Introduction
The Third Party is both the first play I wrote and also the first long-form work, being a complete three-act drama. And though it is still only of a similar length to the “short story” Lobe from the story collection of the same name, it was the first long work that really flowed narratively one part after the other (Lobe was much more a gradually constructed interweaving edifice).
The play is solidly in the domain of the theatre of the absurd, with its most obvious progenitor probably Sartre’s “No Exit”. Pinter and Beckett were also major influences and in a sense the work can be seen primarily as a cross fertilization of those two, with a definite dash of Kafka thrown in.
The most obvious Kafkaesque element is the titular Third Party, the absent threatening bureaucracy that rationalises its violence through the meandering formal prose it delivers in letters to the housemates under its sway who, initially at least, find themselves utterly helpless and growingly desperate in their efforts to adequately respond.
The story revolves around this developing response and the interpersonal dynamics of the trapped housemates, each of whom, except one, Jerry, represents a failed strategy for navigating the situation.
Philosophical underpinnings aside, there is both much satire and straightforward humour in the play. And the characters have always stayed with me both as very distinct ”types”, but also as very individual and real in their own way, and I hope that makes the work, as much as anything else, “a good read”, which is certainly a description I would apply to its major influences.
The book, which I have published under the name Paul Buckle, is available below in free pdf format along with an introductory excerpt.
An Excerpt from The Third Party: Bureaucratic Babble Becomes Barbarous
In this extract, the housemates receive from the Third Party a letter written in a jumble of corporate jargon and bureaucratese that serves to shield a direct and existentially significant act of violence.
(All gather around in a huddle except Lin, who walks over and disinfects the point on the floor where the letter landed).
Mansi: (Opens and reads out loud).
To whom it may concern:With regard to your recent request for a re-opening of written correspondence, we hereby inform you of our temporary acquiescence conditional on all agreed conditions such as agreed during our recent conversation. We reserve the right to permanently cancel this arrangement conditional on your agreement with our acceptance of your recognition of our agreement being conditional. All this being for the purpose of further negotiation, and not in any way prejudicing previous agreements such as pertain to our destruction of your abode regardless of occupational state in approximately 24 hours.
…
You have asked us to delay, and preferably cancel, our intended demolition project, but have yet to give sufficient reason. We ask that you, each of you, explain the importance of your role in the house and the justification for the continuance of such role with reference to productivity outcomes, leadership skills, imaginative strategies for continuous improvement, and so on etc.Yours sincerely,
A Third Party.
Declan: Bloody hell.