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"Until now every night has been a gem
well spent—but this time I can’t think my way. I’ve come up
against an essence. In a rockless unwooded land I can forge these
stones in a furnace—but who can make firewood? If a whole
city’s cooking must be done on dung and dried reeds, how can I
find the fuel to bake a million bricks? I can’t squeeze flame
from sod! What’s left to burn? There isn’t heat enough in all
our straw to glaze a single square-foot slab of clay."
-- Gilgamesh
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The Tower of Gilgamesh
The Acts of Gilgamesh
Two Plays by Jonathan Bayliss
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Jonathan Bayliss (1926-2009) wrote two plays loosely related to
the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic. Information about the playwright is
available at
www.baylisswritings.net and
www.drawbridgepress.com.
Civilization began in Sumer (now southern Iraq), before the civilizations of
China, Egypt, or India. Agriculture started in Sumer; the first cities were formed
there. It is in that part of Iraq - at a time when the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers emptied separately into the Persian Gulf - that the
first writing and numbering, the first accounting system, and the first literature
originated - and, for better or for worse, the Tower of Babel.
The epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible both came out of Iraq. The West
shares them with Muslim civilization.
These plays are sequentially related to the life of Gilgamesh, but
they can be produced independently and in different styles.
The production notes of The Tower of Gilgamesh
are relevant to the second play, The Acts of
Gilgamesh. Both playscripts are available for inspection (PDF
format) from this website.
For permission to reproduce or perform the plays, email
info@drawbridgepress.com.
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