A One-Act Play set in The House of Max Brod
By Narinder Jarial (as Bopa Rai)
Setting
A warm parlor in Prague, shelves heavy with manuscripts, smoke rising from cigarettes. The Vltava glimmers outside the window. A table with wine, papers, and an open notebook sits at the center.
Characters
- Max Brod — host, pouring wine, quiet but ever-smiling. He published all of Kafka’s work after Kafka’s death.
- Kafka — pale, quiet, cage of self-doubt.
- Kerouac — restless, fiery, pacing like a caged panther.
- Camus — calm, hands in pockets, stoic.
- Sartre — blind, smoking, voice sharp.
- Moravia — urbane, measured, mask-like poise.
- Yeats — grand, oracular, with his Improbable Singer, a spectral figure.
- Bopa Rai — the senior-most, ancient wanderer, reborn across centuries.
Key Takeaways
- The play, titled ‘The House of Max Brod,’ is set in a warm parlor in Prague filled with manuscripts and wine.
- Key characters include Max Brod, Kafka, Kerouac, Camus, Sartre, Moravia, Yeats, and Bopa Rai, each embodying unique perspectives on life and rebirth.
- Bopa Rai discusses the notion of relentless rebirth, contrasting it with the existential views of the other characters.
- Yeats brings a lyrical quality, emphasizing the possibility of songs even in hell, hinting at the eternal human experience.
- The play concludes as Brod acknowledges the survival of manuscripts and voices, uniting despite their quarrels.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Scene
[Lights dim, focus on Brod pouring wine. The writers murmur among themselves. Bopa Rai stands at the window.]: stage
Kerouac: Road killed me, bottle buried me. And yet you — old man, soldier, phantom — still walk. How?
Bopa Rai: Because I change my clothes. Accident, alcohol, illness — they tried. But I step out in another suit, another skin. It is not glory, Jack. It is indignity — being reborn again and again, sometimes Christ, sometimes clown.
Camus: There is no rebirth. Only the absurd. The rock falls, the man dies. We must imagine him happy — nothing more.
Bopa Rai: Albert, I have died a hundred times. In trenches, in childbirth, in obscurity. Your rock is heavy. But try carrying humiliation, century after century.
Kafka: I begged to be forgotten, yet Brod betrayed me, saved me. You — you did not ask for this curse of survival?
Bopa Rai: No, Franz. I asked for release, but received recurrence. You feared the flame, I wear it like a cloak. Every death is a coat I shed.
Sartre: Bad faith! No man renews himself — only illusion. We are what we do. When we stop, we rot.
Bopa Rai: And yet you rot, Jean-Paul, while I stand here. Blind, smoke in your throat, while I — despised, reborn — still curse, still walk.
Moravia: But each mask erases the last. Do you even know who you are? Or are you nothing but costumes of centuries?
Bopa Rai: I am all of them. Soldier, monk, drunk, corpse, poet, physician. That is my hell. All of us — fuckers, suckers of genuine religion — building hells inside, while pretending to sing of truth.
[A pause. Yeats rises, commanding the room. The Improbable Singer at his side begins to hum.]: stage
Yeats: But even in hell, there are songs. The improbable binds us: A falcon wheeling, a beast slouching, a fool who sings what kings forget.
Improbable Singer: Change of clothes, change of soul. Hell within, song without. The improbable walks among the dead.
[The room falls into silence. Smoke curls upward. The river glimmers outside the window. Brod raises his glass.]: stage
Brod: So be it. The manuscripts survive. The voices quarrel, but together, they keep the night alive.
[Lights fade. Curtain.]: stage