Wooden Boy

I have lately been watching various Pinocchio adapations, there seem to be a lot of them around at the moment. It was only inevitable, therefore, that I had a Pinocchio inspired dream. I was a volunteer at a live theatre company, along with other members of the public, who would queue up to perform with the same troupe. The gig was to play the titular character of Pinocchio, allowing the actors to dictate the narrative and be swept along for the experience, almost like a paid 'actor for a day' scheme.

I forget the opening scenes of the play, but my memory kicks in when Pinocchio (me) was visited by a doctor with a waistcoat and pocket watch. The actor playing the doctor was clearly homosexual, and whilst performing the farcical gestures with me, involving a health inspection (which was supposed to be funny, because Pinocchio is made of wood), he surreptitiously molested me. I did not know if this groping was part of the play, or something the actor was doing to signal his interest, but I firmly pushed his hand away and the show went on without interruption. 

The doctor pretended to bleed me, and getting into the spirit of proceedings, I performed an exaggerated swoon and feigned a collapse. To revive me, I was led to some tables where chefs were serving up real platters of hot food. I looked over all the appetising stews, soups, and noodle dishes, asking for generous helpings from each. The joke here was that puppets do not need to eat. I indulged in some small talk, telling the catering staff about how fussy my daughter was.

The next part of the show was the big puppet threatre set piece, run by the abusive gypsy Stromboli. It was the same actor who played the doctor, in even more fanciful attire, replete with silken cuffs, frills, curled wig and pompadour makeup. He placed some glasses on my face and painted blue spirals on them, then he took my cheeks in his hands and crooned about how I would be his masterpiece. He whispered in my ear "no strings." The innuendo laden wordplay was not lost on me. The other puppets put on a bawdy, provacative performance to 'I've got no strings', much to the amusement of the audience. This involved the puppets performing a copulation dance with  painted wooden breasts and genitalia on display.

For the next scene, Stromboli grew angry with Pinocchio and tried to discard him. I was thrown into a metal airduct, which I was supposed to squeeze through before ending up in the trash. The duct was far too narrow for a person to fit into, so I climbed out and scuttled over to the refuse pile instead. Because I had held things up, the actor playing Pinocchio behind me (remember that this was conveyor belt theatre) was emerging from the duct at that time, and landed painfully on his face. There was now no guidance for what I was supposed to do, so I wandered between metal pipes and dusty walkways until a Dickensian London gang caught me up and introduced me to rough-living street life, complete with energetic song and dance.

I had played my role rather woodenly up until this point, not wanting to take the shine away from the real actors, but now I got really into the performance and acted my heart out. When the show ended, I was given a resounding applause, and even won the prize for best participant role out of all the volunteers. Nonetheless, the molestation had made the experience not worth it in the end.