The Last Bird: Stories & Plays

"I remember with pleasure our meetings in London. Good luck and always write the Dichtung and the Wahrheit." Samuel Beckett Keith Johnstone (*1933 in England) is a theatre director, writer and professor whose books have had a major influence on the art of improvisation. He worked from1956 to 1965 at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1970 he moved to Canada and has taught or given workshops at major European Theatre Schools and Universites. Johnstone still lives in Calgary and teaches all over the world. Oliver Oliver lived in a cottage near the beach. He had such hopes when he was younger, but nothing he touched had ever prospered. Even worse, he had been unable to establish amature relationship with a woman. One day he wrote a note that expressed his frustration and loneliness. He added his address (plus a photograph of himself), sealed it into a bottle, and threw it into the sea. Every morning he waited for the post to arrive, eagerly at first, and then with resignation. Years passed before he received a reply. It enclosed a photograph of a woman who had been sitting on the shore when a wave had deposited the bottle at her feet. She wrote that she understood him, that he was her true soul mate, and that God had meant them for each other. Overjoyed, Oliver poured his heart out in a second letter, ending with “…I have been waiting for you for the whole of my wasted life, and I feel sure we will find true happiness together.” And then he sealed it into a bottle, and hurled it into the sea. But the bitch never replied.