Pieter Vanderbeck

PIETER VANDERBECK. COFFEE BREAK: A RADIO DRAMA IN TWELVE EPISODES.

It’s easy to treat the “little people” who do the world’s unmemorable jobs as comical characters, like the bus drivers and sewer workers in televison’s The Honeymooners, or to veer to the other extreme in tragic portrayals like Death of a Salesman. Now artist and poet Pieter Vanderbeck dons the cap of Nikolai Gogol and lifts the lid off a microcosm of American working life amid a humble cast of characters: security guards, desk clerks, maintenance men, and janitors laboring at the bottom rung of an unspecified company. Coffee Break spins from America’s caffeine obsession and the relentless, aggressive advertising that once dominated the radio airwaves, and focuses on a crew of working men and women who seldom leave the corridors, offices and infrastructures of a single building, for whom the coffee break is a brief respite of humanity and a glimmer of camraderie. Atop them is a supervisor, and atop him, an arrogant anthill of bosses with schemes, theories, controls and disciplines. Coffee Break is comedy, rife with satire on the limited — and self-limiting — perspectives of workers who know little else other than work, but it goes deeper, showing how those at every level of a company enact the inept cruelties of their bosses upon those below them, so that even a janitors’ workroom, or a restroom stall, becomes a place of surveillance. A few lines of the play follow:

BB [Voice from Radio): Wake up, America! This is the great national COFFEE BREAK, brought to you by SLAVE’S CHOICE Premium Central American Coffee. I am your host, Bilge Bridgewater. In today’s episode, we have gotten very near the actual accomplishment of a classical coffee break, only minutes away, maybe right now, at this instant, this very second. But first, let us remind you. You have no such problem. For you have it all the time, and always an extra can for when the first runs out. Never be without it! And make sure that it is SLAVE’S CHOICE! SLAVE’S CHOICE! The only one! Mmmmm! Smell it! Taste it! Instant enthusiasm! The coffee that wakes you up and keeps you up! Have a cup right now, even if you’ve had several. There’s never enough! The more you drink, the more they eat. You know who. And now, let’s see.

GILLOOLY: Ah! That’s better. Now things are starting to come together.

SCAGGS: I needed that. The first one didn’t quite do it.

KROT: I could have used another, certainly. For starters.

CULP: It makes the world go around, coffee does. There would be no solar system without it.

KROT: But I think we used the whole pot up.

GILLOOLY: Wait for the others. Maybe they can make it. If they know how. I never can be sure how much there is upstairs, when they come in. Ya know? I mean, we got some real dingers here. But wait. That way, it’ll be nice and fresh. None of that burned taste from the electric coil. I hate that. I won’t drink it. Nobody should have to. There’s no cause for it. Those who make bad coffee should be taken out and — well, I won’t say it. It’s a nice day. So far, at least. Maybe it’ll stay that way. Damn. That meeting’s coming up. I’m certain to need an extra coffee before that, and one during it too. Better start an extra. You’re the only one who can make it best.

KROT: Me, again?

GILLOOLY: You’re the best. I can always depend on you.

KROT: You said that when we were in the cribs.

GILLOOLY: That’s it! You’re the Rock of Gibraltar.

KROT: Let me take my last sip first.

GILLOOLY: No hurry. But make it soon.

SCAGGS: And no going to the bathroom along the way. You never come out.

CULP: Ooooo.

GILLOOLY: Now, now.

KROT: Now, see here: what I do in the bathroom, and how long I take, is my sacred and private business.

SCAGGS: We may have to mark it on the time card.

GILLOOLY: Now, now: we’re not going to mark it on the time card. He’s right, you know. I don’t like cameras facing me when I take my pants down, or even open my fly. It’s an individual intimate thing.

SCAGGS: But the cameras prevent bathroom crime.

This is the 232nd publication of The Poet's Press. Published December 2017. 144 pages, illustrated. 6 x 9 inches, paperback. ISBN 978-0922558919. $12.95. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.

Also available as a PDF e-book for $4.00. CLICK HERE to order and download from Payhip.

Version 24. Updated February 24, 2024.