* John Moat' s comments on this scene:

To be honest, this section carries me way out of my depth. Part of my problem is that I don't have any of the dramatist's craft.

I feel sure it is far too long and complex to sustain the interest of anyone but an esotericist... I mean if presented as part of a stage-performance. But clearly it is pivotal to your drama and to your entire vision.

To be guided you would have to consult not just someone versed in the practicalities of theatre, but of the very specific theatre that you have conceived as vehicle.

My own hunch is that it's going to have to be enormously simplified. Shakespeare at times introduced an esoteric dimension by means of a masque, or play within play, perhaps most relevantly in The Tempest.

The play within the play, charged with meaning, is presented to the characters as a kind of ghostly diversion. Very short, - with music - very powerful.

I think you'll need to solve it is some similar way. So: -

Your characters meet for this ceremony. Parshan outlines the proceedings. The characters dramatically, in discussion of their roles, begin to indicate the tensions, personal and historic (cultural).

And than BANG! They are frozen to become spectators, in a panoramic show - where quite shortly, and ritualistically, perhaps in dumb-show, as the means of some highly mennered theatre, they see themselves, or rather the roles they were to assume, enact this symbolic drama that leads to reconciliation. And then BANG! The show is finished. And the original characters celebrate the revelation with the meal, which leads to the superbly dramatic moment of Haki drinking the blood.

*** John Moat's comments on Haki's soliloque at Scene 4, (before it was made into a duet):

{curly brackets - {} - recommended to dispense with}

All goes on far too long and is very repetitive. One beautiful little lyric would do the trick.