I feel like it's an unfinished play about the powerful and the powerless.
Act I: The powerful-French kings, Russian tsars, owners of garment factories, greedy mine owners, fascist governments-oppress the powerless with impunity.
Act II: The powerless rise up and either throw the bums out or bring them to the bargaining table.
(Act II ends with rousing applause from the audience; justice has been served.)After intermission, comes a sobering
Act III: The powerless become the powerful, and, with power comes the potential for corruption. Audience members begin to squirm as their heroes slip into greed, obstruction, self-protection at the cost to the common good. Arguments break out in the audience, sides are taken, the play collapses amid righteous rioting between avid pro-unionists and equally avid anti-unionists. Chairs are flying, punches thrown. I'm feeling pressure to take a position. I look to the stage, waiting for Act IV; this power play demands a resolution. Something must emerge beyond power versus power. Or is power the same whether you’re Louis XVI, John D. Rockefeller, or head of the fireman's union. In its rawest form, is power only about what you can get away with-what I want and what we want. Maybe the resolution comes when we are able to take our eyes off ourselves and consider the system as a whole. What does IT want or need? Maybe that's what is coming up in Act IV. I look to the stage; but the actors have left and the playwright has gone into seclusion.
