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Los Hombres Azules (The Blue Men) A One-Act Play Dramatis Personae John Rivers, Anthropologist Laura Faulkner, Anthropologist Hormiga, their Guide Timuron, Head of the Village of La Golodrina Topo, the Ceremonial Dancer Fourteen Villagers Four Children Blue-Men Scene 1: (A bend in a dusty road in Mexico, a small pueblo off in the distance, during the afternoon. Off the path there rests a large flat boulder. Entering stage right, JOHN, HORMIGA, and LAURA with traveling gear and backpacks are following the rough path towards the pueblo.) LAURA: John, I think we are almost there. JOHN: Yes, Laura, I can see it off in the distance n

There is anxiety amongst the fish-women today. They are nervous, excited by a mysterious electricity that crackles from eye to eye. Their perfect precision cutting fish is slipping today; only the eldest and the newcomer are unfazed, silently, calmly slicing the scales off the creatures of the sea with unearthly accuracy. The other women wait for their cues. Finally, the eldest breaks the silence. "Do you hear that, my child? The sharks are hungry today. They fuss like old hens over a young rooster. Continue your story, please." "Of course, sister. Where did I leave off?" "Notaman has left for the City at the Center of the World." "Ah." S

(HEROD wanders on, coming to a chapel in the fog. As he approaches, he notices with building horror that it is made completely of bones arranged perfectly, none out of place.) HEROD: What vision is this? Another nightmare to haunt me? (He enters. There is an empty altar flanked by tall bone candelabra, behind which there is a throne, like the rest of the chapel, made of skeletal remains. On the throne sits the BISHOP OF BONES, dressed in the pure white regalia of a bishop of Catholic church and wearing an obviously rubber skull mask. He is holding an infant's skeleton as one would hold a live child, mumbling to it gibberish in low, dark ton

How to Summon a Demon for Less Than 5¢ a Minute The circle of red powder enclosed the droplet of blue flame levitating a foot or so above the ground. The conjurer, an adolescent speckled with acne at random spots, sat back and watched with satisfaction. How fortunate it was for him to have found a small, weathered tome in the back of an antique shop, the front cover ripped from it by the ages. In a Gothic script the first page read, "ON THE MATTERS OF DEMON SUMMONING: By M.E.F. Istopheles, PhD Christian Studies." Something about the two-cent manual bound sometime in the 1950s (a most sinister decade of history) attracted his young, cur

In the garden beneath the setting sun Where Men no longer go, The blossoms within hold many secrets Which men should never know. Beneath the trees and betwixt the vines Flowers dot the land; The colors great, the aroma fine, And the arrangement extremely grand. If ladies were to come here, They would surely find A beauty only made by the artistic Nature And her sagacious mind. Her artworks here, however, Are not for ladies' sight. They are aberrant things and rejects of nature Made during her angry blight. Look at the rose, burning petals In a sea of thorns Whose leaflets slice the very shirts In which they are adorned. C

Sarah comes from the land of England, where Archelaus met her during his education at Oxford. She is a loving wife--calm, yet firm in her emotions--and watches over her son like a falcon. Her only weakness is an almost pathological fear of snakes; after watching her younger sister Edna be constricted at the local zoo when she was young, she fears that they will do the same to her or those she loves. Recently she has been plagued by nightmares of Zahr in the form of a snake-man creature, giving her a rattled, unsettled appearance.

It is at noon when the fish-women tell their stories. They gather on the piers, their heads wrapped in colorful scarves, cleaning their husbands' catch from that morning, they speak in low tones amongst each other, so only them and the near-dead fish can hear what they say. They compete against one another for who can tell the best story that day; in singsong Arabic they speak of love and loss, violence and peace--whatever their heart sings that day. It is only when a young girl marries that she may join the fish-women and tell her own stories. It is just one such occaision when the white-faced foreigner begins her first story. She is new to

Archelaus is the son of Herod and the heir to the throne of Judea. Young and bold, but of frail constitution, he was educated in England as his father was and attended the University of Oxford, where he met his wife Sarah. They have a son, Arnab, fourteen months old at the beginning of the play. Archelaus has no desire to control Judea; he merely wants to live with his family in peace. He is concerned with the discovery of the oil well and tries to sway his stubborn father to allow foreign oil companies to use it so war will be prevented. Arnab is the playful young son of Archelaus. He enjoys spending time with his grandfather, who keeps a r

What terrible words of doom you spoke that conjured up the fire and smoke and like fragile glass it shattered and broke the night Judea burned? And barren does the land now lay, now deprived of love they say, the alien land beneath your sway, the scorched land Judea. The people weep and the rivers cry tears of blood from the eye and their bodies mourn-ed dry the people of Judea. A vile land of djinn and snake that trembles in your sin's wake unhospitable, it will be spake "That horrible place Judea!"