Lights rise on the stage. Four figures are frozen in what looks very much like a pose in an Old Master painting. They are a unit, but are on different planes. The emphasis is on a little man, quite scrawny in fact, with a bony face and penetrating eyes. He is old and frail, and looks as if he might break at any time. He wears a tattered suit that has a sheen of filth, a yellowing shirt that was once white, and a twisted tie. On one of his legs his pants are rolled up to the knee, and the leg is wrapped in a filthy bandage. He has no shoes. We shall later learn that he is His Excellency THE PRESIDENT. The rest are shoeless members of his Cabinet. They are a motley group of two men and one woman, plunged into the deepest levels of gloom imaginable: a menagerie of shapes and sizes in tattered and filthy clothes. His Excellency THE PRESIDENT, however, sports a broad self-satisfied smile.

Somewhere on the floor the sun has drawn bars from an unseen window so that we get the sense that our characters are locked up in a dingy cell. The shape and position of the bars will change as the position of the sun changes on its journey across the sky. At night the bars disappear and a dull yellowish light illuminates the lives of our characters. The upstage planes remain very dim throughout the play. These planes are known as the Shadows. If you are not using a proscenium you designate the weakest area/plane on your thrust, arena and so on as the Shadows. The Shadows are not totally dark. Tor instance when our characters are in the Shadows we can see them, and can sometimes identify them. Even now, as our motley individuals pose, we can see another figure in the Shadows. He is a military man in tattered uniform, and he sits on one of the boxes and crates that are on the stage and serve as furniture. He is the Honourable THE GENERAL. Note that besides the boxes and crates the stage is devoid of any props and sets.