GALAHAD, aka “Galahad,” aka, “The Pure One,” aka “Success” was known as “the perfect knight:” for his purity, his nobility, and his bravery. He survived the Chair of Fear, effortlessly pulled a sword from a stone (a different sword), sat at the Round Table, and discovered the grail. There was only one problem with Galahad: perfection tends to ruin everything. What is a sword removed from a stone? What is a death fear when it doesn’t actually kill anyone? What is The Round Table without the Quest for a Grail? What is a knight without temptation? The answer is either not much, or everything. Galahad ended the last and greatest quest, and then, work complete, turned into a ray of light and disappeared, leaving us to figure out which we’d rather have, in the end, perfect success or all the messiness of life, love, and your mates riding around on horses looking for nonexistent things because you knew deep down it was always the journey that mattered.
Of their play about Galahad, Carson Beker writes, “Galahad 2.0 is the most perfect robot, model, teacher, and guardian for your child! Galahad 2.0 has a solution for everything! Galahad is The Good Robot. Galahad 2.0 will teach you to code. Children with Galahads perform 40% better than children without Galahads – but what happens to them after the next upgrade? Galahad is a love story about robots, purity, and whether perfection can have a soul.”
SIR GALAHAD or A PERFECt (K)NIGHT by Carson Beker
Directed by Nara Dahlbacka
Staged Reading on November 20, 2019 at The EXIT Theatre
Carlos Carrillo (Galahad)
Eduardo Escuela (Galahad 2.0)
Carl Lucania (The Designer)
Sarah Hadassah Negron (Narrator)
CARSON ASH BEKER, aka, “The Hyperbolic,” writes plays, tells stories, and gathers people around tables. They are the co-founder of the Pirate Art School The Escapery, and co-founder of Queer Cat Productions, an immersive theater outfit. Their words have appeared or are forthcoming in The Fairy Tale Review, Cutthroat, Spunk, Foglifter, Gigantic Sequins, Utterance, and Radar Literary Series. Their plays have been produced or in development through 3Girls Theatre, Custom Made Theater, Exit Theater, and Z-Space. They are a Lambda Emerging Writer Fellow in Fiction, a Tin House Scholar, and a member of Clarion West 2018. They can be found at CarsonBeker.com, QueerCatProductions.com, and www.Escapery.org. Someday they will rest. Until then, they chase the questioning beast.
The image of Sir Galahad was created by Cody A. Rishell.