The Wandering Heretic

Every year around Halloween my family works with a local theatre group to entertain the children of the area. They cordon off a trail through the woods and set up various stations. Then actors stand in these spots and play assorted fairy tale characters. Each skit lasts about 3 minutes, but can be done almost continuously for a three hour period two days in a row.

This year, I played the Genie of Aladdin and the Lamp fame. (Yeah, that’s me at the left.) I thought is was so much fun that I would share the experience with those that read this column. For those that study such things, there are a great many mythological types in this simple story.

Here are my lines that I recited in costume almost 50 times in that six hour period. I am still recovering as I am a rather physical story teller.

Hello, I am the one and only Genie of the lamp. Would you like to hear the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp?

It all began on a dark night when the evil Jafar went to the Cave of Wonders in the desert and tried to go inside but the tiger god roared “only one who is worthy may enter here”. So Jafar found that scrawny kid, Aladdin and his smelly monkey Abu to go in and get him the lamp. Just as Aladdin grabbed the lamp, monkey grabbed a ruby and the tiger god was so mad that he turned the whole cave into a lava pit. Lucky for Aladdin my friend the magic carpet was there to fly them to safety.

Aladdin rubbed the lamp and out I came. I said “You are my master and I’m going to grant you three wishes.” Oh and by the way, wishing for more wishes is not allowed. It’s against the terms of the Genie Contract!” Still, that boy tricked me into getting him out the cave so he didn’t have to use a wish. In exchange, he promised that for his third wish he would free me.

His first wish was to be a prince so he could win princess Jasmine. So I made him Prince Ali Ababwa. Jasmine heard Ali telling the sultan that he wanted to win her love and she was mad. She said. “How dare you treat me as a prize to be won.” So Aladdin came up with an idea of taking her on a magic carpet ride and showing her a whole new world.

What I didn’t know was that Jafar was also trying to win the princess so he could become Sultan. Jafar threw Ali into the sea to drown him, so to save his life he had to use a second wish. Aladdin rescued the sultan from Jafar’s spell but the bad guy got away.

Then I asked what he wanted his third wish to be and he said “I know I promised to free you but if Jasmine found out I was just a street rat, she’d hate me” So he didn’t free me and I was kinda mad about that so I went back into my lamp.

When I came out that nasty Jafar and his rude bird had stolen the lamp so now I had to do what he said! Of course he wanted to be Sultan and then he wanted to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world. He showed Jasmine that Ali was really Aladdin and then blast him to the end of the earth. Aladdin came back and told Jafar that genie was more powerful and tricked him into turning himself into a genie. Then he was trapped in an itty bitty lamp. And there’s no rubbing allowed on this lamp!

Then the moment of truth came and sultan changed the law so that Jasmine didn’t have to marry a prince. For Aladdin’s third wish he set me free.

Now if you excuse me, I have a date with another rather famous Jeanie. I always was partial to bottle blondes.

(My thanks to the Broadview Heights Spotlights Theatre Group for allowing me each year to share in the fun.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.