ACTORS:

(SPOONMAN HOLDS UP FLATHEAD PUPPET.)

This is Flathead. He is lead actor in Spoonman Puppet Show. Flathead is protagonist character, painfully inept in all aspects of life. In order to survive, he must withstand the constant attacks of his arch-antagonist, the incredibly resourceful, Pointy-Face Man.

Flathead is ACTOR for some of the following reasons: Because...

1. He knows his place.

2. He respects conventions that limit his actions.

3. He follows basic script and direction he has been given.

4. He portrays in dynamic form, balance that exists between action and potential for action.

5. His character is endowed with certain qualities that differentiate him from all other nearby characters.

6. His primary purpose is to initiate and to sustain action as spelled out in the manifesto by which his character was given birth.

7. He is always on the lookout for free food.

AGENTS:

Remember Greek myths? Remember Trojan war? Remember story of Paris and Helen, of Menelaus and Agamemnon, of Hector and Achilles. They were actors in theater of war, on majestic stage of Ancient Troy. Remember the Gods; Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon. From the walls above the battle the Gods watched and fought among themselves just as the mortals did below, some on the side of the Greeks, some on the side of the Trojans. Like rival puppetmasters, like contesting playwrights these embodiments of formless qualities guided the action and the fate of their heroes, giving and taking favors, pushing to keep their favorites victorious, and dealing out death if a hero should be left unattended by his guardian god. Mortals, they were actors, gods they were agents. In this particular way, Spoonman is little bit like Greek god. They are both agents anyway. They are agents for some of the following reasons:

1. They operate from inside the representation, sometimes visibly, sometimes invisibly.

2. The directives they provide issue from some deeply interconnected and underlying level of reasoning.

3. They possess certain skills which they bring to bear on situation.

4. They possess a self-awareness at least one order of magnitude greater than that of the actors within the representation.

5. In any circumstance, they are exercising a particular agenda, a preferred plan, a next choice.

6. They have the power at any time to suspend their agenda in favor of one presented by the situation or by the actors themselves.

7. They always take their commission off the top.

World stage is filled with actors and agents, enacting situations that remain essentially unchanged since beginning of time. Today, above walls of Gaza Strip, long repressed agent/gods suck up massive amounts of liquor, and fight over the bloody fate of their mortal offspring.