Ralph Belard, All-American. Photo Lucas Miller.

CANCELLED!

Michael Miller’s solo play “Transfiguration,” winner of Best One-Man Drama at the 2018 United Solo Festival, will play in London, as part of United Solo’s First London Festival in September, 2 to 12, at the Actors Centre. Gary Hilborn will repeat his award-winning performance, directed by Graydon Gund.

Meet Ralph Belard. You’ll find Ralph lunching on sushi and sake—all deluxe—at his favorite harborside restaurant.

His neighbors were shooting each other dead in the street this morning. He kept his cool and his life, but a guy has to move on, doesn’t he? He might even deserve a little treat, just to help him get over it. Ralph never learned what made them do it. He didn’t care anyway. He watched a woman and her children die. He killed a couple of men in self-defense, and he enjoyed it. Also a cat—by accident.

Rather than try to stop the mass murder, Ralph joined in and survived by following the behavior around him. Shooting people made him feel big at first, then small, when he thought the police might appear and take him in for questioning. But they never showed up, much to his relief. His next step was to treat himself to an expensive lunch with plenty of Otokoyama Junmai Daiginjo (“Man’s Mountain”). Then it was time to move on.

As we constantly take in human disasters like this—and the epidemic of gun violence can stand in for other man-made emergencies like racism, criminal abuse of innocents, corruption, destruction of the environment, and plain old hate and greed—through the media, or, for some of us, experience, what do we do? Are we any better than Ralph? Not enough of us, not enough.