SCENE ONE:
CYRANO (with great conviction): I maintain that the sun and the moon are no great
mysteries, gentlemen. And certainly
not mysteries that can withstand the focus and impress of our imaginations!
FIRST FRIEND: Tell us
more, then, of the relation between the sun and the moon, O Pixilated One!
CYRANO (with even more conviction): The Moon is a world like ours, to which
this world of ours serves likewise for a moon!
There is great merriment among the company, and a
consequent recharging of their glasses.
CYRANO: You make
merry, you amiable doubting Thomases, but I am telling you the plain truth!
SECOND FRIEND: Talk, as
they will say in the future, is
cheap, Cyrano. What we desire is experiment, enactment, engagement,
recounting!
CYRANO (exitedly): And you shall
have it all, my friends! Tomorrow morning, while you are all sleeping off this
robust wine, I shall be on my way to the skies!
(blackout)
SCENE 2:
A forest glade, not far from Cyrano’s home. It is five a.m.
The sun is rising. The
world is wet with dew.
CYRANO (carefully, logically):
It seems to me [he plucks a leaf from, a tree and shakes away the dewy
liquid] that since the morning sun sucks up the dew engendered by the heavy
night, that if a man—that is to say, if I—were to fasten about myself a number of glass vials
filled to the brim with dew, why then should I not also be sucked up high into the air? Why not? How
could it be otherwise, dew being dew and the sun being the sun?
[he leaves the stage, to repair to his workshop at
home]
SCENE 3: The forest glade again. It is the next day, and Cyrano is back
with the equipment he has devised for space flight.
CYRANO (both careful and eager): And now for the great ascension!
[He checks the details of his space costume—which
consists of a tight-fitting suit of leather, to which is affixed a hundred
small glass vials. The sun is
rising rapidly and hotly]
CYRANO (with great excitement): And now, Venerable Sun, do your evaporative work and lift me
to the heavens!
]And much to his delight—and, if truth be told,
amazement—he begins to rise slowly into the air….]
SCENE 4:
Cyrano’s apartments, six months later. He is with the same crowd of carousers as before]
FOURTH GUEST: And so
the drying dew did lift
you into the air?
CYRANO (proudly): It did
indeed. And my rise was so rapid,
I quickly found myself in the middle air with the clouds, and I was now being
hurried up higher with so much rapidity, I felt sure I should bypass the moon
altogether!!….
FIFTH FRIEND (breathlessly curious): And so, what did you do??
CYRANO (smugly): I began
breaking vials, thereby adjusting, as best I could, the forces of attraction
and gravity in order to make a safe landing in the moon.
THIRD FRIEND: And so
you actually got to the moon!!
CYRANO (smiling ruefully): Alas, no. You
see, in my zeal to attain the moon, I broke too many of the dew-filled vials, and, earth’s gravity being what it
is, I found myself back on our own dear planet—but on the other side of it!
SECOND FRIEND: And was this part of the world inhabited?
CYRANO (highly amused to recall his adventure): Yes, indeed it was. This place was peopled by savages, and they all spoke French!
FIRST FRIEND (astounded):
French!!!
CYRANO: Yes, apparently I had drifted down into New France!
THE FRIENDS (uncomprehending): New France??
CYRANO:
Yes. In Canada!
(curtain)
