When naïve, young Ingenu fails to save an earthworm from the forces of nature, he is told by his master that it is all for the best. More than that: In this best of all possible worlds, everything in life happens for the best, but when what's best for the world isn't so great for Ingenu, he has a hard time holding onto his optimism and must learn to navigate the waters of despair, pragmatism, and hope. Bittersweet and absurd, Ingenu's journey thrusts him into Middle Eastern wars and the violence of a New Jersey VA hospital with a stopover in the Garden of Eden in this modern adventure inspired by Voltaire's Candide.

ACTORS: 3 Male (1 Black/mixed race Black+, 1 Caucaisan, 1 any race/ethnicity), 3 Female (1 Black, 2 Caucasian), 2 Persons of any sex/gender (1 Caucasian, 1 any race/ethnicity)

RUN TIME: Approx 2 + hrs with intermission

SETTINGS: Iraq war zone; Iran; Garden of Eden; New Jersey; New York City; Jordan

ACT I, Scene 1

Setting:    Battlefield, Iran.

At rise:     INGENU, a battle-weary American soldier wearing an army helmet and gear, sits on a pile of sandbags. Bombs and gunfire all around him. Slowly he looks to the ground, sees something, dives for it, and picks it up. It is an earthworm. He lifts it triumphantly into the air with a big smile on his face, then: a bright flash, a loud boom, and quick to black.

(Lights up on TELLER, who plays on a simple instrument, such as a ukulele, and sings.)

TELLER:

    Your eyes, your smile

    They get to me

    I bruise, you tease

    Your goddamned words bring me ease

    I’m beguiled

    Ooo, Ingenu

    Do you trust

    What is just

    Will be coming to you?

    Ingenu

    I am high

    Hypnotized

    Mystified by this thing you call truth

    Your eyes, your smile

    They get to me

    I lie, you weep

    Joyful tears of belief

    What’s it like?

    Ooo, Ingenu

    You’re so kind

    Kinda blind

    To the strife around you

    Ingenu

    How you cope

    With (all) that hope

    Won’t you show me how I can pull through?

ACT I, Scene 2

Setting:    The mansion garden of Oil Baron Ghimey. It lies within an American military compound in Iraq. Two months prior to ACT I, Scene 1.

At rise:     Sounds of bombs going off in the distance. Not loud, but present. Lights are up on INGENU and the garden by the end of the song. GUARD #1 and GUARD #2 are present, but motionless upstage of the action. They are dressed as corporate henchmen with wireless communicators in their ears. INGENU is wearing clean linen clothing instead of the army gear, but he holds an earthworm as in the opening, grinning triumphantly. He tosses the earthworm out or off-stage, contented, and steps back to watch. His countenance soon falls, a look of confusion and near panic, as he tries to process what he sees.

INGENU:  Dr. Overgloss! Dr. Overgloss!

(Lights up on OVERGLOSS sitting cross stage.)

OVERGLOSS: Over here, young Ingenu. You call and I answer.

(INGENU runs over to OVERGLOSS.)

INGENU: Master, come quickly—

OVERGLOSS: It is the way of things, you know.

INGENU (gesturing to the other side of the garden.):  Something has happened!

OVERGLOSS: Precisely! It is Cause and Effect.

INGENU: No, it was pandemonium!

OVERGLOSS: For every effect there is a cause and for every cause a reason—

INGENU: No! There was no—! 

OVERGLOSS: Which stands to reason by the very origin of the word, ‘reason’…?

INGENU: But the pandem—!

OVERGLOSS: The origin of the word reason?

INGENU: Ratio. But—

OVERGLOSS: As in…?

INGENU: Rational.

OVERGLOSS: Therefore all in the world is reasonable!

(RECHY, INGENU’s step brother, enters.)

RECHY  (to INGENU):  I hate you.

(RECHY exits the way he entered.)

INGENU: Everything in the world?

OVERGLOSS:  It is Optimism.

INGENU:  Rechy says my blood is tinted. 

OVERGLOSS:  Tainted. He is the oil baron’s son.

INGENU:  But I also have been raised as the baron’s own.

OVERGLOSS:  The baron is the master of ownership. Come. Sit next to me.

(INGENU sits, reluctantly. OVERGLOSS illuminates.)

OVERGLOSS (CONT’D):  Syllogism:—

INGENU:  And I have been allowed into the garden!

OVERGLOSS:  Which was modeled after Eden.

INGENU  (awed):  The Garden of Eden?

OVERGLOSS  (nods) :  Except Eden did have but one serpent demon, and ‘pandemonium’ comes from the Latin for ‘all demons.’ So. The syllogism—

INGENU:  I can’t contain myself.

OVERGLOSS:  Indeed.

INGENU:  As I do live and breathe!

OVERGLOSS:  Yes, well. Don’t strain yourself.

INGENU:  What do I care of pandemonium now when I am in paradise?

OVERGLOSS:  Because of the syllogism!

    (beat)

Tell me what it is you have witnessed.

INGENU:  (deflated):  It was nothing. Not compared to your syllogism.

OVERGLOSS:  We do not compare, my boy, but unify!

INGENU:  We do?

OVERGLOSS (nods):  You had a story to tell.

INGENU:  No…

OVERGLOSS:  The pandemonium…?

INGENU:  Oh! Right!

OVERGLOSS:  And it begins with a world wherein a personage of the baron’s caliber, or in this case the baron himself, can start a war, profit from a war, move his mansion home to the military compound in the center of the war, and plant a garden oasis on the mansion grounds, with a serenity the likes of which no eye of any storm in history can compare! It is a microcosmic masterpiece!

INGENU:  Better than the eye of a storm! That sounds wonderful!

(Bombs sound in the distance. They listen.)

OVERGLOSS:  A thing that is wonderful demands one to be full of wonder. 

INGENU:  I am, Doctor Overgloss.

OVERGLOSS:  Then proceed…

    (pause, waiting)

with your Garden story…?

INGENU:  Oh! Oh, yes. I saw an earthworm!

OVERGLOSS:  Well told, young Ingenu!

INGENU:  But there’s more! 

OVERGLOSS:  Of course. Of course.

INGENU:  During the sprinkling of a dawn sun shower, water gently falling from above and our morning star’s rays glowing from the East, did I spy this intrepid hermaphrodite setting out across cobblestones most hazardous. I tell you I could barely watch!

OVERGLOSS:  And was it summarily preyed upon?

INGENU:  I should say not! For I did pick it up and send it back to its dirty home forthwith!

OVERGLOSS:  You spared the life of an invertebrate.

INGENU:  I thought so, but then a robin did swoop down from the tree above and dive at the poor unfortunate.

OVERGLOSS:  The worm does exist for the bird.

INGENU:  But the bird didn’t catch the slimy thing, for the house cat sprang from behind the very same tree and pounced on the bird.

OVERGLOSS:  The bird does exist for the cat.

INGENU:  Except the snake did interrupt the cat and the cat instead attacked the snake.

OVERGLOSS:  And the bird?

INGENU:  Did happily, despite clipped wing, console itself with a wormy repast.

OVERGLOSS:  And what did you learn, young Ingenu?

INGENU:  That I do love the fair Miss Candy more than anything in all the world!

(Short pause.)

OVERGLOSS:  Then it must be that the worm did make its expedition across unhappy cobblestone that you might fall in love with Miss Candy.

INGENU:  Oh, Providence! Is that the syllogism?

OVERGLOSS:  The first half, perhaps. For love does lead the headlong rush into Eden. But the second—

INGENU:  You see? This is the most glorious place in the whole universe, and you are the wisest of all masters!

OVERGLOSS:  My dear boy, it is not wisdom, nor goodness, but life—albeit this wisdom and goodness of mine are part of life. Everything is the way it is because it is for the best, even I declare the most apparently senseless of the gods’ inventions! Take your buttocks.

INGENU:  Where to, Master?

OVERGLOSS:  To wit.

    (beat)

To wit, your buttocks. As clarification. For example.

INGENU:  Ah!

OVERGLOSS:  Seemingly without function, the buttocks have many uses, including but not limited to, providing a fully portable cushion for sitting, padding for administering an effective yet non-lethal flogging, as well as furnishing a spot on which to hang the trousers.

INGENU:  But what if someone does not have a buttocks?

OVERGLOSS:  Ever doomed he is to getting caught with his pants down. It is the way of things.

INGENU:  But what of women?

(BARONESS enters with CANDY down stage. BARONESS is an ample woman, zaftig at the least. OVERGLOSS and INGENU notice the entrance, and CANDY eyes INGENU flirtatiously.)

OVERGLOSS:  What of women, young Ingenu?

INGENU:  They do not wear pants!

OVERGLOSS:  I should say not.

INGENU:  Then why the female’s need for a buttocks?

OVERGLOSS (turning to INGENU as if noticing his youth for the first time.):  It seems I owe you the sincerest of apologies, young Ingenu, for in the presence of your blossoming manhood have I neglected to impart my most important lessons! 

    (gesturing circularly to his face.)

Observe this face of mine.

INGENU:  It is round, Master.

OVERGLOSS:  Indeed it is round for the likes of a concourse, race course, discourse, recourse, and midcourse intercourse—course, from cursus, to run—and round things are best for running. Take the wheel. 

INGENU:  Where to—

(OVERGLOSS puts up his hand to silence INGENU.)

OVERGLOSS (pointing to his nose.):  But note the appendage here.

INGENU:  The nose.

OVERGLOSS  (sticking out his tongue):  Yes yes, and this one here.

INGENU:  The tongue.  (beat)   They both protrude! Not round at all!

OVERGLOSS:  Very good! Very good! Such an apt pupil! 

    (gesturing to the women down stage.)

Now look there upon the ladies of the house. You focus on the modest form of Miss Candy. I will take in the grandeur of the Lady Baroness as I am more experienced and you would, I fear, die. Take a moment to consider one buttock on yon female.

INGENU:  Well considered, Master.

OVERGLOSS:  Now the other on same such female.

INGENU:  So round!

OVERGLOSS:  Like the face, perhaps? And what of the region between the two?

INGENU:  The abutment of buttocks?

OVERGLOSS:  Yes, young master. What is called the natal cleft, the posterior signpost which does guide the eye toward the confluence of thighs, which does retreat in ways the nose and tongue do advance and from which is borne the best of all possible pleasures! Until tomorrow’s lesson, young Ingenu!

(OVERGLOSS goes to BARONESS, takes her arm and leads her off stage.)

OVERGLOSS (CONT’D):  Ah, my Lady Baroness, so lovely to see you out on this wondrous of Spring days! Have you noticed how round, how inviting, how bountiful is Mother Earth today? How giving, rather like Lady’s own largesse, if I may be so bold. Quite the marvel—is she not?—she that makes things grow, and grow. And grow. It is cause and effect, you know...

(OVERGLOSS and BARONESS have exited. CANDY is down stage smelling the flowers and glancing back at INGENU. INGENU cannot help staring at her back side as she does so.)

INGENU:  Oh, Doctor Overgloss, our lesson has left me aflutter with such strange stirrings. And this “Cause and Effect” is by far the best of all possible lessons, except...the effect that the lesson did have on me is propelling me toward the one I have never met, yet suddenly love, thus making the effect the cause, a cause, I dare say, having the potential for the best of all possible effects!

(CANDY turns to INGENU.)

CANDY:  Hello, Ingenu.

INGENU:  Good day, Miss Candy. She greets me I greet her in return. That is indeed an auspicious beginning to Cause and Effect!

CANDY:  What was that?

INGENU:  Oh. Just a lesson imparted today by Doctor Overgloss.

CANDY:  You like him.

INGENU:  He is the best of all possible teachers!

CANDY:  And you must be the best of all possible pupils. 

INGENU:  Why, I never thought of it that way!

CANDY  (flirtatiously):   Smart enough to be allowed into the Garden.

INGENU:  You think so?

CANDY:  It was very upsetting.

(CONTINUED. PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU'D LIKE TO READ MORE.)