Global Panda(emic)
or
Facing the Theatre of the Future
---A One Act Play---
by
Two actors, HAP and SID, any age, gender, race etc. They enter from opposite sides, HAP eagerly, SID cautiously. They wear Shakespearian costumes. There is a trunk/ costume hamper they use as a bench. They wear Covid-19 protective masks. These could be cloth with standard Happy Face for HAP and Sad Face for SID, or the classic theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. They could also exchange medical masks for theatrical ones, or take masks off (to be less restrictive) and back on (to be “safe”) accordingly.
HAP: (like a ringmaster) Hello. Welcome. Welcome to---the theatre of the future!
SID: Oh yes, we are so happy to be here.
HAP: We are here to… well… to entertain… you.
SID: Whoever you are.
HAP: To perform. Both of us.
SID: Both of us.
HAP: We’re very happy to be here,
SID: Yes, we’re both very happy.
HAP: Well… at least we’re both here.
SID: Where else could we be?
HAP: Where else would we be?
SID: Notice that we’re keeping a respectable and proper six feet distance apart.
HAP: Oh yes. We may be buddy buddies, but… we’re doing the right thing.
SID: And wearing our respectable and proper masks.
HAP: Well, yes, of course. But look, aren’t these nice? Didn’t they turn out well?
(He gets a Comedy mask out of the hamper.)
SID: No. They’re all clumsy and awkward. Hard to breathe too. Never mind being able to project our proper theatrical voices.
(As he puts on a Tragedy mask.)
HAP: But---they are traditional.
SID: Yeah, but tradition is a thing of the past, not the future.
HAP: Oh. Good point. So, anyway… we are so happy to see you.
SID: Who?
HAP: What do you mean?
SID: Who are we so happy to see?
HAP: Our audience. You are a great audience. Such a lovely audience, we’d like to take you home with us, we’d love to…
SID: Where?
HAP: What?
SID: Where are they? The audience?
HAP: Well… they’re… at home, of course. Shelter in place. Quarantine, some of them.
SID: So we have NO audience.
HAP: What do you expect?
SID: This is supposed to be theatre? How can it be theatre with no audience?
HAP: They’re virtual. It’s… it’s a virtual audience. This is theatre---use your imagination.
SID: A virtuous audience? So virtuous, in fact, that I see nothing but empty seats.
HAP: Well, you know what they say.
SID: What?
HAP: The show must go on.
SID: But why?
HAP: Because we are here, and they are… there.
SID: They’re there?
HAP: There, there, yes, yes. They’re here, they’re there. They’re…. everywhere.
SID: No they’re not.
HAP: Hey, look, we’re all in this together. It’s a global thing going on.
SID: Yeah yeah.
HAP: It’s unprecedented. We have to make the best of things.
SID: Yeah yeah.
HAP: Nobody wants to get infected.
SID: Why not? We’re all going to be dead in a few years anyway. All seven billion of us.
HAP: Seven billion, that is a lot.
SID: The years and decades and centuries just fly by.
HAP: Well, thank you, Mister Cheerful.
SID: Don’t call me that. Sarcasm does not suit you.
HAP: Okay.
SID: Back in the day… ah, remember… remember Shakespeare? Ah, those were the days.
HAP: Oh yes. Shakespeare is timeless.
SID: No it isn’t. It’s ancient history. Like the Greeks. Theatre is a dead thing now. Look at this empty audience?
HAP: Remember Paul Simon’s Dangling Conversation?
SID: Whose dangling conversation?
HAP: It was in the song. “Is the theatre really dead?”
SID: Yeah, and that was fifty years ago. And then came Peter Brook with The Empty Space.
HAP: That wasn’t a song, that was a classic in theatrical literature.
SID: As long as there is a performer and an audience, then any empty space becomes a stage.
HAP: One person on stage and…
SID: One person off stage,
HAP: On and off…
SID: Like a prediction of….
HAP and SID: The Age of Digital Reality.
SID: Yeah, but here we are. An empty space. But with no audience.
HAP: I could stay up here and perform, and you could go out there and be my one person audience.
SID: All alone?
HAP: Or not.
SID: We’re in this together, aren’t we?
HAP: We have each other.
SID: We’re the only ones left. Everyone else is… at home, watching their virtuous reality.
HAP: Virtual.
SID: Whatever it is.
HAP: Social distancing.
SID: You can say that again.
HAP: Social distancing.
SID: I heard you the first time. Social distancing is the nail in the coffin of the future.
HAP: It has been a bit of a downhill slide. Like skiing… whoosh.
SID: It started with the invention of the movies and then television took over.
HAP: And then computers.
SID: All chiseling away our audiences. Pure theatre has dwindled down to almost nothing. Shakespeare would have wept.
HAP: You have to face reality. Budget cuts. All the spectacular theatricals had to be trimmed down.
SID: And then down, down to the minimal one-man show.
HAP: And then stand-up comedy.
SID: And reality TV… video documentary.
HAP: YouTube.
SID: Chat platforms… Skype, Twitch, Zoom.
HAP: Remember when we used to do street theatre?
SID: Ah yes, the simplicity and authenticity of street theatre.
HAP: The authenticity.
SID: Of an authentic audience.
HAP: The social connectivity of togetherness.
SID: All gone.
HAP: It’s as if technology has been leading the way and preparing us all along for this.
SID: For this?
SID: For this.
HAP: The new reality. Have you noticed… that even while we’re being forced to be more separate… yet we seem to reach out, over that distance, to each other? We seem to be more friendly. Have you noticed that?
SID: No. I just notice how scared everyone is.
HAP: I wish I was able to interview people. But social distancing, you know.
SID: I wish I could have an interview with the future.
HAP: Seriously? But why?
SID: So I would know what the hell is going on.
HAP: (mimes a microphone like a reporter) So tell me---what exactly is going on?
SID: You think I know? I don’t even know if I’m real person any more. I’m an abstract, not a particular.
HAP: Wow, that’s… deep.
SID: We’re all trapped in this tedium of time defiance.
HAP: Oh yes.
SID: These confusing doldrums.
HAP: Ah.
SID: This limbo of lethargy.
HAP: Clever. I like that.
SID: In which almost nothing is even allowed to happen.
HAP: No, not even this.
SID: This hiatus… struck between the now… and the non-now.
HAP: You mean the unknown.
SID: Whatever it is.
HAP: But hey, the future is always an unknown. Right?
SID: Well, yes. There is a spectrum, you see, one that goes from reasonably predictable to… what? To the wildly unlikely? To the end of times?
(HAP drops the microphone act as they commiserate philosophically.)
HAP: Is that really what we’re facing? Some kind of apocalypse?
SID: No, that would be spectacular, like a nuclear bomb, or a planetary collision. This is different, more insidious and… creepy. But the past is gone, it’s been wiped out. It took to its heels and skedaddled off the map.
HAP: So the future is stalled, it’s in a holding pattern. But it’s out there, circling and hovering and unable to land.
SID: And burning fuel as each moment passes.
HAP: With global warming chipping away at the old iceberg.
SID: And meanwhile people are getting sick, and every day some of them are dying.
HAP: I know. It’s awful.
SID: But it’s the fear that causes the harm, the dampening drudgery of dread, the prickly tease of panic lurking within, waiting to burst, and the speculation of what might, or might not happen next.
HAP: The unanswered questions. That’s where the biggest challenge is.
SID: And the disparity, between overreaction to too much or too little information on the one hand, and the dumb under-reaction by the deniers, on the other, those swaggering cowardly types.
HAP: That leads to the potential for conflict, and protest, and confusion.
SID: As things stop working, and people stop working, and the global economic system starts grinding to a halt.
HAP: Nobody has anything new to say because nobody really knows what’s happening. Even while it’s happening. And it’s happening to everyone, all seven billion of us.
SID: We’re all lost and confused.
HAP: And yet---the sun comes up each day, and the birds sing, and the ducks quack.
SID: And the climate changes, and the garbage piles up.
HAP: Is this pandemic a pandemonium, or is it the opposite of chaos?
SID: Like a stalemate, in which nothing can get done or finished or accomplished.
HAP: Does it just keeps on going, spinning out the clock?
SID: Does it go on forever into perpetual… perpetuity?
HAP: Who are you asking?
SID: I don’t know. Is anybody there? Is anybody listening?
HAP: Hey, I’m listening.
SID: But does that help? Does it make a difference?
HAP: What we’re doing here is---dealing with things. We’re dealing with the pandemic.
SID: Making a deal with the forces of pandemonium?
HAP: Panda, panda… oh… hey, that’s our cue.
SID: Cue for what?
HAP: For the end. The survival of… you know.
SID: Survival of the fittest?
HAP: No. Survival of the many… and the few.
SID: Ah yes… it’s the panda poignancy.
Out of the trunk/ costume hamper they begin to take out bear costumes, Panda bear costumes. They do a little dance as they don their dancing bear costumes.
HAP: Enough. Get dressed. We’re going out.
SID: We’re going out? Drive-through or pick-up only.
HAP: We’re going to face it. The world out there.
SID: Just the two of us?
HAP: We are going out.
SID: Into the pandemic pandemonium?
HAP: No. A panda parade.
SID: They came from China
HAP: Wow. You look fantastic?
SID: Do we have to do this?
HAP: Of course. It’s in the script.
SID: Sheesh.
HAP: Nice. Look at this?
SID: Made in China. Of course.
HAP: Now available globally.
SID: Behind bars.
HAP: In your local zoo.
SID: That you’re not allowed to visit.
HAP: Unless you’re six feet apart and wearing masks.
SID: Or bear heads.
HAP: You know, my first job as an actor was as a dancing bear. A promotion for some charity, I forget what.
SID: My first job as an actor was as Shakespeare’s famous “exit pursued by a bear”.
They dance off stage.
Blackout.