The Moon-Shadow Feast
A Dreamlike, Absurd, and Chivalric Farce in One Act
Characters:
- ARTHUR (The Page of Earthen Eyes): The protagonist. Wears armor made of old canvas scraps and parchment. His gaze always searches the horizon.
- BOWIE: His double. A leaping goblin, dressed in a faded velvet doublet, high hair, and bells. The voice of sheer nerve and physical rhythm.
- BRANDO: His triple. A melancholic giant with a theatrical zoot-suit mask. Stout, cynical, yet harboring deep fragility. The exhibitionist of the soul.
- THE QUEEN: A monarch of chalky stone, wearing a crown and holding a staff that is a massive wooden spoon. She never bends, never embraces; she only feeds.
- THE SIREN OF THE SWING: A creature half-fish, half-silk cushion. She speaks with a velvety broadcast voice, though her movements are a clumsy swing of fins.
- HANS (The Unicorn of Snow): A Germanic mythological being, with blond mane and icy elegance. He slips in and out without touching anyone, scattering false glimmers.
- CAPTAIN (The Winged Guardian): A massive hound with gauze wings watching from the hanging bridges of the dream.
- CHORUS OF CARMELITE MONKS, TOP-HATTED CRABS, MOCKING ALPINISTS, AND DANCING SANTAS.
SINGLE ACT
*(The action begins with the screeching music of broken brass instruments. A Santa on stilts and a giant Moose in a tutu cross the stage executing a rigorous slapstick tango, deliberately tripping over their own feet. A comical fall. They stand up and flee).*
*(At the massive feast table, the Queen serves spoonfuls of codfish that glows with its own light inside pewter dishes. Arthur, Bowie, and Brando sit tightly squeezed onto a single chair).*
THE QUEEN
*(In a flat, rigid voice like a telegraph pole)* Eat of the salt-fish. Drink of the goblins' cider. It is the midnight of the century. At the stroke of twelve, royal protocol demands the Exchange of Distances.
*(A broken cuckoo clock chimes. The three Arthurs rise clumsily, colliding in a tangled choreography. Arthur tries to embrace the Queen, but she turns sideways, literally becoming an immovable statue of salt. Arthur embraces empty air).*
ARTHUR
*(To the audience, ironically)* The solstice embrace in the kingdom of The Stone House. A ritual of crossed swords where bodies must never touch. My mother, sovereign of distances, preferred to hand down the chronicle of the Dead King before my birth... that violent, bald monarch who frightened the weavers of the land by revealing his forbidden heraldry in public parks.
BOWIE
*(Doing a spectacular tumble)* A king who would have exiled you for the color of your silent eyes! He, who thought himself a descendant of the peninsula's conquerors, and you, a mere page with the skin of this valley's clay!
BRANDO
*(Drawing a large mirror from his doublet)* Bah! At least the resilient fellowship of the seventies learned to heal their wounds with cricket spit. Look at us now! Lugging the trunk of blurred memories as if it were gold, when it holds nothing but river stones and petrified fruitcakes.
*(Suddenly, the lighting shifts to an electric navy blue. A curtain of bubbles floods the stage. The ground rumbles).*
ARTHUR
The sea... the foam rises. But it smells like lavender and laundry lines. Someone is washing the ocean with lye!
BOWIE
*(Floating on his belly on the floor, mimicking swimming)* It's the soapy tide! Beware the Wave of the Scorpion Aunt!
*(From the back emerges a giant mascot costume shaped like a Crab wearing a lace mantilla and holding a fan (The Aunt). She leads a two-year-old puppet-child by the hand, wearing an absurdly tight, tiny black medieval swimsuit that pinches his bellybutton).*
SCORPION AUNT
*(Screeching voice, like a fairy tale witch)* Drag that dark-skinned page from the scorching sand! Let him drown in the salty brine until his eyes turn red like my claws! Look at him, with his hair stuck to his skull like a postage stamp!
*(An Octopus and a King Crab cross the proscenium. They stop in the center, stare at each other, solemnly tip their top hats, smash their shells together with a loud "CLACK!" of physical comedy, and change direction. Two Alpinists with colored ropes cross hanging from the ceiling, laughing falsely: "Hehe, look at the Arthurs on their make-believe beach!").*
*(The scene fragments. A frozen forest replaces the beach. The smell of green firewood and unicorn manure fills the air. A heavy canvas tent crushes the three Arthurs).*
ARTHUR
*(Poking his head through the canvas)* Seventeen winters we carried in our bodies! The Siberian cold of the mountain drew us so close that the boundaries of scout uniforms blurred away.
BRANDO
*(Stepping out with a theatrical stride, shaking off imaginary frost)* Let us admit it, Mr. Masculine. In that canvas that weighed seven hundred pounds, under the guise of sleepwalking, you sought the kiss of the Ruby Knight. You faked the myth of the trance to touch another's armor.
BOWIE
*(Ringing his bells)* And at dawn, the floor of the tent looked covered in the condensed milk of gnomes! "If only we'd been left alone..." the minstrels teased. But the page Arthur always preferred the theater of making faces in the mirror.
ARTHUR
*(Approaches the proscenium, shifting his facial expressions rapidly)* For three years I was my own audience. I shed skins in the silver of the mirror until I became the only thing I know how to be with absolute freedom... a flying goldfish!
*(Arthur runs across the stage with outstretched arms. The lights project his giant shadow flying over prop pyramids and floating university traffic lights).*
*(A swing descends from the ceiling with pink neon lights. On it sits the Siren of the Swing, swaying her foam tail. Arthur approaches, leaning on his wooden sword).*
SIREN
*(Voice like a storybook narrator)* Ah, Arthur... so you still reside in the same county of asphalt and dried lakes?
ARTHUR
I have moved towers three times, sea creature. But the map of desire holds the exact same unreachable realms.
BOWIE
Just say it! You lived for ten years in the castle of the Snow Unicorn Hans, the little German donkey. A being as innocent as he was egocentric!
BRANDO
*(Mimicking a waiter pouring drinks)* To whom the local maidens clung like magnets in the royal taverns! He bedded the entire kingdom... except our page! Good old Hans granted only false hopes, like those Prometheus locked away in the box of pain. Hours were spent calling each other "Little donkey, sweet little donkey," believing rhetoric could substitute for fire.
*(Hans, the Snow Unicorn, trots in with arrogance. He passes straight between the Arthurs, drops a handful of shiny confetti on Arthur's head, and disappears through a trapdoor with a "Tom!" sound effect).*
ARTHUR
*(With a clenched fist)* Cursed erotic materialism! The court scholar warned me: it is the drive that makes us stumble over the same millstone. Falling in love at sixty with the young blacksmith from the neighboring village—a knight of thirty winters, unattainable, who only "wants to be polite." I am utterly sick of the politeness of heroes!
BRANDO
*(Weeping comically with a giant handkerchief)* We want to weep! The page becomes transparent before the eyes of the kingdom. Old wizards turn to glass. No one looks at our plumage!
*(A tender howl is heard. The clouds open and Captain the dog descends, his gauze wings fluttering. In his snout, he carries a sprig of golden celery).*
ARTHUR
*(Falls to his knees, the absurd tone vanishes for an instant; raw truth fills his voice)* Captain! The guardian of my days of exile. You left in my arms last winter, giant and heavy, without the magic of the healers being able to halt the clock of your blood. The guilt of iron haunts me, for not taking you to the northern meadows...
CAPTAIN
*(The puppet wags its tail mechanically; a deep, warm voice off-stage echoes)* I wag my tail from the firmament of faithful hounds, my page. You were the center of my map. There is no guilt in the kingdom of those who love without condition. Keep writing the farce.
*(Captain ascends slowly. Bowie and Brando toss marshmallows into the campfire as it begins to die out).*
*(The stage fills with a Court of Ghosts dressed in Golden Age garments but wearing alien masks. A giant fan on the floor blows air, in front of which a Madman with a paper crown recites Shakespearean verses in an invented language. Rhythmic theatrical music begins to play).*
ARTHUR
*(Draping a fox pelt over his canvas armor)* Let the dead pass! Let those who fell in the plagues of the eighties and nineties pass! I do not seek them in the clouds, but in the old wooden passageways of the Dominican temples, where my effigy was burned by the Inquisition of modesty. I am still dancing alone on the floor of The Stone House!
BOWIE
*(Dancing a wild rap with circus-clown steps)* That's it! Even if the farce is dreamlike and the neighbors stare from their dull windows, with their six daughters and their lives of ash... we have the flying goldfish!
BRANDO
*(Opening his arms to the audience, with a comical wink)* Desire never burns out! It is the hell that drives us toward the impossible. Knowing full well it means catastrophic failure, we take a comedic leap into immortality!
*(The three Arthurs hold hands. The stage begins to fill with burnt newspapers flying like black butterflies. The smell of medicinal alcohol and ancient memories fills the air. A final row of goldfish descends from the ceiling, stopping at eye level).*
ARTHUR
Drop the bags of the past. The lesson in the school of lies is over. There are no graves to answer, only this floating stage.
*(Arthur blows toward the audience. A shower of soap and pink confetti floods the theater. The three Arthurs take an exaggerated bow, knocking their heads together in one last mechanical slapstick as the curtain falls).*
