A man loses all he has - sight, legs, wife and son; but eventually finds a family in a mad man, who ironically knows he is mad and thinks the entire world is even more insane than he is, and a fourteen year old orphan whom he adopted from the street. The drama, comically, reveals the extent of moral decay in the society, and exposes the fact that good judgement exists in places where we least expect them.
CHARACTERS
The man,
The young man, his son,
Boy, his adopted son
The bearded man, his friend,
The mad man (who later became the man in the black veil), his friend, Men at the bar, Policeman, Clergy, Mourners.
The conventional Act–Scene style of dividing a play is here replaced by a Phase-Incident Style - where each phase announces the introduction of a new character, while, as the scene in the traditional style, the incident announces the change of situation or surrounding.
Note:
The civil war mentioned in this play was a real incident; however, the mention of it is purely for entertainment purposes and is by no means intended to incite emotive reactions. As for the characters in the play, they are fictitious and bear no intentional resemblance to any persons known to me, living or dead.
PHASE ONE: THE MAN AND THE YOUNG MAN
In recent times. Early one morning in a semi-urban African community; in an old building that reminds passers-by of the Government Reserved Areas of the colonial times – the only of its kind in the neighbourhood. The sweltering sun is yet to take its course on the beautiful African sky. Men and women are seen slogging along the dusty road close by, in their difficult hunt for daily bread. From a distance, car horns blare few and far between.
From the main yard of the old building, a bespectacled lame man in his mid-sixties is being wheeled rather recklessly into the frontage by a young man about half his age.
