ANNA
What was that?

ERWIN (offstage)
Only a car backfiring in the street. Nothing to worry your pretty head about.

CAT
It was a gunshot – see how he protects you? Go with him and become his wife. Let love happen when it will.

Erwin Und Mich (sample)
by Robb Piggot

CHARACTERS

ERWIN (Schrodinger) A scientific theorist with an ordered mind. Conventional with traditional values, but admittedly a stranger where the “weaker sex” is concerned. Does not realize that emotions like love can be put in a box quite as easily.

ANNA A young woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. More trusting of others, than of herself. Conflicted in a moment that requires immediate action.

CAT Self-serving. Manipulative. Drinks milk out of a saucer. Walks that fence between loyalty and opportunity.

SETTING

An empty cold-water flat in Berlin. Only a large metal box with closable lid, now half-filled with small parcels, sits unobtrusively onstage.

TIME
Fall of 1933.

(The lights come up on the CAT resting on the box, finishing the bottle of milk. ERWIN enters with some small parcels.)

ERWIN
Look who has come home. I had almost given you up for dead.

CAT
It’s only been a few days.

ERWIN
A week.

CAT
I always come back.

ERWIN
How nice it must be to come and go as you please.

CAT (stretching out on the box)
Oh, let me sleep, I have had had a long night.

ERWIN
Not there, go on – shoo.

CAT
What happened to my chair in the corner?

ERWIN
The packing men came and took it away this morning.

CAT
Packing men? To where?

ERWIN
England.

CAT
Whatever for?

ERWIN
Because my absent friend, I have accepted a position at the University of Oxford and am leaving on a train within the hour.

CAT
I don’t want to go to England. It’s cold and rains there. Much nicer here.

ERWIN
That shows how much you’ve been paying attention. Germany is no longer safe.

CAT
Oh, those soldiers –

ERWIN
Heathens.

CAT
I pay them no mind.

ERWIN
It’s not you who they’re watching. Already, it is not good for those who speak up and I fear it is only going to get worse. (ERWIN exits.) No, it is time to leave.

CAT
Very well, I suppose I shall have to get used to it.

ERWIN (offstage)
You are not going.

CAT
Excuse me?

ERWIN (entering with more parcels)
You are to stay here in Berlin.