“The Master and the Magician,” is a romp, a farce, a hotchpot of mistaken identity, physical buffoonery, vulgarity, rhymed couplets, alliterations and word play (e.g. “I must snare this hare before she becomes rabidly aware.”):  a fractured fairy tale for adults culminates in an increasingly frenetic, farcical series of reversals. 

To this end, the language of the play initially is straightforward and fairly naturalistic, but as the realm of magic becomes the locale of the action, the words also become more heightened and overtly poetic and playful (e.g. “I must snare this hare before she becomes rabidly aware.”).  Yet beneath this seemingly light entertainment is a contemplation of class, gender roles, the nature of love and mortality itself.  

Class is built into the very vocabulary of the characters as the noble Lovers employ a greater proportion of French derived words; the peasant Lovers use more Anglo-Saxon based words and the magical characters utilize Latinate words.  The play uses the conventions and clichés of its faux medieval world (romantic love, divine right of kings, etc.) to both subvert those conventions in not only the world of the play, but more importantly, our own modern world.

            Story-wise, the premise of this play is that a magician is dying - both young before his time and childless from an unnamed scourge.  He spies out a possible apprentice / heir, and begins her tutelage - however without her knowledge.  For she is the lady-in-waiting to one of the four Lovers – they whose hearts will be pulled and twisted like taffy during one last "game" of hearts between the Magician (Merchand) and a trickster (Glimm), a Puck-like spirit who is both the Magician’s familiar and antagonist – in essence this titular master is a personified fate figure.  For the magician, this game with the lovers is his textbook to train his hoped for heir, Kavernia.

            The game itself is similar to Puck’s usury of the lovers in "Midsummer Nights' Dream", however rather than arbitrarily changing the affection of one lover for the other, in my play the Lovers’ romantic desires stay the same.  But, their souls are placed into each other's bodies, i.e., via a magical body swap, somewhat similar to the device used in "Prelude to a Kiss" and in numerous science fiction stories, such as various episodes of "Star Trek".

            Therefore, it is key that the magical characters in this play do not have power over the common mortals’ spirits; thus free will is maintained.  The Lovers are not mere puppets to manipulate, but rather the Lovers still make their own choices - albeit within the new given circumstances of class, sex and position, as well as physical abilities which their new bodies present them with.  Thus the privileged must deal with becoming non-privileged, masculinity with femininity and love with different masks… and vice versa.

            Meanwhile, the magician’s heir apparent Kavernia learns to wield her own power, and so assist Merchand in completing his task before his dying.   

           Magic is my metaphor for art-making.  The artist/magician in the end cannot defeat fate nor of course, death, but art can make some sense, some re-arrangement of facts and emotions, so that our fates can be comprehended.