An Existential Encounter

A 1-page play for my infamous writing group.

Lights up. The stage is bare, but for two simple chairs facing downstairs. Seated on these chairs are two men in black, casual clothes, staring straight ahead. There is a long period of silence. When they speak, they do not look at each other.

Man 1: Are you real?

Man 2: (considers) I... think so. Why do you ask?

Man 1: I'm considering the possibility that nothing outside my own consciousness is verifiably real.

Man 2: Of course you are.

Man 1: Descartes said that everything can be doubted, can be thought away, except one's own consciousness.

Man 2: Day-who?

Man 1: My mind, therefore, is the only thing that I can be confident is truly real. And that made me wonder if you are real.

Man 2: I feel real.

Man 1: But what if you are not? What if you are only part of a world that I invented but that does not truly exist outside of myself, an illusion I created to keep me company out of some sense of cosmic loneliness?

Man 2: Would it make a difference?

Man 1: I think it would, but I'm not sure how.

Pause.

Man 2: You think too much.

Man 1: (growing emotional) I just want to know! I just wish everything wasn't so vague, so uncertain, so full of different and opposing meanings. Don't you ever wish you could cling to something and know, without any doubt, that it was true? Don't you wish there were some dry ground in this epistimological nightmare we call reality? Love, desire, pain, hunger, death: there's too many symbols! Too many illusions! Too much interpretation! Don't you ever want something more.... stable?

Man 2: What does what it matter what I want? I may not even be real.

Pause.

Man 1: Don't leave me, ok?

Man 2: (looks at him and smiles) Ok.