Life Imitates Art. Again!

Danny Downs in his greatest role as Mon. Serpent in the Long Beach Playhouse 
production of Spinelli, September 2000. 

From the New York Times

Oscar Pistorius Removes His Artificial Legs at Sentencing Hearing
LONDON — Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic runner, removed his artificial legs and shuffled his way to the front of a courtroom in South Africa on Wednesday, the third day of a hearing to determine his sentence for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend.
Trembling and tearful, he rested his right hand on a desk for support as his lawyers pleaded with a judge to sentence him to community service rather than prison.
Dressed in a T-shirt and athletic shorts, Mr. Pistorius, 29, was under five feet tall without the J-shaped carbon-fiber prosthetic legs that earned him the nickname the Blade Runner. It was an image far more humble than that of the world-class athlete who successfully challenged able-bodied athletes.
Mr. Pistorius’s defense lawyers had asked him to take off his prosthetic legs to highlight the sense of vulnerability they say he felt when, acting out of fear and confusion, he fatally shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, early on Feb. 14, 2013. But the tactic appeared to also be meant generate sympathy from the judge and a lighter sentence than the 15 years Mr. Pistorius faces for murder.

From Spinelli

TRACY

Thank you. Now I know this might be painful for you, Mr. Serpent, but before you leave the courtroom, I wonder if you might do me a favor and remove your prosthetic devices.

SERPENT

(anxiously looking down at his legs, then up at TRACY)

Remove them?

TRACY

Remove them and demonstrate for the Court how you normally get around.

(A gasp goes up in the courtroom

HEPBURN rises)

HEPBURN

Objection, Your Honor. Is this necessary?

TRACY

Your Honor, the witness has been accused of affecting a false appearance in order to deceive the Court. I think he owes the Court a look at the real him.

(JORDAN looks to HEPBURN for a stronger objection, but there's none)

JORDAN

Objection overruled. Remove your legs, Mr. Serpent.

(With great trepidation, SERPENT removes his prosthetics and places them on top of the witness stand)

TRACY

Now would you come down from the witness stand and show us how you travel about day to day, year to year, millennium to millennium.

(SERPENT lowers himself down on to the courtroom floor and with arms tucked in tight to his sides--slowly, fretfully begins to slither

 JORDAN rises to watch, and slowly others--CLERK, BAILIFF, members of the gallery--rise from their seats to watch

 All eyes are transfixed by SERPENT'S painful progress towards GOD

 When he's almost there, he works his way up on his knees, starts bobbing his head and projecting his tongue in GOD'S direction, and then...)

SERPENT

(screaming)

You did this! You did this to me!

Blackout 
End Act One