Middle Of The East

By Artur Alonso

With No Meio do Oriente, Círculo Edições publishes his second book and the first play. With this number we start the Coleção Knosos, conceived to spread this literary genre. A genre of great projection in the media and in society by its expansion in reality, because it may be performed at the stage. Therefore it has the strength of the visual and auditory. The senses enjoy to the highest degree through the perfection expressed in the imaginary performance, and we hope in the near future in reality. We believe in this work, we think its value adds to our publishing work, since it is a very special and daring work. It breaks the established framework of the genre and delicately transfigures the difficulty which has its own choice, the being itself, and that difficulty multiplies its value. It highlights the profundity of the human dream. With this edition for the theatre, we aim at digging in the frightening social factors. We want to overcome the barriers installed in the tedium and the known. We wish to know and believe in Thought: it is the motor of men and women, it is the pneumatic tyre of the world which moves by itself. Thought makes us evolve, since we are thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Artur Alonso
• Release date: Jul 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005035211

Book preview

MIDDLE OF THE EAST

By Artur Alonso

Copyright © 2020 Artur Alonso

With No Meio do Oriente, Círculo Edições publishes his second book and the first play. With this number we start the Coleção Knosos, conceived to spread this literary genre. A genre of great projection in the media and in society by its expansion in reality, because it may be performed at the stage. Therefore it has the strength of the visual and auditory. The senses enjoy to the highest degree through the perfection expressed in the imaginary performance, and we hope in the near future in reality. We believe in this work, we think its value adds to our publishing work, since it is a very special and daring work. It breaks the established framework of the genre and delicately transfigures the difficulty which has its own choice, the being itself, and that difficulty multiplies its value. It highlights the profundity of the human dream. With this edition for the theatre, we aim at digging in the frightening social factors. We want to overcome the barriers installed in the tedium and the known. We wish to know and believe in Thought: it is the motor of men and women, it is the pneumatic tyre of the world which moves by itself. Thought makes us evolve, since we are Thought.

To my son David, he also has to live in the confusion that surrounds his world.

To Maria Peón, without whose previous work this play would not have been born. To Joel R. Gomes – who gave me the great advice that I never followed... and, in spite of everything, this work would have nothing of value without them...

(In the) Middle (of the) East

Act I

Scene 1

A voice speaks offstage, no-one knows from where it comes, no-one knows to whom it speaks

Life’s contingencies are not your adversaries, but your allies. Learn to welcome them, even when they upset you. Acceptance is the highest form of Love. It is the final yes to life’s sacred experience.

(Dugpa Rinpoché, Precepts of Life)

Lights are turned on.

An ordinary room, with a big wardrobe, with sliding doors; a double bed. The room is not that ordinary: somehow it appears huge; a very big chest of drawers, with four big drawers, two of them open. From the open drawers, underwear and nightshirts stick out. A pink velvet rococo chair (if it is not available in pink, it may not be pink).

In this room there are: Carlos (a young man, about to turn thirty -unemployed- and yet with a PhD in Continental Classical Philology - specializing in Nordic Languages); a retired Colonel, in plainclothes and with a tie, and Carolina Mondelo, a former actress in children’s films, who at thirty-seven teaches dramatic arts at the nº 5 Secondary School, in Cidade das Névoas.

Carolina is lying on the only bed; she gets up sideways, gracefully, with great care, turning to her right, gets down from the bed and goes into the big wardrobe looking for perhaps a shawl (she thinks of the cold); the Colonel notices his full-dress uniform, lying at the foot of the bed, on a small bench. Carlos is looking into the wardrobe mirror (appearing to look at his chin, but really all the time with his mind focused on Carolina Mondelo).

Carlos

(Addressing the Colonel) How could I help other people? (He spoke, but the Colonel doesn’t answer, he’s noticed a stain in the uniform...).

Carolina Mondelo

(Coming out from the wardrobe, with a little item of silk, carefully held in the fingers of her right hand: the piece could be a scarf or something similar. She intentionally addresses, not Carlos, but the Colonel.) Help others?... Why should someone have to help others?...

The Colonel

(Turning to Carolina and to Carlos, as if now uninterested in the uniform and the stain.) Altruism in helping has been the prime mould on which our high Western Civilization was built.

Carlos

... Ever since I remember... I’ve had like a nostalgia for those courageous warriors who wrote history with their feats...

The Colonel

(With a sigh) Ah! Those heroes of childhood!... Those Achilles and Ulysses... Those Hannibal and Hasdrubal... Those Vercingetorix and Viriatus... Heroes facing impassively the menacing claws of awaiting death!

Carolina Mondelo

(With cynical laugher) ... Look at my little children! Martially playing at battles!

Carlos

... Excuse me, Miss Mondelo...

Carolina Mondelo

You may call me Carolina... We happen to be, so to speak, students of the same class...

Carlos

... OK, Carolina... My interest has to do with the central idea which moves the universe: the interrelation of all its elements...

The Colonel

... The gift of dedication... A sublime attitude in the service of peace, which has benefits both on the personal and collective level!

Carlos

But people sometimes irritate me... It is as if I were a stranger amongst them...

Carolina Mondelo

Each person is different... Each nuance diverse... Days like to change... People like to invent their own stereotypes...

Carlos

(Intrigued) Something like dressing up?... If it were like this, why should people need fancy dresses?

Carolina Mondelo

A fancy dress allows for the courage of the transvestite. We change our dress as a symbol of an internal change...

Carlos

(With that childish enthusiasm of someone who discovers something for he first time...) ... as in the Greek masks: the laughing mask for someone who no longer knows how to laugh..., and the crying mask for those who forgot their tears...

Carolina

(Specifically)... In other words: Theatre!... That is why it is so difficult to know how to help others...

The Colonel

Feigning is an art, the philosopher a model... And the way of the soldier is the manual for overcoming the most extreme vicissitudes...

Carolina Mondelo

Nothing is more stupid than to inflame a delirium: war simply was, and always will be, a butcher seeking submission!

The Colonel

War is a noble attitude to avoid greater and worse contingencies...

Carolina Mondelo

The industry of pillage! The Seed of Eternal Confrontation!

Carlos

(Breaking up the discussion) But I want to help... To give another depth to my life...

Carolina Mondelo

(Again interrupting, not noticing what the Colonel is saying, not paying attention to Carlos, looking absentmindedly to an imaginary horizon, which doesn’t materialize...) War as a game: bodies as toys... Let us maim with thunder: missiles, laser bombs, high-frequency hand grenades... Let the broken precariousness of silence die!

The Colonel

(In a vain mood) Chattering is not a policy when you lack arguments!...

Carolina Mondelo

(Walks near the bed) Then it is better to invent: let us invent martial winter tales...

The Colonel

... Martial life is a sacred song; the epic of transcendence" the defence of the most ancestral value, the inherent liberty: discipline!

Carolina Mondelo

What defence: the control of the weakest?

The Colonel

The sacred