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Jacob’s Puppet Theatre
“Well, son, you’ve already grown up, on your tenth
birthday I’m giving you this gift, like a completely
perpendicular cream torte, it’s a puppet theatre I built
myself!”
The inside of a white cylinder. Fragility. In the foreground a
beggar appears, who calls himself the Sun, because he’s
caught a bit of it, and if you look into his eyes you can
become dizzy or get sunstroke. From the wings a barrel of
tar is pushed out, the beggar hates that and ignores it. Then
from the other side comes a hunchback, reeling and
puffing, with a Mephistopheles mask pulled over his face.
Satan grabs some tar with a teaspoon and, splash, throws it
on the beggar’s head. The beggar curses at first, in the end
begins to whimper and spit saliva. The hunchback throws a
pinch of tar back. Masses flood over.
Then the bell jingles, because there’s a confrontation of
white and black strength. This is an eternal battle, and the
victor can’t be determined. This repeats a couple of times.
Bells jungle, and flingings of tar form the background. In
the heat of battle a meat grinder with the mouth of a bear,
exhaling the smell of ground beef, its handle a
foreshortened feathered leg, lumbers to center stage. The
meat grinder dips a foot into the tar and, turning the leg in
a circle, pitches. A ball hits the Sun above the eyebrow.