Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl Page A

sound design and original music were by Andre Pluess, the choreography was by Ann Boyd, the fight choreography was by Joe Dempsey and the stage manager was Christine D. Freeburg. The cast was as follows:
    A WOMAN, JEAN
Polly Noonan
A DEAD MAN, GORDON
Marc Grapey
GORDON’S MOTHER, MRS. GOTTLIEB
Molly Regan/
Marilyn Dodds Frank
GORDON’S WIDOW, HERMIA
Mary Beth Fisher
GORDON’S BROTHER, DWIGHT
Coburn Goss
THE OTHER WOMAN/THE STRANGER
Sarah Charipar
ENSEMBLE Géraldine
Dulex, Ben Whiting

CHARACTERS
    1. a woman, Jean
    2. a dead man, Gordon
    3. Gordon’s mother, Mrs. Gottlieb
    4. Gordon’s widow, Hermia
    5. Gordon’s brother, Dwight
    6. the Other Woman/also plays the stranger. Has an accent.

SET
    1. a moveable dining room table and chairs
    2. a moveable café table
    3. a cell phone
    4. light
    notes for the director follow the play

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all . . . It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page . . . My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead . . . In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? . . . The messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail-coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next.
    â€”CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities

. . . you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keepe that hid.
    â€”JOHN DONNE, “The Undertaking”
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In Hopper’s paintings there is a lot of waiting going on . . . They are like characters whose parts have deserted them and now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company.
    â€”MARK STRAND, Hopper

PART ONE

scene one
    An almost empty café.
    A dead man, Gordon, sits on a chair with his back to us.
    He doesn’t look all that dead.
    He looks—still.
    At another table, a woman—Jean—sits, drinking coffee, and writing a thank-you letter.
    She has an insular quality, as though she doesn’t want to take up space.
    An empty bowl of soup sits on her table.
    She looks over at the man.
    She stares back at her coffee.
    She sips.
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    A cell phone rings.
    It is coming from the dead man’s table.
    It rings and rings.

    The caller hangs up and calls again.
    Jean looks over at him.
    She sighs. The phone keeps ringing.
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    JEAN
    Excuse me—are you going to get that?
    No answer from the man.
    Would you mind answering your phone?
    I’m sorry to bother you.
    If you could just—turn your phone— off ?
    The cell phone rings again.
    Jean gets out of her chair and walks over to the man.
    Are you ill?
    No answer.
    Are you deaf?
    No answer.
    Oh, I’m sorry—
    Jean signs in sign language:
    Are you deaf?
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    No response.
    The phone rings again.

    All right.
    Excuse me.
    She reaches for the cell phone. She answers it.
    Hello? No. This is—you don’t know me.
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    (To the dead man) Are you Gordon?
    No answer.
    (To