Twilight Café [The Last Breakfast]:
"At last! A play about Caribbean men and women as we are NOW! Blood bursting through history, primal fears, contemporary gender wars, the unexamined cliches of masculinity lagging far behind the new feminine, the collapse of the performative in gender roles and formations now rendered obsolete - Tony Hall's Twilight Cafe is a brilliant and harrowing sexual embrace. The secularism of the post-post-modern, Orisha worship, soucouyants, hidden duennes and blue Carnival devils merge in a dance of no-death that cuts to the heart of the vast chasm of incomprehension between men and women."
Ramabai Espinet
Toronto
August 9th, 2005
What Hall seems to be attempting here is a relief map of the Trinidadian psycho-social landscape . . . . The disconnectedness of the scenes and the almost tabula rasa quality each tableau presents the actors with could yield very interesting results . . .”
Raymond Ramcharitar
Trinidad Express
Wednesday June 26th, 2002
Flag Woman:
It is the night before the carnival starts and Blind Miss B, an aging flag woman, is forced to confront, with reluctance, the life-long demons trapped in her head.
Tony Hall was born in 1948 on Trinidad and has been making plays in the street, on stage and screen ever since. He is the author of acclaimed works for stage, Jean and Dinah . . . (1994), Red House [Fire! Fire!] (1999), MUD! (2001), Twilight Café [The Last Breakfast] (2002), a calypso musical with David Rudder, The Brand New Lucky Diamond Horseshoe Club (2004) and Flag Woman (2005) for radio. With Banyan he has created 3 major drama series and several award winning documentaries and public affairs programmes for television. Tony Hall founded, with Errol Fabien, Lordstreet Theatre Company with the prize winning jouvay masquerade band trilogy, A Band on Drugs (1990), A Band on Violence (1991) and A Band on US (1992). Tony has been Visiting Artist in Residence at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut since 1998. He lives with his family on Tobago.
Twilight Café [The Last Breakfast]
MAN
(He takes a big gulp from the bottle and blows it out in a spray in her face. Then he makes a sudden karay (attack) with the bois and as she runs away he pursues her around the room.)
You see, is like I have this long, hardwood . . . (WOMAN screams) stick in my hand and I run after Sarah everywhere. Everywhere she runs I run after her. She screams and screams but I do not let up. I get stronger and stronger, surer and surer, harder and harder. But she is quick and I lunge forward to get her and I miss. She scurries away like an ant. No, a snake. A little black, multi-coloured snake, a pretty-coloured snake, which will bite your hand and kill you, if you give her the chance. So you must give her no chance. No chance at all. You must squash out her light right away, as soon as you see it. On time! One time! As she slips and falls, right there, in front of me. But gets up, just in time. I can’t catch her. I dive forward to dig out she liver with my wood leading me. Sarah falls again, in agony, in front of me, and begs and begs and begs. I am strong this time. So I crack her once. (Lightning and Thunder from the thunderstorm outside.) I crack her twice. (Another crack of Lightning and Thunder.) Oh God! My stick strikes her head and cuts across her body as blood squirts everywhere. Her blood, a red, red wine is dripping from my hardwood stick. It is all over her face and clothes, on the floor, in my face, in my mouth, down my throat and I taste it. I drink it. I drink her blood. Oh God! Is plenty blood. Too much blood. God! (He tries to wrap her in his large red handkerchief. To soothe her wounds.) (Pause.) I am tired. She remains on the ground. She doesn’t get up? Sarah? Get up? Limp? She is limp. Like a lamb. Meek. (Pause.) I don’t know what to do. But I not afraid, even though my feet floating backwards and I facing forwards. I am somewhere else other than where I am. I am here. This is not Sarah on the ground. It is not Sarah. (Pause.) We can be together now. You don’t have to leave. Yes, we can be together now, Sarah. Sarah? Sarah? But something happen to Sarah? She doesn’t answer. But why she doesn’t answer? I must ask her. Why you don’t answer, Sarah? What? I bend down and look at her closer. It is Sarah. Oh my God, Sarah. Who do this? This is your blood? Oh God! Who do this to you? Don’t be afraid to tell me. Is something you do?
Flag Woman
MISS B.
(swallows hard.)
This little black boy, naked, just stand up just so and ‘buse me. I stand up by the standpipe and watch the little fella. He ent no bigger than my, my finger nail, watch me and tell me what I should do and with what parts of my body. Well I just watch he, take up my bucket, full of water, and walk round the corner to my house. That night I went into my bed early. I was a little tired. The next thing I know I see the head of this little prick, peeping at me, through a hole in the floorboards. Well, as the blood fly up in this head, I take up my po from under my bed and fling the little piss in it down the hole. Aye!! Aye!!! Aye!!!!
That boy start to bawl and lo and behold I hear a whole set of naked voices laughing, running out of meh yard and scampering down the road. What? Them little bitches!
(The brass band moves down the road.)
FX. Sound of chipping feet.