This play is called The Illuminati in Drama Libre by Alice Gerstenberg. It was written in 1921. This play was originally published in "Ten One-Act Plays. Alice Gerstenberg. New York: Brentano's, 1921." It is now a public domain work and may be performed without royalties. I found this play on this website: http://www.theatrehistory.com/plays/illuminati.html. This play has performed on many small stages. It was hard to find specifics of where this was performed, I found a few websites that were small theatres in various cities in the USA that performed this play. It is not staged often and it is not one of Alice Gerstenberg's most popular works.
There are two characters in this play, he and she. They whirl into sight on the stage. They began to talk in short fragments. First flirtatiously, then in despair, then angrily, then in horror, then dramatically, then in agony, then inspirationally, then emotionally, then passionately. You're not 100% sure what their talking about. It seems as though they are in love, their is a conflict, they don't know how to resolve that conflict, they fight, they struggle and then at the end SHE isn't getting what she wants and SHE yells colors. HE is overcome by the sound of these colors. SHE yells, HE is overcome and then they disappear off stage.
Gerstenberg chose to only have two characters, to not give them names and to have them wear shapes and colors on their faces. This is was fascinating because we knew so little about the characters based on their names and outfits. We could draw few conclusions. Gerstenberg also chose to have them talk in fragmented sentences which created an interesting dynamic on the stage. There was this quick back and forth back and forth happening that you don't frequently see in plays. It was super poetic and unique for what is common in the theatre. Especially for the time in which she lived, she was a pioneer for doing things differently and approaching social issues in the theatre.
