THE MOUSY KING
a puppet play
This is tale addressed to the grown-ups of the long-gone year of 1968. Three decades later Emir Kusturica made his film Underground on a similar subject.
The state of The Mousy King is to be found in the underworld that is completely isolated from the surface world. The true employees of the dictator-king are diligently on the look-out so that no dangerous ray of sun enter the kingdom of darkness. A symbol of the all-seeing and all-encompassing power is the Green Snake, whose inaccessible nest is the king's crown. But a little girl that has by chance entered the underworld takes from the head of the caricature of a king the crown mistaking it to be a funny looking hat. Finally what turns out is that the all-encompassing power of the Green Snake is a sham and that the dictatorial power, which all think is to be eternal, collapses for in a few short minutes under the laughter and cheering of the people of the underworld.
In the times before 1989 the stage production of this play proved out of the question.
- It is published in the Collected Plays of Konstantin Iliev (Red Wine for Goodbye, Odysseus Travels to Ithaca,The Mousy King), Publishing House "Bulgarski pisatel", Sofia,1995,
ISBN 954-443-130-6