FLATIRON: THE PLAY
CAST:
* SEÑOR BORGES — Concierge of the building, quasi-omniscient, theatrical. Speaks with a rich Buenos Aires accent and the calm joy of someone who knows everything is a little silly.
* JERRY GREENBERG — A painter possessed by the Flatiron. Mostly responds in mutters, existential pronouncements, or from within his canvases.
[AT RISE]
The loft is dim. A warm amber light glows from behind the translucent canvases. The Flatiron Building looms beyond the window, surreal and faintly shimmering. At center: JERRY GREENBERG, lost in his ritual, silhouetted by window light. BORGES enters stage left through an imaginary door, carrying a clipboard and a mug of maté.
BORGES (to audience, cheerfully):Ah! Good evening, mis amigos del teatro. Welcome to the Flatiron Building—or at least its metaphysical doppelgänger. I am Señor Borges, concierge, not philosopher, though… often mistaken. (winks)
Today, I must check in on a tenant. A certain Señor Greenberg. An artist. Possibly immortal. Definitely unstable.
(He tiptoes toward Greenberg, who mutters to himself while painting.)
He paints only the Flatiron. Every day. From every side. Even the ones that don’t exist.
(leans in conspiratorially)
He says he’s proving it exists. I think he’s proving he exists.
(Calls over shoulder, not expecting an answer.)
Señor Greenberg! Are you still lost in your experiment?
GREENBERG (without turning):The Flatiron never casts the same shadow twice.
BORGES (to audience, nodding):Ah yes. He’s lucid. Dangerous. Or as we say in Buenos Aires—“como un mate con cáscara de banana.” A bit off.
But let me tell you something. You’re not here for a wellness check.No, no. You are here because this building… this triangle of illusion…has begun to speak.
(He moves to a canvas, lifts it, peers closely.)
These are not paintings. They are imaginary solutions to questions no one asked.This one? A trench. A collapse. Immigrant ghosts in mourning suits.But it never happened. Or it always did. It depends who remembers. And how they remember.
GREENBERG (softly):It’s not about memory. It’s about geometry.Long side. Short side. Thirteen across.It’s a Pythagorean wound.
BORGES (smiles, sips maté):See? He's a poet trapped in an engineer’s nightmare. Every soul is a duplex—a duplex in a city that keeps remodeling its tenants.
That brings me to … la dualidad. The double. The mirror. The twin.It is the oldest trick in fiction—and the truest one.
You see, people love to pretend they are singular, whole, consistent.But in literature, we know better.
Now, Jorge Luis Borges—my literary cousin, so to speak—He was obsessed with this idea. He even wrote as two people.Sometimes the blind librarian.Sometimes the sly metafictionist.Sometimes the man who knew he didn’t exist outside the page.
In one of his essays, Borges spoke about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—He said, and I quote almost exactly,“It’s a detective story, or rather, it should have been read as one.”Because the trick, you see, isn’t the transformation.The trick is not knowing the two men are the same.That’s what makes it sing!
And yet—every film since insists on casting the same actor for both parts.Why?Because we’re afraid the audience won’t understand.But Borges—my Borges—understood:The reader should not be given that luxury.They should be deceived, surprised, delighted.Only at the end should the fiction twist around and reveal:You were reading the same man all along.
Here, in Flatiron, the same trick plays.The narrator? Alex Alessi? A man looking for himself in the absence of another.Only to realize—he was the ghost he was chasing.He and Greenberg mirror each other. Echoes, distortions,Fragments of the same unsteady identity.
And this is not new, no. English literature is soaked in it.Dorian Gray and his portrait.Hamlet and his father’s ghost.Frankenstein and his monster.Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty—opposites that need each other to make sense.
But the finest doubles are the ones that hide in plain sight.As Borges once said, you'd never suspect if Jekyll had a different actor.And when the truth came—¡Dios mío!It would hit like thunder.
(He moves toward Greenberg, who is mid-painting, oblivious.)
This man paints himself, though he insists it is the Flatiron.And perhaps it is.But the building, like the story,Is merely a stage upon which the self performs itself—again and again—Each time hoping it might be the original.
(Returns to audience, voice softening.)
What if none of us are originals?What if we are all shadows of shadows,Performing personas we mistook for truth?
Borges wrote once,“I do not know which of us has written this page.”And I, your humble concierge,Could say the same.
(Beat. A small smile.)
Now… let us speak of pataphysics.The science of imaginary solutions!A system designed to explain what doesn’t need explaining!A lens of delightful nonsense.
Señor Greenberg here—he is a devout pataphysician.A man who builds meaning from ash. Who thinks truth is a performance art.Inventor? Yes.Experimentalist? Of course.Delusional con man?Only to himself.
GREENBERG (crosses stage in twelve steps, murmuring):One… two… three… the long side is longer in grief than in measurement.
BORGES:He paints it again and again—not to depict—but to divine.Each painting says: “Am I here yet?”Each brushstroke asks: “Was this real or just inherited fiction?”
(A distant wind gusts. The canvases tremble.)
And who am I, you ask?Why, I am the concierge of myth.The one who kept Alex Alessi’s name on the intercom.The archivist of misremembered fires and false construction sites.History is not written by victors—it is whispered by buildings.
(He taps the floor, dead serious for a moment.)
They danced beneath the Flatiron once. In a ballroom built on bones.Do not ask me how I know.Some truths are passed down like rent-controlled leases.
GREENBERG (urgent):There’s music in the walls.I hear it. Every New Year’s Eve.
BORGES:Of course you do. The ghosts never miss a party.
(He strolls upstage, peeking out the window.)
You want to know what this play is?It is not a story.It is a prism.Turn it one way: a myth.Another: a hallucination.Another: a man, lonely, trying to prove the city didn’t forget him.
(Turns back to audience, eyes glinting.)
The most honest art makes no claim to truth.Instead, it reveals the architecture of our fictions.
(Beat. He looks at Greenberg, then shrugs.)
And this building?It’s made of memory, missteps, and metaphor.Steel, maybe. But mostly, longing.
GREENBERG (near a whisper):I don’t paint buildings.I paint belief.The canvas is a wound.
BORGES (warmly):And we—We are its scar tissue.
(He takes a final sip, then sets the mug down on a paint-splattered pedestal.)
Stay long enough, and the Flatiron will speak to you too.But beware—It will tell you exactly what you want to hear…and then vanish like a ghoston the wrong side of a triangle.
(Lights begin to dim. Wind howls one last time.)
BORGES (smiling):Now, if you’ll excuse me—I must return to my post.Somebody must guard the doors…of unreliable realities.
So when you leave this play, remember:The person you think you are?Might just be the actor who got the part.
(He exits slowly, humming an old tango. Greenberg paints in silence. The Flatiron shimmers. Blackout.)
END
© Michael Arturo, 2025
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Michael Arturo writes fiction, contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.
