ABSTRACT
The absolute fragment is a tease, more or less invented in its modern form when millions of people were being fragmented, warmed therefore by a rather desperate gaiety that was founded on the disparity. Wesker's thoughts about fragments are articulated most straightforwardly in his discursive rather than dramatic writings. Wesker's fragments in The Old Ones are, most obviously, fragmented actions. Rather than a unified, Aristotelian plot with a beginning, middle, and ending. The Old Onesbegan, in part, as an experiment in form, in which Wesker tried to build a play out of more loosely related elements than ever before in his career. It combines the broader focus of The Kitchenand The Friends with the episodic structure of Chips with Everything and Their Very Own and Golden City. The scenes in The Old Ones are linked in a number of ways, atmospherically, imagistically, and thematically. In The Old Ones, there is little discussion of utopia.
