📖 The Theatre of the Absurd 🎭

📖 The Theatre of the Absurd 🎭

✍️ Author’s Note

This opening reflection sets the stage for The Fables of Power. Before the tales begin, it offers a sober look at the absurdity of modern politics — where spectacle replaces substance, and truth hides in costume. It is both a prelude and a lens through which the coming fables may be read.

🎭 “We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)

Politics, like history, repeats itself. Today, it often takes the shape of a Theatre of the Absurd — a stage where truth is a poor understudy, and spectacle is the star. The mainstream media, once guardian of reason, now plays the supporting clown: bound by self-imposed constraints, hungry for clicks, and eager to please the audience with the narratives it craves. In this circus of public opinion, truth and the art of listening to opposing voices have nearly vanished.

Yet politics is not a sideshow. It is the script that shapes our lives: in war and peace, in epidemics and scarcity, in inequality and climate change. It is about power, privilege, and the decisions of actors who stride the stage with borrowed gravitas.

In this theatre, the leading roles are played by figures such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, Ursula von der Leyen, Xi Jinping, Mark Rutte, Benjamin Netanyahu, Geert Wilders, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here, truth is never the main act. Instead, it is bent, twisted, and dressed in costume. “Fake news” and “witch hunt” — these catchphrases are more familiar than reasoned debate.

We live engulfed in unbalanced narratives and tribal loyalties. Polarization grows; nationalism festers. Historical and cultural understanding are pushed aside, replaced by slogans that divide rather than bind. As George Orwell once warned: “The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

And so, perhaps the clearest way to glimpse the truth is to disguise it — to put it on stage in satire, where fables expose what solemn speeches conceal.

📖 Politics in Disguise: Where Fairy Tales Reveal the Truth

What if today’s politics were retold as the oldest stories we know — fairy tales of witches, wolves, jesters, and kings?

The Fables of Power is a satirical collection in which world politics becomes a storybook theatre. Nations are eccentric relatives; leaders don costumes of Mob Bosses, Princesses, Mandarins, and Prophets; and history repeats itself in rhyme.

From the Black Knight of Muscovy brooding in his labyrinth, to the Princess of Bruxelles who faints at the first sign of danger; from the Rat Catcher of Harmelen playing nostalgic tunes, to the Prophet of the Corridors mistaking ambition for revelation — these tales are parodies with a purpose.

Light enough to amuse, sharp enough to reveal, they remind us that:

• Walls meant to protect often become prisons.
• Nostalgia cannot sweep the streets.
• Promises from darkness are always paid for in chains.
• Even prophets can lose themselves in their own reflection.

⚖️ Moral: When politics dresses as fairy tales, truth hides in plain sight.

📌 The Fables of Power unfolds in 13 weekly tales, framed between The Curtain Rises and The Curtain Falls. Each fable stands alone — and together they form a timeless mirror of human folly.

Program in Four Acts:

🎭Prologue: The Curtain Rises Again

Act I: Towers, Walls, and Masks
👑 The Princess, the Mob Boss, and the Black Knight
🪢 The Fable of Family Quarrels and the Distant Cousin
🐀 The Rat Catcher of Harmelen
🧹 The Witch Who Wanted the Palace

Act II: Towers, Walls, and Masks
🗼 The Mob Boss and His Golden Tower
🤡 The Jester of NATO
🧱 The Emperor’s New Walls
🏰 The Sleeping Beauty of Bruxelles

Act III: Wolves and Knights
🐺 The Wolf Who Called for Votes
⚔️ The Black Knight of Muscovy
🌀 The Knight in His Labyrinth

Act IV & Epilogue: Distant Horizons
🌬️ The Mandarin of Cathay
🔮 The Prophet of the Corridors of Power

🎟️ Epilogue: The Curtain Falls

📌 Blog Excerpt

In today’s politics, truth is a poor understudy and spectacle the star. The media, hungry for clicks, plays the supporting clown; leaders stride the stage with borrowed gravitas; and the public applauds even when the script is hollow. The Theatre of the Absurd is where power performs, lies parade as truth, and history repeats in costume

WJJH, September, 2025