Published with the assistance of the the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We also acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Hines, Karen, 1963-

       Hello-- hello: a romantic satire/Karen Hines.

      A play.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-55245-171-7

      ISBN-10: 1-55245-171-2

      I. Title.

      PS8615.i44H44 2006 C812’.6 C2006-901686-0

       for Blake

      We live in a dream world. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognise that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness that absorbs the moment in which we live, then generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that they recognise this and we do not.

      Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already, destroy the conditions necessary for human life on Earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs’ retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler.

      George Monbiot

      The Guardian, August 12, 2003

       Introduction

      Hello … Hello was written during the nineties, when serious cuts to spending on the environment, the public sphere and the arts were underway. The general idea was that we should adhere to more commercial models on all fronts.

      My reaction, perhaps perverse, was to embrace this new order by writing a love story set in a place and time where art and commerce have finally and completely conjoined: a romantic fable for a new world. The absence of props and the near-empty set, which began as budgetary necessities, quickly became key to the play’s point of view. Words were free, so I used a lot of them, and soon the spoken stage directions, with their lush descriptions of glowing snowfalls, mammoth set pieces and dancing accountants, set the stage for a piece of theatre that could both celebrate and subvert the classic styles of escapist entertainment it employed.

      Despite the fact that Hello … Hello was riddled with romance, comedy and songs, it became increasingly clear during the very first workshop that it was not really a romantic musical comedy, and shouldn’t pretend to be. Or should only pretend to be. Perhaps, we thought, it was an ‘allegorical romance with songs.’ Or a ‘black romantic tragi-comedy.’ Whatever the genre, obstacles became our compasses and limitations our guides. The ironic juxtaposition of nothingness and ‘everythingness’ was mined for its comedy. The romance was mined for its appeal. The darker suggestions regarding romantic love and its macrocosmic reverberations were left to seep out from between the lines.

      The world has changed a lot since this play was begun, and it’s changing faster and faster. The belief I had just ten years ago in the power of art to change the world is being challenged by the probability that economic progress can change it faster and more everlastingly. But, as Kalle Lasn, founder of Adbusters magazine, says, ‘On the far side of cynicism lies freedom.’ And I suppose, at its most basic level, this play is an ode to the pursuit of freedom. It is also an ode to art itself, which seems, increasingly, to be something akin to that tiny endangered frog we have all seen in National Geographic or Scientific American: the one that is tinier than a fingertip, exquisitely beautiful, morbidly fragile …

      This play is an ode to that frog.

       Production History

      Hello … Hello was produced three times in Toronto between 1998 and 2003. Each production was directed by Chris Earle, with musical direction by Greg Morrison. The music was composed by Greg Morrison with song melodies by Morrison and Hines.

      Hello … Hello was first performed in 1998 in a workshop production at The SPACE in Toronto.

      Ben Cordair: Steven Guy-McGrath

      Cassandra: Karen Hines

      Female Chorus: Teresa Pavlinek

      Male Chorus: Steve Morel

      The premiere was presented by Pochsy Productions at the Factory Studio Theatre, in association with Factory Theatre, in April 1999.

      Ben Cordair: David Jansen

      Cassandra: Karen Hines

      Female Chorus: Teresa Pavlinek

      Male Chorus: Steve Morel

      In November 2003,Hello … Hello was presented by the Tarragon Theatre.

      Ben Cordair: Peter Oldring

      Cassandra: Karen Hines

      Female Chorus: Aurora Browne

      Male Chorus: Steve Morel

       Notes

      Hello … Hello is an affectionate but unforgiving meditation on escapist consumer culture and on that most escapist of entertainments, the boy-meets-girl musical. Though it is a musical piece of theatre, its production should resist classification as a traditional musical, and though the romance between the characters is very real, every similarity to actual romantic comedies should be carefully considered.

      Hello … Hello is not an attack on the musical theatre form; it is a meditation on the human impulses that lie beneath that form.

      Sentiment is defined by some as the absence of actual feeling. Hello … Hello should at all times be a-sentimental.

       Characters

      BEN CORDAIR, Head of Creative at Quicksilver Incorporated. CASSANDRA, a salesgirl at The Abyss.

      FEMALE CHORUS, who narrates and plays fifty-one other roles. MALE CHORUS, who narrates and plays fifty-three other roles.

      The performers who play these roles should not be cast only to type but also for their ability to parody type. Their singing and dancing skills are important, but, again, primarily insofar as they augment the performers’ abilities to parody the musical form. Comedic precision and a satirical bent are, in the end, the key elements.

       Chorus

      The chorus in Hello … Hello is inspired both by kathartic Greek tragedians and by the enthusiastic hoofers in Hollywood-style musicals. Theirs is a human voice. They sympathize with Cassandra, Ben and all of the citizens of the megalopolis, while also standing apart from