Stage: Shehrazade’s studio. Shehrazade is mixing pigment wearing an apron. sketches of naked women on the wall. Shehrayar rushing in, in full costume, tiara and royal staff.
————————————————————————————————–
Shehrayar (controlling his anger): Shehrazade, why do you draw nude women? This is blasphemy.
Shehrazade (carelessly): Why? What’s wrong with women’s bodies?
Shehrayar (dumbfounded) : Nude women?! Everything is wrong with that.
Shehrazade (looking him in the eye): They are not real women. They are art. They are ideas.
Shehrayar : They evoke desire.
Shehrazade (with a sarcastic smile): Desire is born to be evoked. How else human kind continues?! What good desire is if you want to kill it?
Shehrayar: Not kill it,but suppress it and control it.
Shehrazade: THAT will evoke it like nothing else. You know better, Shehrayar.
Shehrayar: Shut up!. Nudity encourages sin.
Shehrazade: Nudity in art means more than encouraging “sin”. What you call sin is a minor side effect.
Shehrayar (with wide open eyes): Minor?!!
Shehrazade: Shehrayar, eroticism results from variety of things. You can not ban everything erotic.
Shehrayar: You want to destroy the fabric of society. You want God’s wrath to devastate my kingdom
Shehrazade: Society needs to breath. Your kingdom needs fresh air and sunshine to keep its fabric from rotting.
Shehrayar (furious): Shehrazade, you are playing with fire. You know exactly what I can do to you.
Shehrazade (with the same sarcastic smile): And I know exactly what you can not do to me.
Shehrayar: Shut up woman!
Shehrazade (lovingly): I want to help you Shehrayar. Please accept what you are.
Shehrayar: Shut up! Shut up!
Shehrazade: Accept your human desire. It is not sin. Accept your…
Shehrayar: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
—————————————————————————————————-
Shehrayar rushes out of the room. Shehrazade goes back to her pigment bowl.
—————————————————————————————————-