Download - The Chemistry of the Dream

7/27/2019 The Chemistry of the Dream

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THE CHEMISTRY OF THE DREAM

Theater

Cacildo Marques


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THE CHEMISTRY OF THE DREAMTheater

Cacildo Marques

For reading alone, doing group dramatic reading or mounting.

Characters: Ulysses, Larissa, Polux, Aura, other six electrons (they can be the other characters,in alternation), Achilles, Lysander, Dalton, Helen, Thalia, Artemis.

Material: Black balloon of cardboard (nucleus), the five polyhedrons of Plato, beakers,Erlenmeyers, colored balls of isopor, picture with periodic table, material for gunpowder (sulfur,saltpeter and crushed coal), silver rain, ten colored foils of tissue paper, laser pointer.

SCENE 1

(In the center of the stage there is a kind of black balloon representing the nucleus of an atom. In turn of it tencharacters dressed in red are turning around, representing electrons. In the right corner of the stage one sees an alchemistand his disciple. The alchemist gesticulates and, without emitting sounds, he represents to be speaking to his disciple.)Electrons (singing):

I want now to explainBecause I need to know

What I am doing in this

Dream in that I don't know

Where the real finishes

And where it will begin

The pure imagination

Breaking my heart that leans.

I am of this mechanism all

A frenzied and shaken piece

Nobody explained already

Where this finally will give.Ulysses (one of the electrons): I don't get to understand: yesterday I was an entrepreneur of the branch ofplastics and today I am here as a simple electron. It is not possible to be real. But I already have madethe test. I pinched my arm and it hurt. I pinched the girl's arm there (he points to Larissa, one of the electrons)and she screamed. But I never imagined that I came changing in an electron without that it was adream. What do you think, Larissa?

Larissa: I think you are not dreaming. We have been transformed in electrons. Of industrial chemistryI was transformed in a particle of tiny dimensions.

Ulysses: You don't get to convince me. Would you be capable to solve a quadratic equation now? I

don't know if I would be capable.Larissa: It is much more difficult to articulate a period of twenty words correctly than to solve any type


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of equation. But we can take advantage of this situation for enriching our knowledge. Do you know thehistory of the chemistry?

Ulysses: I know a little.

Polux (other electron): It is not worthwhile to know this. Rest, boy. Don't warm up your brain at random.

What will you make with the history of the chemistry, this science that serves for destroying the world?Have not you been seeing the smoke of the factories? Have not you been accompanying the news onacid rains, pesticides and the slaughter of fish at the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, in Rio? This is theresult of the history of the chemistry. You don't need to know anything else.

Larissa: Gee, what a retrograde subject you are, huh, Polux! You shouldn't worry with the one that hesays, Ulysses. He comes with this conversation that he is ecological militant, but the one that he is,really, is an enemy of the knowledge and of the progress.

Polux: What is this, Larissa? Do you already begin so, disqualifying my speech? You don't imagine theamount of people that think in the same way as me.

Larissa: Don't come to sell cat for hare, Polux. We know that you are an ecological opportunist andnot a serious environmentalist.

Ulysses: In spite of the objection of Polux, I am hoping to know the history of this science that hedetests. How is it, Larissa?

Larissa: We will accompany there the explanation that the alchemist is doing for the disciple that isbefore him. As we are electrons, we have those possibilities. Let's go to there.

Polux: Ulysses, remember that I informed. It is not worthwhile to know that history.

Ulysses: I only ask you grant me the freedom of being able to verify for me by myself.Larissa: It is this, Polux. You are being impertinent. We will hear the alchemist's class.

Achilles (speaking loud to his disciple Lysander): There are a lot of people that insists on comparing me toParacelsus. Who had felt! In this time, in 1530, Paracelsus is the largest pharmacologist of the world.Me, Achilles, I am a common alchemist, a mere repeater of the processes that I learned with mymasters. Of course I have not been selling brass as if it was gold. If I will get to transform anothermetal in gold, there, yes, I will be rich. Through this that soon will be called the "Spanish gold", thebrass disguised of gold, it won't happen.

Lysander: But, master Achilles, and the history of the alchemic processes what you promised to tellme?

Achilles: I arrive in this point soon, Lysander. Before I need to talk about the principles of thealchemy. They are traditionally two: the sulfur principle, masculine, and the mercury principle,feminine. Those principles are not the substances of same name. They are principles because they formthe theoretical base of our work. The sulfur principle is masculine because it burns and the mercuryprinciple is feminine because it is malleable. Paracelsus introduced a third principle, the salt, which isneutral and means life, because the salt is to conserve.

Lysander: And so we have the key of the alchemy...

Achilles: Those principles would not serve us for anything if they were not the techniques that our


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predecessors developed and delegated us. Since the god Hermes Trismegistus granted the knowledge tomen we have been creating and improving our techniques, trying to arrive close of Hermes some day.

Then they taught us the techniques of fusion, obtaining of leagues, distillation, sublimation, calcination,dissolution, filtration and crystallization. Whatever the future development of the science comes to be,those processes will serve as shore for the studies on the part of the researchers.

Lysander: And the origins of all these things?

Achilles: I am arriving in this point, boy. It is so. Those techniques were developed starting fromcertain presuppositions. The first is that the matter can be transformed. And the first conscioustransformation process of the matter happened with the discovery of the fire, 400,000 years ago. Thecopper became explored circa the year 4000 before Christ, and around the year 3000 B.C. what thehistorians will call "the Bronze Age" took place, and then, for the first time, man gets to produce ametallic league: the bronze contains 90% of copper and 10% of tin. The Bronze Age lasted 2000 years.In the new phase, 1000 years before Christ, the production of the iron overcame the one of the bronze.For that time the glass was already manufactured in Egypt.

Lysander: And certainly the theory of the four elements was already known there...

Achilles: No! You are missed! The theory of the four elements only came to the light in classic Greece.First, Thales of Miletus, in the 7th century before Christ, defended the hypothesis that the water is thebasic element, the fundamental element in the construction of the universe.

Lysander: He was a great man!

Achilles: Thales is the inventor of the speculative science, but in this point he didn't convince thephilosophers that came just after him, because Anaximenes started to defend that the basic element isthe air. This didn't also convince, therefore Heraclitus soon appeared with the theory that the

fundamental element is the fire. Parmenides didn't agree with none of them and he came affirming thateverything was one, that the universe was formed by a identical whole and who saw differences was us,because of the imprecision of our senses. And Empedocles? He went far away, because he thoughtthat, besides the elements, the universe was built starting from two contrary forces: the love and thehate, being the love the attraction force and the hate the repulsion force. Now, see those solids there.

Lysander: Those there, of cardboard?

Achilles: Exactly. Catch them for me.

Lysander: What do these solids have with the science of the transformation of the matter?

Achilles: They have much more than you think, my boy. How many solids do you have here?

Lysander: Five solids. Or is it for me to say another thing?

Achilles: It is quite so. Five solids. And which solids are these? What type are they?Lysander: My geometry teacher already taught this point. They are the five polyhedrons of Plato. Allof the faces have the same number of edges and of each vertex the same amount of those edges itdeparts. The regular polyhedrons are peculiar cases of the polyhedrons of Plato.

Achilles: This! This! And what does the five polyhedrons of Plato represent?

Lysander: Certainly, they are not the four elements, because we have five polyhedrons.


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Achilles: No! You are missed! Four of them represent fire, earth, air and water: the four elements. Thatis it. At that time of Plato, 4th century before Christ, the theory of the four elements was alreadyconsolidated and he then imagined this representation. The fire is the tetrahedron, four equilateraltriangles. The earth is the hexahedron, formed by six square faces, each one of them being divided intwo isosceles right triangles. The air is the octahedron, eight equilateral triangles. Finally, the water is

formed starting from the icosahedron, a shape with twenty faces, being each one of them an equilateraltriangle. But, for despair of Plato, suddenly he discovered that a fifth regular polyhedron existed: thedodecahedron, with twelve pentagonal faces. As the elements that compose the nature were only four,he decided to associate to this new polyhedron the invisible substance that formed the bed where thecelestial stars move, denominated ether.Lysander: Plato was very creative.

Achilles: He was. As much Plato as his student Aristotle was.

Lysander: Which was Aristotle's contribution in that theory of the four elements?

Achilles: He introduced the idea of the associated properties to those elements. The properties are alsofour: hot, cold, dry and humid. The fire is hot and dry, the air is hot and humid, and so on.

Lysander: Master, and the theory of the atoms? Where does it enter?

Achilles: Atoms? Are you crazy? Where did you hear this history about atoms?

Lysander: Thereabout, with my friends.

Achilles: Since now, forget this absurd idea! Our objective, the alchemists' objective, is to reach three

results: the philosopher's stone, which is the transformation of other materials in gold; the universalpanacea, which is the medicine to cure all of the diseases; and, finally, the elixir of the long life, theyouth's source. Only with the idea of the continuous matter we can conquer these goals. Now youcome with this conversation about atoms! You are walking in bad company, Lysander!Lysander: I didn't know that the atom idea was so contrary to the alchemists' purposes.

Achilles: Then you should know that it is. In the 5th century before Christ a nut one called Leucippusand his student named Democritus introduced this idea that the nature is formed by corpuscles calledatoms. And how then the atoms are held some in the other ones? Another nut, a Roman one calledLucretius invented the explanation that the atoms have hooks. This is nonsense and attacks the gods'

memory. (Severe.) Never again speak here to me about atom in my laboratory!

Lysander: There is no problem, master. Never again I will speak about these things in this house.

Achilles: Quite so. You are a wise boy. Therefore I think you will be a great alchemist. But we will takeour meal. (Both leave the room.)


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SCENE 2

(Electrons again rotate around the nucleus and sing.)

I see the chemistry of the dream,

Of my dreams as an young man,It comes show me the history

And too leads me to know

The construction of the science

Which in the beginning was occult

And today it has transparency

Oh my days are more smiling

When the information sprout

From the chemistry of my dreams.

Larissa (to Ulysses): Did you see? He doesn't believe in our existence...

Ulysses: This is why he didn't see us.

Larissa: But he could not see us really. Nobody never got to see an atom, what about an electron, stillone more alchemist, who believes in the continuous matter, in the way Aristotle guaranteed. For thoseand for other, only in the 8th century the existence of the chemistry was proposed as independentscience, for an Arab researcher called Jabir Ibn Haian. Before this time there was alone alchemy. Infact, it suits to remind that this idea of ether only persisted up to 1905, when it was discarded by thetheory of the special relativity, of Einstein. But, returning to the atom, only for you to have an idea, aproton is 1800 times heavier than an electron.

Ulysses: Gee! Are we, electrons, so much light?

Polux: Don't believe in this, Ulysses. It is more madness of this impure science named chemistry.

Larissa: Shut up, Polux! Or else I will make you to enter in a reaction with a substance that will makeyou to turn soap.

Polux: This is a good idea. If I turn me soap I will help to clean the dirt that the chemical industry hasbeen spreading around the world. But you don't have power to rush me in a reaction. You are a mereelectron, like me.

Larissa: Don't forget that besides electron I am industrial chemist.

Ulysses: The chemist of my dreams.

Polux: Uh! He is lost, poor!

Ulysses: Is this not Jealousy, Polux? Larissa doesn't call a lot for you...

Polux: I would jump out. I have chemistry horror, still more of industrial chemistry.

Aura (leaving the middle of electrons and going to Ulysses): Are you by chance suggesting that my husband isbeing interested in this destructor of the ozone layer?


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Ulysses: Ah, are you his wife? I only spoke it because I didn't know that you were there to the side.

Polux: Aura, you don't have anything to enter in the conversation!

Aura: Ah, it is because I was with jealousy. (She goes back to the middle of the other electrons.)

Larissa: Did you already imagine, Ulysses, if that alchemist, Achilles, knew where the science of thetransformation of the matter would arrive in? He could not dream that one day there would be the eraof plastics, superconductors, penicillin, aspirin, milk-in-powder, vulcanized rubber...

Ulysses: Asphalt, gasoline, pasteurization, drops, electronics of colors in the video, anhydrous alcohol,nylon, polypropylene, magnetic ribbon, PVC...

Polux (ironic): CFC, mercury residue, nuclear dust, carbon gas, pesticides, anencephaly, non-degradablegarbage...

Larissa (going to Ulysses): Of the imbecility of given pseudo-environmentalists...

Ulysses: You are right. There are certain types of environmentalists that think we only get to seesolutions, never problems. (Going to the audience.) My company has been engaging in practice of thesocial responsibility, because this, besides giving a participation feeling and usefulness in general to theadministration and employees, is a vital subject of marketing today. I know this subject very well,because when a student I was part of ecological groups, which struggled for the preservation of forests,mainly of the Amazonian forest, for the cleaning and restoration of the life of rivers and streams, forthe depollution of the air...

Larissa (pointing for the bottom of the stage): See who comes there.


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SCENE 3

(Dalton enters the stage accompanied of his assistant Helen and then surrounds the electrons.)

Dalton: What do you find, Helen? Did the experience convinced you that atoms exist or did you still

bet in the continuous matter?

Helen: I think I am convinced that they exist. It is a pity we cannot see them. Will it happen that amicroscope will be invented capable to show an atom?Dalton: Only if somebody creates another principle for microscopes. With the current principle, Idon't believe. But we will leave this room because this green dress people (he points to electrons) areleaving me abashed.

Helen: Green, master? Everybody is in red there.

Dalton: Are you crazy, Helen? They are dressed in green! (Both leave the stage.)


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SCENE 4

Larissa: Did you see this scientist that passed here?

Ulysses: What a crazy subject! Do you know him, Larissa?

Larissa: Didn't you notice? Didn't you discover who is he?

Ulysses: I cannot imagine.

Larissa: It is well seen that you don't know the history of the chemistry and of chemists. He was thegreat John Dalton.

Ulysses: Dalton? By chance he was color-blind? Did have he Daltonism?

Larissa: It is clear! Daltonism comes from Dalton.

Ulysses: Ah!

Larissa: Did you understand now?

Ulysses: It is clear. I knew the history, but I didn't remember.

Polux: He had to be color-blind for believing in the atomic theory.

Larissa: Nor in the atomic theory do you believe, Polux? You are an electron! An electron!

Polux: And do I know what I am here? I was thrown here I don't know by who for knowing I don'tknow what.

Aura: How doesn't you know the one you are? You are my husband!

Polux: Uh, Aura, I know this, but it doesn't explain anything. I don't know what I am, where I havecome from, where I will go...

Ulysses: I know what you are.

Larissa: Cricket-cricket.

Aura (pulling Polux by the arm): Let's go to stand back of this people that only thinks about to demerityou.


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SCENE 5

(The chemist Thalia and her student Artemis enter on the right side of the stage. This one brings beakers,Erlenmeyers, isopor balls and picture with periodic table. Thalia brings a case.)

Thalia: It is a hardness to do conference for that people that has resistance to the chemistry.

Artemis: Fortunately this was passed, professor Thalia. I have thought they behaved well after all.

Thalia: This is if we compare it with the one of last week, it is not, Artemis? That one was besides thelimits.

Artemis: There were people there without the smallest idea of what is an atom.

Thalia: There was that one that asked how he should do for seeing one.

Artemis (laughing): He at least had curiosity.

Polux (to Aura): Ah, if she could see and hear us. I would ask her what is an electron.

Thalia (taking the table off the hands of Artemis and putting it in position that is visible for the audience): Thinkingon if we didn't have the 1808 John Dalton's atomic theory...

Artemis: We could still be touching, thinking the matter is continuous, as the alchemists did. But evenwithout John Dalton, professor Thalia, I think the works of Lavoisier already pointed to the acceptanceof the corpuscular theory.

Thalia: It is true. Already in 1785 he got to obtain in public the decomposition of the water inhydrogen and oxygen. With this he made to collapse the theory of the four elements.

Artemis: Oh, yes, professor. And he made that spilling the water for a hot pipe of a rifle.

Thalia: Another step that enriched the atomic theory of Dalton a lot was the work of Avogadro, a littleafter the publication of 1808.

Artemis: Is it the idea of the mole and the Normal Conditions of Temperature and Pressure?

Thalia: Exactly. That consolidated the use of the theory of the proportions in the science of the

transformation of the matter.

Artemis: But the law of the defined proportions belongs to Joseph-Louis Proust.

Thalia: It is just a preamble to the Amedeo Avogadro's laws. In the history of the chemistry nobodygave alone a step of giant. Each scientist gave a small contribution to the results already known. So thebuilding was being formed.

Artemis: And this table? Who did conceive the first idea of table of elements of the chemistry? WasDalton this one?

Thalia: Ah, the table! That is one of the great discoveries in the history of the chemistry. Basically theyare three people the responsible for its creation: Dalton, Berzelius and Mendeleev. Dalton began thepractice of calling by their initials the chemical elements. Berzelius practically completed that work


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creating symbols for most of the elements known at that time. But who saw the periodicity in theclassification of elements was Mendeleev. And in 1869 he set up the periodic table that we used today.

Artemis: Incredible thing! Each column of the table contain a type of substance, is not it so?

Thalia: Exactly. The more elements to the left are metals and the more to the right are gases. Metals

are majority: 70%.

Artemis: And as for the antique ones, professor, what notable results can be reminded?

Thalia: During the Medium Age a great progress happened in the area of medicines, which wereproduced by alchemists. The problem is that they didn't believe in the possibility of developing organicmatter in laboratory. The fact is that before 1780 the organic chemistry was not possible, because it wasnecessary first to discover the oxygen and the hydrogen, besides other progresses. The firstsynthesization in laboratory was the obtaining of the urea in 1828, by Whler. But, returning toprevious times, in the 13th century we have the English Roger Bacon, a true scientist, studying anddeciphering the composition of the gunpowder, which is done with sulfur, crushed vegetable coal and

saltpeter. (She gets of the case some small packages containing these substances, she mixes them and spills the result in acan plate, which is put in the ground.) We will make a demonstration. (She stripes a match and lights the gunpowderon the can plate.)

Polux (screaming): Pollution!

Artemis: Professor, in your next conference, I think you should include this kind of demonstration.

Thalia: It is clear! I am thinking on this. But there are still other products in that area of the chemistry.See. (She removes of the small suitcase small sticks that are silver rain, those pyrotechnic tubes used in parties, and shelights them one by one. It is necessary very care for liberating the stage of inflammable materials.)

Polux: This was what lacked: pollution with pyrotechnic effects!

Ulysses (going to Larissa): I think Polux is getting crazy.

Larissa: He was crazy always. The problem is that now he is an impertinent lunatic.

Artemis: Showing these silver rains, your lectures can be more dynamic.

Thalia: At least I wait this. I am presenting these isopor balls to represent protons, neutrons andelectrons for a long time (she shows the isopor balls), but I always thought the components of the atom are

much more alive things than these very dry balls.

Artemis: What? Are the electrons alive?

Thalia: Way of saying. But they do have an own pulsation, a type of life.

(Larissa looks at Ulysses with approval air. Polux and Aura balance their head negatively.)

Artemis: It is a pity that we cannot see them.

Larissa (going to Ulysses): It is a pity that they cannot see us.

Thalia: Don't have illusions, Artemis. The people that saw electrons got this just in dream.


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Ulysses: Look, there, Larissa. At least them, both of them, they are not dreaming.

Larissa: All right, but they are leaving.

Thalia (arranging the objects in the small suitcase): Let's go, Artemis. We are already delayed. (They leave on theleft side of the stage.)


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SCENE 6

(The electrons begin to rotate around the nucleus and to sing again "I want to explain", the song of the beginning of theplay.)

Larissa (as stopping rotating and doing with this the other ones also stop): I have sad news. Nor I know if Ishould say you this.

Ulysses: Now that you already threatened to speak, holding is not worthwhile. Do have you whatnews? A tragedy?

Larissa: It is almost a catastrophe, a Greek tragedy.

Ulysses: We will stop with this. We are not in a play; we are inside of an atom.

Polux: Greek tragedy! Being close to chemists could only end in this. If the electronegativity of this

atom allows, I will try to jump out immediately.

Larissa: It is not worthwhile, Polux. It is as if you were tied here.

Aura: Yes, Polux. After all, you won't want to jump alone for another atom and to leave me here.

Ulysses: Tell us soon about the bad news, woman.

Polux: Woman! Are we already like this, is it?

Larissa: Shut up, Polux!

Polux: "Shut up, Polux"! It seems you only knows how to say this!

Larissa: No! I know how to say more things. I am not Cassandra, but I have to prevent you: This atomwill dissolve.

Ulysses: How do you know about this?

Larissa: I am a chemist. Did you forget it? I know the kind of atom in that we are.

Ulysses: Which electron first will jump?

Larissa: This is not possible to foresee.

Polux: I know who will jump: Larissa. She will turn, she will dance, she will tumble!

Ulysses: Ready! Now he turned a bird of bad omen.

Aura: See as you speech of my husband!

Larissa: I ended for creating a tense climate here. I will show a different thing for undoing a little thistension. (Larissa is going until the bottom of the nucleus of the atom and catches in the floor of the stage ten foils of

tissue paper, each one of one color, and she distributes them for the other nine electrons, reserving for her the white foil.)Open the foil in front of you. You know that the obtaining of colors is a chemical process. And hereyou see the numbers of the colors used in electronics. Colors are nothing else than light waves of


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different frequencies and the light waves are also particles, once they are a form of energy. And, inaccording to the quantum theory, the energy is formed by particles, which are the named "quanta".(Each foil has a cipher written in it: black - 0, brown - 1, red - 2, orange - 3, yellow - 4, green - 5, blue - 6, violet - 7,

gray - 8, white - 9.) We will rotate around the nucleus.

(They rotate while sing "See the chemistry of the dream". Suddenly the nucleus begins to collapse and falls by half,

producing great noise.)

Aura: Photons! Gamma rays! Beta rays!

(Polux runs towards the nucleus and he tumbles, when he emits green light of the laser pointer, which should imitate abeta ray. He is followed by Aura, which also falls.)

Ulysses: Oh, rays!

(They go all towards Polux and Aura. They take us in their arms and carry them for the bottom of the stage. Theyleave scene while the nucleus has just collapsed.)

(The cloth falls.)


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[If you mount this play, email me: [email protected]]

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