On a ship at sea: the tempestuous noise of African-American tourists and absconding conference delegates is heard.

Enter the Master of the Slaver and an Education Officer.

master: Education Officer!

EDUCATION OFFICER: In here, master: whatËs up?

master: We have guests. Speak to the guides. Immediately. Tell them to say something politically correct or the museum is history.

Exit Education Officer. Rhetoric is heard off stage.

Enter Museum Staff dressed as Mariners.

A tape recording plays a paper read in Brussels by willy bal: I see all of these men stripped of their humanity, then recorded and accounted for only as "pieces of ebony." I hear the Very Christian King launching his ships on a conquest "of souls and of spices." The fleshly covering of souls can be emptied by scurvy and by dysentery, for in any case, the soul is saved by the grace of baptism. The spices, however, must arrive guaranteed in flavor, safe and sound in port, ready to refloat the royal treasury. Île de Gorée: sunset on a choppy sea, contemplated between the bars of captivity. Confinement facing the infinity of a free horizon. Who will ever tell the secret or screaming despair of those hearts of ebony wood?⁴

Enter Education Officer, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, and others.

ALONSO: You there. WhereËs the master? Say something.

EDUCATION OFFICER: I pray now, go back to your conference.

ANTONIO: Where is the theory?

EDUCATION OFFICER: Do you not hear it? You mar our labour: donËt say anything, you do assist the storm.

gonzalo: Do you know who youËre addressing.

EDUCATION OFFICER: When the sea is like it is, what care these swells for the name of king? To the conference in silence! Trouble us not.

gonzalo: Good, yet remember who funds this ship.

EDUCATION OFFICER: Sure, the one who pays my way but what are you paying me for if it is not to steer. YouËre a bored member, command these delegates to silence. Ready yourselves in your hotel rooms for the mischance of the hour, for the end of the occidental hegemony, and give thanks that your dogmas have lived so long. Out of our way, I say.

Exit Education Officer pursued by a tape recorder.

ALONSO: I take great comfort from this fellow: I think he has no drowning mark on him; his complexion is perfect for the gallows. We need do nothing but go to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable. If he was not born to be hanged, our budget is wasted.

Re-enter Education Officer.

EDUCATION OFFICER: Stay the new course. A plague on this waffle! They pass louder wind than the weather or any in our office.

ANTONIO : HeËll be hangËd yet, though every drop of water swear against it. And gape at widest to glut him.

A confused noise within: Mercy on us!·We split, we split!·

Farewell, my sister!·Farewell, brother!·We split, we split, we split!

sarat maharaj: The Congo is flooding the Acropolis.⁵

ANTONIO: LetËs all sink with the king.

ferdinand: LetËs take leave of him.

Exeunt Ferdinand and others.

SEBASTIAN: Now would I give a thousand words for an acre of painting. I would sooner a dry death. Bartender!

Exeunt.