

(He holds out a hand, but just barely further into the apartment than YOSSELE could reach. YOSSELE steps forwards into the space to shake it.)

YOSSELE

Yossele.

(DANIEL, trying to be polite, looks down at his hand—there’s something on it after shaking YOSSELE’s)

DANNY

Some clay from his hand had gotten onto mine.

DANIEL

Are you… a sculptor? I’m surprised you have room for something like that in one of these tiny apartments!

YOSSELE (surprised)

I… Yes… Well, I make do.

DANNY

He seemed surprised I mentioned it.

DANIEL

You know… would you like to come in a moment? I have tea, it’s still warm. The good stuff, too. Have a cup.

YOSSELE

I’d like that quite a bit.

(DANIEL puts the screwdriver down on the table and grabs a cup from another cardboard box under the table. He pours a second cup of tea. YOSSELE takes a seat at the table opposite where DANIEL's sketchbook is set up. He smiles, and DANIEL sits across from him. DANIEL hands YOSSELE a cup)

DANIEL

What sort of things do you sculpt, then?

YOSSELE

I’m still figuring that out myself, I suppose.

DANIEL

Ah. A struggling artist. I don’t think we’re so different, Yossele. You with your clay and me with my…

(DANIEL looks off towards his sketchbook, before closing it)

YOSSELE (with genuine interest)

You draw?

DANIEL

Yes. Well, I’m figuring out my things too.

(He laughs)

I’m trying to draw a newspaper strip. A cartoon. Get it in the Tribune, or something, then syndicate it to more papers. Who knows…

DANNY

And, of course, it worked out. Squirrel Town got into the Herald, not the Tribune, but it syndicated elsewhere too. I got hired by one of the bigger publishing joints in the city a few years later, drawing something more, I don’t know, real, and that’s when I met your grandmother… Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time. I don’t think I had even started drawing Squirrel Town yet. 

(Making a gesture to continue with one hand)

Anyway, anyway.

YOSSELE

No need to shut your sketchbook. I’m sure it’s great work. The stories you draw.

DANIEL

Oh! It’s... thank you. I don’t know it’s what I’d be doing if I could do anything but, I don’t know. Nothing else seems quite fulfilling to me other than this. 

YOSSELE

Of course.

DANIEL

Your clay, though. What sort of things do you make?

YOSSELE

Truth.

(a beat)

DANNY

From anyone else’s mouth it would have seemed like a normal answer to me at the time—I was a struggling artist too, and thought myself a hero for it. Maybe not a hero… a martyr in the name of a greater cause. But he was… I don’t know, so serious about it. Meant it about more than just his art. He was truth, wanted to live it. I could tell that about him just from how he looked at me when he answered. 

DANIEL

What is it then? What’s true?

YOSSELE

What do you mean “what’s true?”

DANIEL

I don’t know… these days, I mean, I’m not sure what truth could even look like. Certainly not in clay.

(He laughs. A beat. The two look at each other)

YOSSELE

Holiness is truth.

DANIEL

See, that’s another… I don’t know. 

(He takes a sip of tea)

Maybe I’m just not as religious as I used to be, not as good a Jew. But… I don’t know, I guess I don’t get it. What the big deal with holiness is. 

YOSSELE

My Rabbi used to tell me a story. May I tell it to you?

DANIEL

Sure thing.

YOSSELE

There was once a woman who was so good and kind in life that when her time came to die, an angel came to her and told her he would answer one question. She knew she was going to Heaven-

DANIEL

Heaven? Some Rabbi! Jews don’t believe in Heaven and Hell!

YOSSELE (patiently and kindly)

You’re right, but it’s just a story.

DANIEL

Yes, sorry, sorry, please continue.

YOSSELE

She knew she’d be going to Heaven, so she asked him what Hell was like. He agreed to take her. When the two arrived there, she was amazed to see that it was a beautiful palace. In addition to the most luxurious lounges and gardens in all the world, the palace was stocked with massive buffets of the most delicious food imaginable. When she saw the people there, however, it began to make sense to her—each person’s arms were bound at the elbow-

(He mimics the denizens of Hell with his own arms, laying them rigid and fully extended on the table, or just above it)

- such that they could not bend them. The people in Hell could see the food, even pick it up-

(Keeping his arms extended, he attempts and fails to reach his hand to his mouth.)

-but they could not put it in their mouths to eat it. After some time taking it all in-

(He returns his arms to a resting position)

-the angel took her to Heaven. There, she saw the same beautiful palace—the same lush gardens and comfortable lounges, and the same buffets stocked with delicious food. What shocked her, though, truly shocked her, was that, like in Hell, each person’s arms were bound-

(He extends his arms again)

-so that they could not eat the food. Here, however, each person picked up food for the person next to them, and fed them- 

(He mimes feeding a non-existent person next to him)

-and their neighbor did the same for them.

(He returns his arms to a resting position).

This was Heaven.

(a beat)

DANIEL

So… what, holiness, truth, is people being good? I… I like it but…

 (smiling cynically) 

Well, where have you been the past few years? The past few decades, really? I mean, Jesus, it’s just cruelty and suffering all day every day, and… and nothing anyone can do about it. That’s true… truth. But nothing holy about it.

(YOSSELE isn’t ashamed, nor angry. He lets DANIEL sit with what he said for a beat.)

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… you seem like lovely company, and I’d love to see your sculptures some time. And it’s a good story.

YOSSELE

It’s alright. I understand why you think that way. 

(A beat.)

DANIEL

So…Are you new in the building? I haven’t seen you before…

YOSSELE

Yes. To the country, actually. I’ve been here only two weeks.

DANIEL (surprised)

Two…! Well, your English is good but you picked a helluva time to come over. Where from?

YOSSELE

Prague.

DANNY

We… I didn’t know, at the time, the full scale of what was happening in Europe. The camps. We couldn’t, I mean… we couldn’t have, not like we know now, couldn’t have seen the pictures. But still, we knew it was very bad there. Very bad to be Jewish. Or a communist, Romani, gay… but very, very bad to be Jewish. It’s embarrassing now what I said, but I said:-

DANIEL

-You must’ve then… How’d you, you know, get… you know, get away?

DANNY

But, God, I’ll never forget what he said back-

YOSSELE and DANNY (at once)

I was asleep.

(Stage left lights go down. A beat, and then another.)

DANNY

I don’t remember what we talked about after that. He took the screwdriver, and helped Mrs Feldman. He fixed it, but really Albert needed to look at it, or better a proper electrician. The… a month or so later, faulty wiring in Mrs Feldman’s apartment… something went wrong, something because of how Mr Walker did the renovations a couple years prior, how he cheaped out on them, and the building caught fire. It was right as the sun was setting, and it was pouring. I was only just able to grab my umbrella and my sketchbooks as I ran out. I happened to see Yossele as I did. We stood there, a few moments in the rain, starving, but the supermarket next door wouldn’t let us in from the rain to eat. Said they weren’t a soup kitchen. Still, I bought myself a loaf of bread and hurried outside to eat it before it soaked through.

(The lights come on on stage left. It’s raining hard. The furniture is gone, just DANIEL and YOSSELE, each holding an umbrella. DANIEL has two large sketchbooks, one under his arm, and one in his hand. Under his other arm is a baguette. They stand close to one another. DANIEL fumbles with all the things he’s carrying, trying to take a bite out of the baguette, but unable to position himself correctly. A moment of this. YOSSELE puts away his umbrella, and gestures to take DANIEL’s. DANIEL hands it to him, and YOSSELE holds it over both their heads, while DANIEL scarfs down part of the baguette. He eats as DANNY speaks.)

DANNY

…Eventually, we’d find out that Mrs Feldman had passed away. She fainted from the smoke, I think, and… she passed away.

(A beat)

Mr Walker, not that I saw a lot of him anyway, died soon after. Strangled, apparently, in his house outside the city… they found… I don’t know why… bits of… clay on him. I never took him for an artist but… The city tore down what was left of the tenement and built affordable housing in its place. Did the same to his other buildings.

(A beat)

A few times since, I tried to look up Yossele’s name, see his art maybe, but I could never find him. I didn’t see him again. 

(DANIEL holds out the half-baguette that’s left to YOSSELE. They trade, DANIEL holding the umbrella over both of them as YOSSELE begins to eat.)

END