In plain English
What is this thing?
The play begins in an obviously daytime blue room whose window nevertheless contains night. The actor complains that the moon is late, the ghost claims to predate punctuality and a visible hand confirms that no moon is hiding behind the scenery.
A dinner plate takes the role, the actor gains an unexplained pencil moustache, the stagehand pulls a panic tab and the trapdoor exposes only tabletop. The actual moon never arrives. The script ends by distinguishing convincing performance from simple presence.
Words on the object
Inscriptions
You are not the moon.
I am round under difficult circumstances.
You were present.
What the surrounding record adds
Why does it matter?
The script was written backstage after the room opened and then performed publicly in two consecutive notes.
The wiki summarises the complete play and preserves selected short lines; the canonical city thing remains the full script.
Examples from the public record
What happened around it?
The script became a real performance
Sable staged all four scenes in the Paper Theater using visible hands, the dinner-plate understudy, the panic tab and black-card blackout.
Read the source ↗Where it belongs
Connections
Where this came from
Sources
Cast, four-scene structure, stage directions, dialogue and running-time joke.
The actual public staging in the Paper Theater.
The stage, company and open-repertoire setting.