Eutopian story D: a play in ten acts, written by the Italian students
Characters:
- Narrator
- Listener
- Lennon-looking guy
- Frank Banchieri
- Francisco
- Joe
- Tiago
- Eutopian guy 1
- Eutopian guy 2
- Eutopian guy 3
- Estonian girl
- Alessandro
- Miriana
- Alessandro and Miriana’s Dad
Stage: meeting room on the groundfloor
ACT 1: First and second part.
Scene: Frank Banchieri’s bedroom
CHARACTERS: Narrator, Listener, Frank, John Lennon, Francisco.
Characters standing up, narrator and listener sitting down -future on the left, present in the middle, past on the right-
Narrator: Have you ever heard the saying: “It's the same world over”?
Listener: No. What do you mean? Has there been such a saying?
Narrator: Yes! In 2050 it was a reality.
Listener: Really? Now, I'm so curious. Tell me about that period, please.
Narrator: In 2050, the world became one single nation. There was one government and Amabo was the president.
Other characters (in the background): Amabo..? Who was he?
Narrator: There was one mother tongue. The cultures were amalgamated in one single culture. The economy was thriving, the expectation of life was increasing, people were freer and as a consequence, discrimination didn't exist anymore.The people lived in a wonderful world, it was a perfect world.
Listener (with a relaxed face): How could it happen?
Narrator: In part it was also thanks to us. Now it is the time to tell you the story of that world. The story starts… We are in Luzern, Switzerland. Where the by now 89 years old Frank Banchieri on his death bed, prey of his many faults, decides to call the participants of Eutopia + project, sending them an e-mail. Pushed by the curiosity of receiving a notice about a project happened decades before, they all go to the place indicated by Franck, his house. The guys are confused to see the old man on the bed, staying in a mysterious silence, they are just petrified.
John Lennon-looking guy: Who are you? Why have you called us?
Frank Banchieri: I want be frank and honest with you... I just need you to go back in time and make our present better.
Francisco: Our world is already perfect,why should we want to change it?
Frank Banchieri: And so you call perfect a world where French people don't go around with a baguette under their armpit, Italians don't cook good pasta and English people don't drink tea at 5 p.m.?
Francisco: Why is all that so bad? Life has never been better. We defeated cancer and a lot of other illnesses. Nobody suffers from hunger or poverty. We have no war! Why would you want to change that?
Other characters (in the background): What’s going on? Did you get the email? How strange.
Frank Banchieri: Shut up! I cannot stand it when so many people are talking.
Other characters: (Stop their conversation and look guiltily at Frank's bed).
Joe: Frank is right! It would be marvellous if we could go back in time and change something, so we won't have this boring world. There are some many points against this society.
(Returns the present)
Listener: Which points is Joe thinking of? What do the others think? Do you agree with Joe or Francisco? And what did Frank do that he is so respected?
ACT 2 : Third part
Scene: Frank Banchieri’s bedroom
CHARACTERS: Narrator, Frank, Joe, Tiago, Francisco, Eutopian guy 1.
Narrator: To be honest, I think that one quality that people can’t lose is to reason in their own way. In that reality everyone was living in the same way, nobody was worried about thinking differently from another one. But this story is the perfect example of how different thoughts can change, or in this case, save the humanity.
Frank: Since I found out the cure for cancer life has never been better!”Surely we live in an apparently perfect world… but have you ever thought about this? everyone doing the same things everyday without passion and sentiment? This isn’t a perfect society and without a perfect society there is no perfect world!” (Angrily)
[EVERYBODY is shocked, TIAGO gets close and listens from the outside, then enters the room]
Tiago: “Hi there… what’s happening here?”
(Group discussing outloud what’s going on, what’s happening,)…
Tiago: (trying to calm everyone, smiles) “Everyone has their own opinion. I think that war and poverty keep the balance. Without them, the world will be overpopulated soon. It's nature rule!”
( group discussion in the background)
Tiago speaking outloud : “We changed nature and we are driving humanity to self-destruction.”
[Eutopian guy 1 comes in the room to tell FRANCISCO something ]
Unknown man : (looking worried) “Francisco! If I tell you what I have found... you won't believe me!”
ACT 3: fourth part
Scene: Frank Banchieri’s bedroom
CHARACTERS: Narrator, Eutopian guy 1, Eutopian guy 2, Frank, Joe, Francisco, Estonian girl
Narrator: “Nobody knew that man and what he was talking about, surely they couldn’t ever remotely imagine anything of what was going to happen and that it was going to change the future of the entire humanity.”
Eutopian guy 1: “Come, everybody! I'll show you.”
[EVERYBODY start moving]
Eutopian guy 1: “Last night I was walking home when I saw a weird light coming from this cave, I was too scared to check it because it was very dark, so I came this morning and I discovered this, then I came to you as fast as I could!”
Eutopian guy 2: “Maybe we should ask Frank about it!”
Narrator: “Everybody went back to his house, Frank was lying on the bed, he looked very sick because of the fever. When the guys asked him about the mysterious machine he looked at them and flakily said...”
Frank: ”Where did you find it?” (he chuckles) “I thought I had hidden it well enough. Now, listen closely to what I'm going to tell you. This problem has been troubling me for some time. So, I built a time machine, just in case anything goes really wrong. However, with great powers come great responsibilities,. Such a powerful machine must be kept concealed from everybody’s sight, especially when it comes to all those evil people around the world.
[A yell comes from a side of the room where FRANCISCO is standing]
Francisco: (looks a bit embarassed for the yell) “Why didn't you tell us before?”
Frank: (looks like a bit embarassed too) “I would have told you about it earlier, but there is another problem… I have forgotten how to use the time machine.”
Joe: “Oh no! Are you serious? How do we use this machine without instructions?”
Francisco: “We must find out how this machine works, it is our only hope! Let's go back to the cave and figure out something .”
Frank: “Go guys!”
[The guys follow FRANCISCO after a moment of confusion]
ACT 4: fourth part
Scene: the cave
Characters: Narrator, Francisco, Estonian girl
Francisco: (looking unsure of his plan) “Does anyone have any ideas?”
Estonian girl: “I think we should try to press that button!” (pointing a button) “What do you think?”
Narrator: “Now, nobody was sure about the answer. Nobody says anything, nobody knows what to do. After all, they didn’t have many alternatives if they wanted to save humanity. Another thing that people never will lose is hope.”
[While the NARRATOR is talking, the girl is pressing the button, in slowmotion]
ACT 5: fifth part
Scene: the cave
Characters; Eutopian guy 2, Eutopian guy 3, Narrator:
(After pressing the button,holograms of planets appear)
Eutopian guy 2: “Where are we?”.
Eutopian guy 3: “The true question is: when are we?”.
(everybody making surprise noises, Joe is moving the planets)
Eutopian guy 2: “We must try to press this buttons and see what happen”
Eutopian guy 3: “Sure! Let's try with this!”
Narrator: After they have learnt how to use that wonderful machine, thinking a lot about what drove the humanity to lose its originality, what led the humanity to lose their customs and cultures, they got to blame the unique language….Going back to these periods of time, they became ambassadors of all the different world languages and cultures and, instead of making the language a single one, they made it multi languages!That’s how the humanity kept its traditions and cultures.When they felt the work was done, they came back to their time and they were shocked to find: a world free of hunger, wars and disease but also a world with various, different cultures and rich of individuality, a true Utopic society.
ACT 6 : sixth part
Scene: An attic in a house
Characters; Narrator, Alessandro, Miriana,
Narrator: the years went by and the guys grew up; everyone continued with their own life, some got married and got some children. But, 20 years later, the economy started to get worse and essential goods became too expensive, making people to fight against each other, trying to survive. Even children started to fight with their fathers sometimes. Again war was destroying humanity!!! Everyone lost the hope, everyone except two brothers: Alessandro e Miriana. One day, they found a secret diary and decided to read it.
(While reading it, they are shocked about something)
Alessandro: what’s this strange machine? Is it a simple sketch?
Miriana: c’mon, let’s continue to read, i want to find something about Mom and Dad..
Alessandro: it’s too much detailed for it to be just a simple sketch, it seems more like a blue print. And what about those missing pages? It’s all too strange.. I think we should ask Dad.
ACT 7 sixth part
Scene: a sitting room in a house
Characters; Narrator, Alessandro, Miriana, dad
Dad: it will seem impossible to you guys, and probably you won’t trust me. Previously, the world was a different place, full of diversity, full of people with different cultures and knowledge. But there were wars, hunger, poverty and disease. We decided to solve these problems, unifying everyone within a single “language”. To do that we used that Machine represented in that page of the diary, created by the leader of our group. The machine gave us the possibility to travel across the time to modify some things. We understood that unifying all languages in a single language had been a mistake and we travelled back in time and restored variety.
Miriana: can this machine change things again?
Dad: (..) it could.. but i’m your father and i don’t want to give to you this huge responsibility. It’s something way bigger than both of you.
ACT 8: sixth part
Scene: a path in a wood
Characters; Narrator, Alessandro, Miriana, dad
Narrator: the two brothers decided to go for a singular trip, searching for something comparable to The Grail but, unlike the past, this time the coordinates where precise
(The two brothers are walking along a path in a wood, looking for the machine, they find a big machine..)
Alessandro: we finally found it! I wasn’t hoping about it anymore..
Miriana: and now? We know what that is, we know why we are here, we know where we have to go and we know how to do it but.. we don’t know when to go..
Alessandro: we can try to go about 70 years before, i think it’s the best choice, soo we can have more time!
Miriana: perfect.. now we have to just start it..
ACT 9: sixth part
Scene: a dark room
Characters; Narrator, Alessandro, Miriana
Narrator: They went back in the time, to the 2017. The world was really different, more simple and pacific than they thought. But they were two simple kids, they couldn't go into the governments’ palaces and simply tell them to stop. Plus…nobody would believe they were time travellers. But there was a way..
Alessandro: it will be hard for us to be heard by all the world.. no one knows us, we are lonely, in a world we don’t even know..
Miriana: we can! What about writing a book?
Alessandro: (..) good idea! Even though i don’t think it will be easy for us to make a book that will make the world trust us..
Miriana: you’re right.. what about just telling how we are living….?
Alessandro: well.. we must say what we lived and also what we saw!
Miriana: you are saying that.. we should write what will happen if the EuTopia project will be accepted?
Alessandro: not only that! Thanks to the time machine, we will really live those particular moments of history! we can describe those moments from our point of view, analizing and writing about them with the best accuracy possible.
Miriana: exactly! And with that we will surely influence their way of thinking!
ACT 10: sixth part- conclusion
Scene: an empty room, with the characters sitting in chairs
Characters: all characters
Narrator: it took Alessandro and Miriana some years to write their book and publish it
Eutopian guy 2 Year of publication: 2014.
Listener After publication the book, unexpectedly, started to have a big success amongst young people
Eutopian guy 3: very soon it became a best seller all over the world.
Lennon-looking guy: Millions and millions of readers were struck by how real the events written in the book were,
Estonian girl: They realized how mankind was following the same path written in it.
Frank: After some years, when the governments presented the EuTopia project, people started to worry
Alessandro and Miriana’s Dad: they feared that what was written in the book could become true.
Francisco: After a little while, the governments abandoned their EuTopia project!
Joe: The humanity continued its path
Miriana: even if the world didn’t become the perfect world that EuTopia wanted to create, it remained balanced:
Tiago: there were problems of course!
Eutopian guy 1: but the people of the world were determined to keep that balance, fighting against everything wad bad…..
Alessandro: Back in 2017 the only Eutopian project which got to its successful conclusion was the Eutopia +Project which made six European countries protagonist of a truly unique Eutopian story.