CAST
HOWARD: a smug museum docent
ALVIN: a museum visitor with unorthodox opinions about art
STEPHANIE: a stupid museum visitor
JOJO: an even stupider museum visitor
SETTING: A museum gallery
HOWARD
Now, this next piece is a recent acquisition and is very special. It was recently discovered in a chateau in Belgium, where it had been in an aristocratic family’s possession for over three hundred years. Can anyone guess who it’s by?
STEPHANIE
Picasso?
HOWARD
Not quite. I’ll give you a hint. It’s the work of an Old Master, noted for his many landscapes and depictions of the Flemish peasantry.
JOJO
Madonna!
HOWARD
Not a painter, I’m afraid. In fact, it was Pieter Bruegel the Elder. You may recall some of the familiar motifs from “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” The foregrounded peasant, the bright palette, the elliptical composition…
ALVIN raises his hand.
HOWARD
Yes sir, you have a question?
ALVIN
Yeah, why’d he paint all those dicks?
HOWARD
I’m sorry, sir, I must not have heard you correctly…
ALVIN
(shouting)
I said, why’d he paint all those dicks?
HOWARD
Uh.. I don’t believe there are any dicks in the painting, sir.
ALVIN
(scoffs)
Bro, open your eyes. There’s like a whole field of dicks right there on the left, coming out of the ground.
HOWARD
I believe those are trees.
ALVIN
Then how come they got no leaves, dude?
HOWARD
Because it’s a winter landscape?
ALVIN
So you’re telling me those are trees? And what’s that supposed to be, a frozen pond? And those are like some boring-ass peasants ice fishing?
HOWARD
Yes, I would say the iconography is self-evident, but what makes the painting fascinating--
ALVIN
Laaaame! You think Bruegel became famous by painting that snooze-o-rific crap? Naah, bro.
JOJO
(to Alvin)
Why? What do you see instead?
ALVIN
I see an alien picnic in a field of dicks. It’s clear as day.
STEPHANIE
You know, I did think there was something kind of alien-y about that spaceship.
HOWARD
There is no spaceship in the painting! And, I assure you there is no field of dicks or picnicking aliens!
STEPHANIE
Then what’s that big gray spaceship thingy with the pointy top on the right?
HOWARD
That’s a church! The pointy thing is a church! Need I remind you Bruegel was a 16th-century painter? There were no spaceships back then.
JOJO
There would be if aliens brought them.
STEPHANIE
Yeah, or if time were a circle.
ALVIN
Yeah, or if that peasant was actually a time-traveler in disguise!
JOJO/STEPHANIE
Oooooh, yeah!
HOWARD looks like he’s gonna lose his mind.
HOWARD
I will stake the fate of my immortal soul on the fact that Bruegel did not paint time-travelers, aliens, or, god help us, a forest of penises!
STEPHANIE
But, I mean, isn’t art, like, subjective?
JOJO
Yeah, what if this painting’s like that white and gold striped dress from the internet a couple years ago?
STEPHANIE
You mean the blue and black one?
JOJO
No way! It was sooo white and gold.
HOWARD
Ok, it was clearly white and gold. But that’s not the point!
ALVIN
I saw white and gold, too. Just like in this painting I see a couple aliens who landed their spaceship in a field of dicks to have a picnic with a time traveler in order to learn all the secrets about Ancient Egypt.
HOWARD
Hold on, did you say Ancient Egypt?
ALVIN
Yeah, you know the mystery of the pyramids and mummies and shit like that.
HOWARD
Ok, now that’s not totally crazy. ‘Cause Bruegel, as is well known, was a Rosicrucian, and the Rosicrucians came from the Knights Templar, and the Knights Templar trace their origins back to the masons who built the pyramids of Egypt. And you see that sun? See how many rays it has? Thirteen! Precisely the same number as the Rosicrucian sun, symbol for divine alchemy, and exactly the same number of pyramids in the necropolis at Giza!
STEPHANIE
I don’t know... That interpretation seems a little forced.
JOJO
Yeah, I still like the field of dicks.
Blackout.
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