ABOUT

THE PLAY
In dialogues, like a confessional, or intimate interrogations, Salter, and middle-aged man is faced with three of a unknown number of genetically identical sons.
The oldest son, Bernard (B1) was abused, ruined and rejected at an early childhood because of his mother’s suicide and an alcoholic Salter’s absence, desperation and violence.
The second Bernard (B2) was later cloned from genetic material of the initial & rejected Bernard when Salter decided to pull himself together, and start all over again. Then there are an unknown number of additional clones made by the scientists that helped Salter clone Bernard.
When the play starts, B2 has learned the truth about his origin, that he is a clone, and turns to his father in a state of total existential turmoil, disappointment and fear.
In the second and fourth act, the first Bernard comes to his father with anger, and ends up hunting B2 down to kill him.
In the last act, Salter has lost both his sons. Bernard has killed his clone and he has killed himself. Or has he killed himself twice? “If you meet yourself, you have to die” Salter has tracked down one of the other clones, Michael Black. Michael black does not live up to Salter’s expectations, neither is he interested in his biological father.


REFLECTED IN THE DESIGN
The play is set around Salter. He appears in all the scenes, and slowly transforms trough meetings and confrontations with the three versions of his son. We see the direct effect his actions and choices in life have had on his them. Salter’s failures, lies, prides and illusions are exposed and picked apart, one by one by his two sons. When all his life lies are divulged and he is totally exposed, the first son murders himself and the other. Salter turns to an unknown son, but is rejected. In the end he is nobody, because he has nobody left in his life.

He started out as a total failure in life, and ruined the lives of the two depending on him. His wife committed suicide, and a seriously traumatized 5-year-old Bernard was placed in foster care. Salter made a major decision. He would turn his destiny totally starting from sketch again. , He made himself into the “ideal Salter”, a respectful, caring, responsible single father for a cloned version of his first son.

The set is Salter, or his surface, as an ideal. A smooth, elegant, controlled man that loves his son. It is his habitat & the exhibition of his character to the outside world. It has the appearance of a diorama. The space looks like an exclusive office space, but there are no signs of any actual work being done there. There is only a sofa, a side table, a blinded window, a picture of a boy and a bonsai tree. The walls are of dark, seemingly expensive wood and the floor grand black stone tiles. It doesn’t reveal much, but it gives an impression of importance and control. It is his comfort zone.
The sons brake into this comfort zone, physically through the wall panels, and pick this façade apart, word, by word, question, by question, confession by confession. The lights expose the fakeness and cheapness of the room. The wood and stone is imitated, and far out of scale, making Salter an even smaller man.

In the last act at the museum of Natural History he meets one of the clones. They stand in front of a diorama with no animal. They are in a public space, reflecting on the evolution of life, looking at an exhibition lacking something essential. Salter, and the audience’s faces are reflected in the glass of the diorama. Salter is faced with the final result of his own life.
Salter is homeless in the sense that his illusions of witch he has based his life, are all broken. Both his social sons are dead. He has no relations, nothing, not even an identity anymore.
He is basically no one.



The space for act 1 -4. The two first sons comes to their father.
is Salters "habitat" ,a cold, representative, masculine out of scale no-space,
partly office,
masculine zen minimalism in fake skin, wood and stone
-restrained & imitated nature
partly diorama/ exhibition
partly studio
framed in a rounded space with apparently now entrances or exits , and directed towards the audience, like a confessional talk show setting
partly nothing.
Partly lost.
Partly hidden
Totally exposed

Act 5. At the museum of natural history