The Oval Portrait

Characters:
Woman/Narrator 2 – Mariana Gouvêa
Painter/Traveller – Rodrigo Costa
Pedro – Gabriela Toledo
Narrator 1 – Daniela Longato

We are going to perform our adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” for the stage.

Play:

Traveller – It’s too dark in that forest. LOOK, A HOUSE!

Narrator 1 – It was a sad and strangely beautiful house, many hundreds of years old.

Traveller – Cof cof. I’m very sick, I think I have a high temperature!

Pedro – Want some medicine?

Traveller – No, thanks, Pedro.

Pedro – People were living here until a very short time ago. They left in a hurry.

Narrator - Pedro carried me through several tall, richly decorated rooms to a smaller room in a corner of the great house. He helped me to lie down on the bed. There were a lot of very fine modern pictures in this room.

Traveller – There is a smaller room here. Let’s see it. Hey, Pedro! Look at this painting! It looks like a picture! Come over here!

Pedro – Uau, the woman looks very beautiful!

Narrator 1 – The picture was a portrait. It was oval in shape, and showed the head and shoulders of a young woman. After that, I began to sleep. I was in a room, in a brightly lit room. The young woman was a beautiful young flower, and always so happy. She was smiling, but her smile began to fade away.

Painter – Look here darling! I want to paint you, because you have my heart.

Woman – Ok.

Narrator 2 – The woman loved all things but one: her husband’s work.

Painter – It looks just perfect!

Narrator 2 – Weeks went by, and the woman began to feel weak. But she didn’t tell her husband, because his life was his work, and she didn’t want to make her husband heavyhearted. And then, I saw a terrible scene: the finished painting and the beautiful woman on the floor, dead. I woke up with a scream.
Pedro – Hey friend, wake up! We have to go now!

Narrator 1 – I got out of the bed; Pedro and I left the house, and we went away. That young woman of the oval portrait was in my thoughts forever.