Ivan Kraus, a witty Czech author and puppeteer, was one of the artists who started the first Black Theatre of Prague in the 1960s. He emigrated after the Soviet invaion in the summer of 1968 and made his home in West Germany. 'The Censor' comes from his collection of short satirical pieces and appeared in Index on Censorship in 1976.
The Censor is seated on a stool ( or possibly two stools).
The Dancer enters.
At a sign from the Censor she begins to dance.
Censor: More slowly, please.
The dancer continues to dance.
The Censor stops her.
Censor: Hold it! Show me that last movement again.
The Dancer does so.
The Censor shakes his head.
Censor: No. Not that. Omit it.
The Dancer resumes her dance.
Censor: No. Not that. Onit it.
The Dancer dances.
Censor: That's not allowed.
The Dancer again resumes dancing.
Censor: Omit!
(after a while)
Omit!
(after a while)
Leave out!
(after a while)
And that!
The Dancer no longer dances, she is merely walking about
the stage.
Censor: What's this? Call that a dance? Why aren't you
dancing?
The Dancer shrugs her shoulders helplessly.
Censor: Don't do that!
The Curtain starts to come down.
Censor: Just a moment!
The Curtain stops.
Censor: I won't stand for any innuendo. Gently, now...
that's better... gently ... very, very slowly ...
The End
Translated by George Theiner
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/
Monday, 15 November 2010
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Saturday, 13 November 2010
HENRY MORGAN'S MARCH ON PANAMA -A.G.Prys-Jones (1888 -??)
Henry Morgan (Harri Morgan ) who was born in 1635 in Llanrhymney, then a village between Cardiff and Newport, in South Wales, to a prosperous farming family, who died on 25th August in 1688 in Jamaica , was otherwise known as Admiral Henry Morgan, privateer. Regarded as the greatest of the privateers, amassing huge fleets, attacking prominent targets and being the worst enemy of the Spanish since Sir Francis Drake. Now the face of spiced Rum, which on all accounts, his excessive consumption off led to his demise from acute alcoholism.
Morgan's curls are matted,
His lips are cracked and dry,
His tawny beard is tangled,
And his plumed hat hangs awry:
But his voice still booms like thunder
Through the foetid jungle glade
As he marches, bold as Lucifer,
Leading his gaunt brigade.
Twelve hundred famished buccaneers
Blistered, bitten and bled,
A stricken mob of men accursed
By the monstous sun o'erhead:
Twelve hundred starveling scarecrows
Without a crumb to eat,
And not a drink for tortured throats
In that grim, festering heat.
Twelve hundred threadbare musketeers
Rotting in tropic mud
Where the reeking, fevered mangroves
Wake havoc in their blood:
Twelve hundred febrile wretches,
A legion of the dead:
But Morgan in his blue brocade
Goes striding on ahead.
Twelve hundred tatterdemalions,
The sorriest, maddest crew
That ever the green savannahs saw
When the Spanish bugles blew:
Twelve hudred rattling skeletons
Who sprang to life, and then
Like a wild wave took Panama,
For they were Morgan's men.
a captive bows begore Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan's as Morgan and his men sack the city of Panama in the 1870s.
Morgan's curls are matted,
His lips are cracked and dry,
His tawny beard is tangled,
And his plumed hat hangs awry:
But his voice still booms like thunder
Through the foetid jungle glade
As he marches, bold as Lucifer,
Leading his gaunt brigade.
Twelve hundred famished buccaneers
Blistered, bitten and bled,
A stricken mob of men accursed
By the monstous sun o'erhead:
Twelve hundred starveling scarecrows
Without a crumb to eat,
And not a drink for tortured throats
In that grim, festering heat.
Twelve hundred threadbare musketeers
Rotting in tropic mud
Where the reeking, fevered mangroves
Wake havoc in their blood:
Twelve hundred febrile wretches,
A legion of the dead:
But Morgan in his blue brocade
Goes striding on ahead.
Twelve hundred tatterdemalions,
The sorriest, maddest crew
That ever the green savannahs saw
When the Spanish bugles blew:
Twelve hudred rattling skeletons
Who sprang to life, and then
Like a wild wave took Panama,
For they were Morgan's men.
a captive bows begore Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan's as Morgan and his men sack the city of Panama in the 1870s.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Raymond Garlick - Auguries of Guilt.
One must be realistic : man
Is crueller and more violent than
All other living creatures. We
Alone of animals agree
To decimate our species by
Polluting land and sea and sky.
This we must face: the human lot
Is to be capable of garrotte.
To be a creature who guillotines,
Hangs, shoots, tortures; builds a store
Of nuclear weapons; goes to war.
No other animal does this -
Not the hamadryad's kiss
Nor the scorpion's plunging thorn
Match the weapons man has worn.
No cloud of hook-beaked birds of prey
Dismembered Dresden that dark day.
The leopard nor the jaguar
Ripped apart Hiroshima.
No flame-eyed, ravening tiger fell
On Guernica. Man shaped its hell.
Wolf and hyena had no part
In Auschwitz. All was human art.
The world view of a red-eyed bull
Today is quite respectable.
Who are our Great? The school-books pick
Alexander and Frederick;
And, to impress that violence rules,
The cane and strap sing in the schools.
What is honour? a gun-bright guard,
Its files inspected in charade;
A statue in a city square
Of General X slashing the air,
The shadow of arch-violence thrown
Down the ages from the stone.
Mock machine-guns make fine toys
For nicely bought up little boys,
And tailored royals ride the street
Costumed for bloodshed, gloved and neat
Whose image many a church augments
With laid-up flags of regiments.
Each village has its cenotaph
Raised on violence's behalf.
Man is the animal that hates.
What hope for us, for nations, states?
This: only we, who hate like hell,
Only we can love as well.
FROM:- Glas-nos, Cerddi Dros Heddwch/ Poems for Peace. CND Cymru 1987.
LEST WE
FORGET
Is crueller and more violent than
All other living creatures. We
Alone of animals agree
To decimate our species by
Polluting land and sea and sky.
This we must face: the human lot
Is to be capable of garrotte.
To be a creature who guillotines,
Hangs, shoots, tortures; builds a store
Of nuclear weapons; goes to war.
No other animal does this -
Not the hamadryad's kiss
Nor the scorpion's plunging thorn
Match the weapons man has worn.
No cloud of hook-beaked birds of prey
Dismembered Dresden that dark day.
The leopard nor the jaguar
Ripped apart Hiroshima.
No flame-eyed, ravening tiger fell
On Guernica. Man shaped its hell.
Wolf and hyena had no part
In Auschwitz. All was human art.
The world view of a red-eyed bull
Today is quite respectable.
Who are our Great? The school-books pick
Alexander and Frederick;
And, to impress that violence rules,
The cane and strap sing in the schools.
What is honour? a gun-bright guard,
Its files inspected in charade;
A statue in a city square
Of General X slashing the air,
The shadow of arch-violence thrown
Down the ages from the stone.
Mock machine-guns make fine toys
For nicely bought up little boys,
And tailored royals ride the street
Costumed for bloodshed, gloved and neat
Whose image many a church augments
With laid-up flags of regiments.
Each village has its cenotaph
Raised on violence's behalf.
Man is the animal that hates.
What hope for us, for nations, states?
This: only we, who hate like hell,
Only we can love as well.
FROM:- Glas-nos, Cerddi Dros Heddwch/ Poems for Peace. CND Cymru 1987.
LEST WE
FORGET
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
REFORMING US BACK TO THE WELFARE POLICY OF THE 19th CENTURY.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Dance with your Neighbours for F**K's Sake.
Many Western media outlets have been delighted to report that two Israeli women have teamed up to become the first same-sex couple to compete in a version of the internationally popular television series 'Dancing with the Stars'.
Indeed it is a great day for humanity with even Rupert Murdoch's Sky news reporting that "30 different countries have versions of the show, but none have done what Israel has done this week.
Israel because of this is now being praised for being an exemplary , tolerant and liberal society, but how come it won't even dance with it's own neighbours. Ah the smell of hypocricy.
Keep on dancing everybody. Heddwch.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-dance-with-your-neighbours-for-fks-sake.html
Indeed it is a great day for humanity with even Rupert Murdoch's Sky news reporting that "30 different countries have versions of the show, but none have done what Israel has done this week.
Israel because of this is now being praised for being an exemplary , tolerant and liberal society, but how come it won't even dance with it's own neighbours. Ah the smell of hypocricy.
Keep on dancing everybody. Heddwch.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-dance-with-your-neighbours-for-fks-sake.html
Monday, 1 November 2010
Britons Never Shall be Slaves. - Helen Heslop.
Henry Drake still at school sees
His father, put away for
Misbehaviour, wave goodbye.
He cries.
A teenager before the
Word is born, the Army claims
Him for the country's fight for
Freedom.
Benghazi - weather sunny,
Plenty grub; that's new. Payment
Too. Peace intervenes; home to
Blighty.
Better off by one new suit
He's free to find a job, low
Pay, and a girlfriend, Ann, keen
To save.
Romance falls through, but there's his
Cycling, gardening, fishing,
Same boring job, same low wage,
But free,
At forty-four Henry Drake
Is made redundant. 'Sorry. . . .
Years. . . cut backs, but we . . . thanks for. . . '
He's free
To care for his mother, ailing
Fast. He does his nest; she dies
At eighty-two, leaving him
Free to
Stare awhile, at least he's hept
Some hair; he'll join . . . make new . . .
But Englishmen of Henry's
Station
Unprivileged, no decent
Education, find themselves
Ditched by a freedom loving
Nation.
His father, put away for
Misbehaviour, wave goodbye.
He cries.
A teenager before the
Word is born, the Army claims
Him for the country's fight for
Freedom.
Benghazi - weather sunny,
Plenty grub; that's new. Payment
Too. Peace intervenes; home to
Blighty.
Better off by one new suit
He's free to find a job, low
Pay, and a girlfriend, Ann, keen
To save.
Romance falls through, but there's his
Cycling, gardening, fishing,
Same boring job, same low wage,
But free,
At forty-four Henry Drake
Is made redundant. 'Sorry. . . .
Years. . . cut backs, but we . . . thanks for. . . '
He's free
To care for his mother, ailing
Fast. He does his nest; she dies
At eighty-two, leaving him
Free to
Stare awhile, at least he's hept
Some hair; he'll join . . . make new . . .
But Englishmen of Henry's
Station
Unprivileged, no decent
Education, find themselves
Ditched by a freedom loving
Nation.
SING FREEDOM, ed Judith Nicholls
Faber and Faber, Published with assistance of Amnesty International, 1991.
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Sahmain greetings. ( For tomorrow)
Ah October the 31st, with or without foundation, the old superstitions linger on in many hearts and many places.
Will they, ever fade away and die completely?
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
Do you still cross your fingers, do you still believe in magic, touch wood, just in case! Dream today in colour, listen to the wild winds blow. Time was when children marvelled behind each fast-shut door. Nights drawing in again,time flies, listen out, take a peep over the ledge......
Scan the likely paths of green, leave behind the alleys, cast your shadows, soar to the moon and back, draw eyes a gaze with mystery.
Bobbing and a weaving, we are the branches, we are the roots, may fatigue and loneliness be overcome, tonight we sing, spin through a whirling dance.
Listen to the drum beat
as spirits awake.
Imagine tomorrow
a world full of equality
freedom and justice.
Burn bright
blessed be.
Will they, ever fade away and die completely?
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
Do you still cross your fingers, do you still believe in magic, touch wood, just in case! Dream today in colour, listen to the wild winds blow. Time was when children marvelled behind each fast-shut door. Nights drawing in again,time flies, listen out, take a peep over the ledge......
Scan the likely paths of green, leave behind the alleys, cast your shadows, soar to the moon and back, draw eyes a gaze with mystery.
Bobbing and a weaving, we are the branches, we are the roots, may fatigue and loneliness be overcome, tonight we sing, spin through a whirling dance.
Listen to the drum beat
as spirits awake.
Imagine tomorrow
a world full of equality
freedom and justice.
Burn bright
blessed be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)