Download All About Eve – Chapters 3 to 6

All About Eve
Chapters 3 to 6
KAREN
I find these wisecracks increasingly less
funny! ‘Aged in Wood’ happens to be a fine
and distinguished play-
LLOYD
‘at’s my loyal little woman
KAREN
The critics thought so, the audiences
certainly think so – packed houses,
tickets for month in advance...of all the
women in the world with nothing to
complain about...
You’re talented, famous, wealthy – people
waiting around night after night just to
see you, even in the wind and rain...
BIRDIE
What a story. Everything but the
bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end…
MARGO
There are some human experience,
Birdie, that do not take place in a
vaudeville house – and even a fifthrate vaudevillian should understand
and respect!
Vaudeville: theatrical entertainment consisting of a number of
individual performances, acts, or mixed numbers, as by
comedians, singers, dancers, acrobats, and magicians. A form
of mass entertainment popular amongst the lower classes.
EVE
Why do you have to go out there. [i.e.
Hollywood]
BILL
I don’t have to. I want to.
EVE
Is it the money?
BILL
Eighty percent of it will go for taxes.
EVE
Then why? Why, if you’re the best and most
successful young director in the Theatre-
BILL
The Theta uh, the Theta, uh – what book of
rules says the Theatre exist only within
some ugly buildings crowded into one
square mile of New York City? Or London,
Paris or Vienna? Listen, junior. And
learn. Want to know what the Theatre is? A
flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos,
carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances,
Punch and Judy, a one-man band – all
Theatre. Wherever there’s magic and makebelieve and an audience – there’s Theatre.
Donald Duck, Ibsen, and the Lone ranger,
Sarah Bernhardt, Poodles Hanneford, Lune
and Fontanne…You don’t understand them
all, you don’t like them all, why should
you? The Theatre’s for everybody – you
included, but not exclusively – so don’t
approve or disapprove. It may not be your
Theatre, but it’s Theatre of somebody,
somewhere.
EVE
But Hollywood. You mustn’t stay
there.
BILL
It’s only one picture deal
EVE
So few come back...
BILL
...it’s just that there’s so much
bushwah in this Ivory Green Room
that they call the Theatuh –
sometimes it gets up around my chin…
bushwah: rubbishy nonsense; baloney;
bullshit; perhaps representing bourgeois,
from its use in political rhetoric.
Bourgeois: a person whose political,
economic, and social opinions are
believed to be determined mainly by
concern for property values and
conventional respectability.
Green Room: the space in a theatre or similar
venue that functions as a waiting room and
lounge for performers before and after a
performance, and during the show when they
are not engaged on stage
Ivory Tower: an environment of intellectual
pursuit disconnected from the practical concerns
of everyday life
MARGO
Look trough the wigs, maybe it got
caughtBILL
Real diamonds in a wig. The world
we live in...