The Hamlet Project

They say that flies are the hardest to train. If you want to make an insect circus, you’d be better off with fleas or beetles or anything other than flies. Flies can’t remember anything. Train them at noon – they’ll have forgotten everything they learned by teatime.
But the Great Man didn’t care. He had a room full of flies and he spoiled his favorites, gave them sugar water from an eye dropper, wrote them love songs. He was indefatigable. He’d run them through the same routine everyday and every day they’d start again at the beginning as if they’d never landed on a little trapeze before, never sat in a miniature lion’s mouth.
When the Great Man tripped over his tiny tent one morning when the door bell rang at the crack of dawn, he went down with a crash and never got back up.
When the authorities finally came to retrieve him, they just waved the flies away, not noticing that some were dressed in tiny costumes – with tiny top hats and tails, tiny evening gowns. They brushed them all away, missing their distinctions.