15 - I dreamt in German last night.
16 - Is that so?
15 - Yes. You know how they say you really know a foreign language well when you begin to dream in it?
16 - Yes, I’ve heard that. So, sprechen sie deutsch?
15 - Nein, nein. Actually, I don’t know German at all.
16 - You don’t?
15 - No. Never even took a course.
16 - That’s odd.
15 - Yes, it is.
16 - So what was the dream about?
15 - I have no idea. I couldn’t understand a single word that was squawked.
16 - Ah, but surely you remember what the people in it were doing.
15 - No.
16 - Why not?
15 - Because there weren’t any people in it. Just penguins.
16 - Penguins?
15 - Yes, it reminded me of a National Georgraphic special, only instead of voice-over narration, it consisted of nothing but inane penguin chatter.
16 - Auf deutsch?
15 - Ja.

There is a pause, during which two people run across the upstage area, passing a gun back and forth between them. After they’re gone the scene continues.

16 - How did you know it was German?
15 - What?
16 - If you don’t know any German, how did you know that was what they were speaking?
15 - Squawking.
16 - Whatever.
15 - Well, it was very ... guttural sounding.
16 - Guttural squawking?
15 - Uh huh. And they spoke like the bad guys in Die Hard.
16 - I see.
15 - Alan Rickman was good in it.
16 - In Die Hard? Yes, he was.
15 - No, I mean in my dream.
16 - Alan Rickman was in your dream? I thought you said there were just penguins.
15 - Well, yes. There were penguins ... and Alan Rickman dressed up as a penguin.
16 - Uh huh.

16 starts to inch away from 15.

15 - He had a really big beak, you know that?
16 - No, I didn’t.
15 - I wonder what Freud would say about that.
16 - Probably something in German.
15 - Oh, ja. Or maybe Austrian.

16 stares at 15 into the blackout.

This, like "Right Now," was submitted for the Brick's Night of 1000 Plays. Unlike "Right Now," this bizarre little number was originally written as the ninth in a series of short scenes to be collected under the title One Minute Into Each Scene A Gun Appears Theater. Hence the gun-tossing interlude in the middle. And no, I am not planning on explaining why they're standing in an orchard, so there.

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P.S. All materials on this page are copyright 1998 by Craig J. Clark, in case you didn't know.