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Hey guys, big opportunity here for a real life changer, and it’s all for the good cause.

 

Here’s the deal.  I am doing a street performance for donations.  Amazing, right?  I’m set up in the Washington Square Arch, left side, as you enter.  Look for a red popcorn box, which I am using as my stage.  Don’t be fooled by the bloke on the right, doing some sort of mime, maybe something about Dusseldorf and how to prepare strudel – that’s not me.  A lot of people are walking by and pretending to not notice.  I’m thinking about putting up some lights and maybe a big banner with an arrow. 

 

Anyway, it’s a great performance and well worth all the donations it’s going to bring in.  It’s kind of a Shakespeare deal, with some curious twists.  Some ins and outs, you know, like real life, but in the end, focusing on the plight of the forgotten bug.  What the hell, here’s a bit of an excerpt, but don’t be passing it around.  I’m serious.  This is confidential.  Copyrighted, even.

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                                    ACT 1; SCENE 1      

 

                     STAGE CENTER

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Pacing back and forth, looking hard at the audience.

 

Macdeath

Is this a fly swatter which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A swatter of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the DEET-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy paddle collect the gouts of slime,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder.
Thou sure and firm-set earth ,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

 

A bell rings

 

Ah, I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, faire fly; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

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Exit left; sound of fly swatter hitting mark.

Soldier running, enters stage right.

 

Soldier

Alas! the king is dead and lies upon

Yon hearth, now but slime and gruel to feed

Thy earth. Thou run’st to share these evil tidings.

Alas!  Alas!

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Exits stage left at a run.  Sound of commotion from off stage.  Much buzzing.

 

Macdeath enters stage right.

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Macdeath

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

 

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their shells.

 

Stops. Rubs his hands together and looks at them closely seeing something that is not there.

 

Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh! Yet who would have thought the old fly
to have had so much blood in him.

 

Looks again at his hands then holds them high for the audience to see.

 

You think perhaps this is a story of of the king?

No, no, no… that’s not what is meant.  It is not

The assassination of the king

That brings me before you.  Ah, but what then? you ask.

 

No, it is the assassination of Musca domestica,

Or Drosophila melanogaster, or Periplaneta americana.

 

And what might those be, pray tell?  Ha, ha, ha. 

Not surely those you would consider cousin. 

Let us call it Rose, The Sweet. Fly Rose – is she not Deserving of a life?  Toiling long the hours of each day

In cleaning of the mess we leave we behind,

Be it scheisse or corpse… 

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Okay.  That’s probably enough.  Come see it for yourselves and you will be better off for it.  And bring money for donations.  In fact, you are hereby commanded to appear in the audience, by the power invested in me.  Plus I have some connections out there.  I’m not kidding.  Seriously.

 

Also, if one of you wouldn’t mind, please bring a digital camera.  It would be, like, super to record the performance so I could add it to the website. 

 

All for the good cause, you know.

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