Brief

England, 1538. A tale stranger than a zombie attack – based on actual history. The dancing plague is turning innocent people into uncontrollable mobs. A royal operative and his team of agents uncover a high-level plot as a foreign troublemaker tries to start a revolution.

What We Liked

“Adventure, mystery, romance and occasional coarse humor.” Capt. reynard, a semi-scrupulous member of the king’s guard, recruits or entraps agents in the political upheaval surrounding King Henry VIII. Wrenn, a young female agent, changes identities easily and is quick with a blade. her hapless cohorts include an idealistic, if somewhat naive, wandering musician and a cynical, knife-wielding pick-pocket.

This is a fun adventure about three good-hearted lonely men who, in an attempt to do what's right, find in each other a trustworthy friendship.

Film: "Dancing Beast" has a very well-developed, well-rounded plot that could easily be adapted into a strong screenplay. With appealing characters, rewarding arcs, the period setting of Henry VIII’s England, and the visual possibilities within the phenomenon of the Dancing Beast, this story has all the ingredients to become a great historical comedy adventure.

TV: Four interesting, flawed, good-hearted, and funny characters on a quest are all a good TV show needs. "Dancing Beast" is set in 16th Cent. England and has enough story to populate many seasons. The characters' backgrounds and blank-slated futures will grasp the audience and keep them wanting to watch the next episode.

Key points:

- The protagonists
- Their arcs
- The humor
- The Dancing Beast
- The ending

Synopsis

Sarah, a young serving woman, moves through a crowded marketplace, her thoughts scattered. She has no family and is completely dependent upon her sometimes difficult employers. She struggles with feelings of guilt and anger. The entire village is under a shadow cast by plague, famine, political unrest and a recent unsolved murder, "...everyone is clenching a jaw or a fist". Passing some children playing a rhyming game she begins to skip along, laughing at her own childish indulgence. For reasons she does not understand she begins to dance through the village square. Soon, others join in and the dance becomes wilder. The dancers flail about, injuring themselves and others. They head out of the village, leaving a trail of destruction.

After a brawl that leads to the destruction of a rural tavern house a semi-scrupulous royal operative known only as “CAPTAIN REYNARD” dragoons into service two traveling players, an itinerant harper and a smooth-talking tavern-fly. The hapless recruits’ names (and the reasons for concealing them) are gradually revealed. REYNARD introduces his assistant: “Please forgive RANZ. Can’t pour the piss out of his own boots at the end of the day. He wanted to be the Village Idiot but there was too much competition here.”

Previously unknown to each other the captives, MATTHEW and WILL, are trying to piece together the previous night’s events. Gradually they reveal something of their backgrounds. MATTHEW laughs and says, “So here we both are with our fine upbringing, lofty discourse and training in weaponry. On the run, penniless and friendless in a strange land. Obviously the privileges of a comfortable life are limited.”

Two women from very different stations in life enter the story. MORVANNA shakes her head at the difference between her name, “ringing of song and story”, and her current comfortable but mundane circumstances. We learn a little of her past - Henry VIII has banished the Gypsies from England and she is suspected of having Romani heritage. The second woman is currently known as “GWYNN” but, as she later tells WILL, she’s used so many different names – for reasons that become clear – that she’s in danger of forgetting her own. CAPTAIN REYNARD struggles with the fleeting memory of a woman he can’t identify.

REYNARD keeps his new agents in the dark about his operations. On the way to their first assignment they encounter a full-blown incidence of the Dancing Plague, a form of mass psychosis in which groups of otherwise ordinary people begin to dance uncontrollably, sometimes for days or weeks, often doing great harm to themselves and others. CAPTAIN REYNARD had an earlier encounter with the phenomenon which he has dubbed THE DANCING BEAST for the way the members of the mob seem to move as one creature. He brings THE DANCING BEAST under control using a method he developed years ago but not in time to prevent some destruction and loss of life.

MATTHEW and WILL are surprised by the sympathy REYNARD shows toward the victims. He tells them of losing someone close to him on his first encounter with THE DANCING BEAST and explains what little he knows of the phenomenon. “When does a ‘host’ of dancers become a ‘herd’ and then a ‘horde’? No one has returned - in their right minds - to tell the tale.”

MATTHEW and WILL are placed as traveling entertainers at the home of the Lord Mayor of Hunsley but they’re actually spying on a meeting between the Mayor, the DUKE OF CLARENDON and a foreign agitator, HIERONYMOUS BUNCK (yes). The body of a man, first thought to be the DUKE is found but the DUKE appears and identifies the man as his servant. WILL, who has a history with Clarendon, is accused but denies any involvement in the man’s death. He discovers that a young serving woman, GWYNN, is also working for REYNARD. When he asks her how she became an agent she tells him her real name, WRENN, and of her background in the theater - a young woman who pretended to be a boy so she could act the part of a woman when women were not allowed onstage.

MATTHEW’S reverie of his time with MORVANNA is interrupted by the woman herself. She tells him of the past three years of her life - and that of their children. She’s now married to a good man who doesn’t care about her past. They share a laugh remembering old times but Morvanna becomes uncomfortable and takes her leave.

The Captain and his team investigate a traveling preacher, THE GOOD PASTOR MALCOLM, who has been preparing his followers for The End of Days. REYNARD and MALCOLM debate the nature of existence.

REYNARD begins to suspect that his operation may only be part of a larger plot, the full details of which are unknown to him. HIERONYMOUS BUNCK is involved in a scheme along with the DUKE, who has even fewer scruples than REYNARD. BUNCK and CLARENDON are fomenting a large-scale riot as an excuse to confiscate land but the carnage is about to go beyond their control. They have cleverly stirred long-simmering resentments, turning neighbor against neighbor. The villagers, having sacked and burned the church, are headed toward the town where MORVANNA lives with the children and her husband. In the outlands, another Dancing Beast is forming and heading toward the town.

MATTHEW finds MORVANNA and her family. The husband is initially suspicious but the three join forces to protect the children from the mobs. REYNARD, WRENN and WILL are captured in the village by CLARENDON, BUNCK and their henchmen. Ranz lures the rioters through town and contrives an escape for his friends but not before REYNARD and WILL have been dosed with a slow-acting poison.

Seeing an approaching storm as a Sign of The End Of Days, the Good Pastor Malcolm is moving his followers toward the village. The fervent believers, the rioting mob and the Dancing Beast converge on the town. The storm rages and a dam breaks, causing floods and destruction until, finally: “Most survived but they were never the same in the years that followed. The rioters and looters would see the storm, the flood and the Dancing Beast as the Hand of God. They lived in fear for the rest of their days and attended church regularly. The surviving members of the Dancing Beast had seen something in themselves that Man was not meant to see and they could not forget. The area remained a place of fear long after the events of that day had passed into history, then legend, and finally...children’s fireside tales.”

After the destruction, REYNARD and WILL (who have survived the poison by novel means) find MATTHEW and, with RANZ’s help, go in search of WRENN.

About The Author

John Foley worked many years as a musician and music therapist before writing his first book, ‘Guitar Music for the Mid-Life Crisis' about the history and science behind the human response to music. He got the idea for "The Dancing Beast" while researching and coming across the phenomenon known as “the Dancing Plague.” His debut fictional novel mixes mystery, adventure, political intrigue, and witty humor.