A readers' drama is a drama in script form meant to be read and imagined by its readers. Reading a drama is similar to reading a novel that has lots of dialog and not much description. The visual setting, the characters' appearance, etc. are, for the most part, left to the readers' imaginations.
My readers' drama about JFK is ceremonial in nature. It opens with a picture of JFK and a folk song, "The End of November, 1963."
Darkness falls
as the sun goes down,
Dead trees cling
to the icy ground,
The black raven
bird makes no sound,
The gyre is
turning, it’s almost wound.
It’s the end of
November, in the year…
Nineteen…sixty-three…
After the song, a character named Heroikus enters. He identifies himself as a protector of heroes ancient and modern, and the keeper of the their pantheon. He speaks to the reader (audience).
Heroikus
Every nation in every age, and especially your nation, in your age, has a need, nay, a thirst for a cohesive force, a set of shared values and beliefs, and an assortment of unifying, heroic characters who through the magic of myth become something more than legend.
The hunger for heroes is natural. Even now some of your sons and daughters-- because they have no example or guidance from you—sadly try to make heroes out of bombers, terrorists, and vampires.
Without heroes, without myth, families fragment, things fall apart, a culture’s center cannot hold.
He explains that the focus of this drama is John F. Kennedy as a hero and possible addition to the heroic pantheon. He introduces a character called The Old Writer who was alive at the time of JFK's assassination and who will take the reader back to examine the fear and grief felt at the time of his sudden death, as well as some of the words (speeches) and deeds of Kennedy. He promises also to explore the negatives about JFK.
From the Prologue...
From the Prologue...
Old Writer
November, November…
November, November…
The word falls
from the lips like a dry leaf
And whirls
aimlessly in the chill wind.
The Great Wheel
turns,
And the green
world gives way to daemonic grey.
Fifty years have
passed since that bleak November…
Fifty long
winters since
John Kennedy’s
brutal murder
Left its ugly scar on our hearts.
Left its ugly scar on our hearts.
After an invocation, we move into Part I, "The Leviathan Rises." Here we see a still picture of the presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Old Writer takes the reader back to that tragic weekend.
Old Writer
Somewhere in the
darkness
On that cold
November night,
A small lamp is
switched on.
The windows are
dark,
And outside, the
last dead leaves
Quiver in the
night wind.
In another room,
the screen flickers, glows…
And the images,
the voices, the questions,
The shapes of
light and dark,
Coalesce into
that primal, wordless fear…
Behemoth,
Leviathan rising slowly
Up through dark,
anarchic waters
From that
abysmal place
Where order
crumbles,
Love is
mutilated nightly,
And Chaos and
Fear reign.
JFK 50: A Memorial in Drama, Poetry, and Song will be available this weekend, October 19, as an eBook on amazon Kindle.
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