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so i wrote this play in March . . .
it's been on the shelf, gathering dust . . . it's got some great lines (it's sort of a libretto) but is otherwise a very conventional farce . . . the players, while not wholly one-dimensional, are impelled by the story, are largely unconscious of the consequences of their actions . . . there's this halfwit eunuch who keeps a sassmouthèd stuffed bear, and the boy's nursemaid of whom he is enamoured, and then there is her employer (eunuch's father) who has lost the will to live. the nursemaid is carrying on an affair with the next door neighbor, and for some reason they conspire to kill the eunuch's father. the neighbor's stepdaughter buries herself in the backyard after she catches wind of her boyfriend's untimely demise. he has driven himself off a promontory somewhere in the west.
i'll make this mercifully short . . . the eunuch's father kills himself and blame is traced to the nursemaid, so the boy in a fit of rage transmogrifies into a bear, lays the nursemaid over his knee in the final act and proceeds to disembowel her on the threshhold of their home . . . the next door neighbor is horrified and points an elephant gun at the man-bear creature, who is evidently unfazed . . . "you can't use an elephant gun on a bear, you need a bear gun" . . . the bear buries the neighbor alive, the townsfolk apprehend the bear, the city is safe.
influences are drawn everywhere from old chinese poets and indian mythology to popular 19th century Russian and French literature and (unnoticeably) Thomas Pynchon (because I could not help but pay unflattering homage to such a great guy)
any takers? PM me, please! thanks!
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