At the dentist’s of Schreiersheim
| Time: | approx. 3-5 minutes |
| Recommended age: | from 10 |
| Size of group: | 2 performers |
| Time for preparation: | none, only 10-15 minutes to train the sketch |
| Material: | a hammer, a few large chisels and a massive pair of pliers, chair |
Game description
Location: In an old-fashioned barber shop where teeth were once pulled out.
Players: The man with a sore tooth, the narrator and the barber.
A man with a fat swollen cheek comes into the front room of a dentists. This means: we do not see the cheek because it is wrapped in a large scarf. There is no one in the shop. He sits down on a stool in front of a table where a few torture instruments are lying. There is at least a hammer, a few large chisels and a massive pair of pliers. He writhes around in pain and stamps his feet. He sometimes cries so badly that the audience starts to cry with him. The narrator comes in from the left of stage
(A sharp lad who walks a fine line between compassion and taunt). He points at the poor man and says:
"Toothache – taken subjectively,
Is, without a doubt, most unwelcome:
But it has one characteristic,
that thereby turns to vigour,
which is outward often wasted,
to one point inward and here energetically concentrated.
The first stab of pain is hardly felt,
but the well-known drilling is already there,
the jerking, the wincing and the noise —
and the world news is out of mind,
the stock exchange,
the taxes and the 1 x table is long forgotten.—
In short, every form of usual existence,
which usually seems important and real,
is suddenly unsubstantial and futile.
Well even the old lever rusts,
we can’t remember what butter costs,
because the soul is hiding out in the narrow gaps of the back teeth —
And under roaring and ranting
One thing is certain: The tooth has to go!
(Wilhelm Busch)
The narrator leaves. The barber appears on stage (where possible: a man like a master butcher). The pained man opens his mouth and points at the sore tooth. The barber: "Yes, my dear man, it must be pulled out, otherwise you might get blood poisoning at the end of it all!"
The poorly man groans and holds his cheek while the tooth puller sots out his tools.
"You don’t need to be scared", he says in the meantime. "It’s about time that we sort that out. But it’s good that you didn’t go running into town with it. They hunt the money out of your pockets there and you don’t have anything but a bit of pain." He reaches for the pliers, wipes them on his trousers to sterilise them.
"Look, Willem!" he says trustingly. "If you go into town, a tooth breaker lives directly on the left side of the street, that is a serious flayer. He does it like this!" applies the pliers and pulls with all of his strength.
The patient kicks his legs and screams as if he is on the spit. "Yes, exactly. He does it just like that!" says the barber and pants a little.
"Isn’t that great?" the barber continues. "And then he takes 2 pounds for it. — and one street further on, there is another one – he does it like this." He pulls once again; fidgets and screams from the patient. "Look, Willem, he is such a con artist." He wipes the sweat from his forehead. "And you have to pay 5 pounds for his services there.
— — "yeah, yeah!" says the barber. "You see, that’s how they do it in the town. You will only hear cries and screams in vain, and you have to fork out until you’re broke. — But back to me, I do it like this!" He grabs the tooth with a smile, which he had already pulled loose.
Without any problem he takes the tooth (he takes a piece of wood or a boar’s tooth, which he already had in his left hand and takes from the patients mouth) studies it and places it elegantly on the table. "So, there is the minx. And? You’d be lying if you said that you noticed that. And me? — I don’t take 5 pounds for it, I don’t even take 2 pounds. It doesn’t even hurt and I only charge a single pound. It’s almost a gift and makes pulling teeth enjoyable."
Judging
no scoring
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