Chapter 18 - Because it is There

The theatre must be absolutely dark. Cover the exit signs, bribe the fire marshal if you have to, but when the play starts there must not be one free photon in the auditorium. Of course we cannot provide for the light leaked by glow-in-the-dark writing on an audience member's wrist-watch, but therefore we must be all the more diligent in blocking the light we can.

It will help if you imagine the darkness first. Pretend that you are in the audience. You are there with your Mother or the girl that you met last week at the theatre when your coats got mixed up. Come up with a good story for why you are at the theatre, going to see this play in particular. Don't read any further until you have done this.

Now pretend you have been sitting in this dark dark theatre for, say, thirty seconds. Probably you are thinking this is the darkest theatre you've ever been to. You start to get a little bit nervous, perhaps because you can't see your proverbial hands. Most people at this point will think that they felt something strange about the lighting even when they had first entered the auditorium. This means that you have an observant audience because you have managed to tint all of the house lights slightly orange. And then, just at the breaking point when the slowest audience member has started to worry that someone could be stealing his wallet, just then, and no later, the curtain parts.

You see, the whole time the audience had been sitting and thinking and worrying in total darkness, behind the curtain, which is extra thick and hung with great care to not give this away, the brightest blue and brightest white lights you can afford are shining. The set itself, which is completely white is reflecting this ultra-bright light and it's bouncing around all over the stage trying with all its might to get through that curtain, which it can not do because the curtain is so well-sealed.

So with that in mind, when just the tiniest little crack between the curtain opens the excited light bursts into the theatre. The audience is momentarily blinded. And when their irises adjust they see what appears to be vast sheet of broken ice.

In reality they are seeing an assortment of 21 platforms all in various interlocking shapes. Each platform must be quadrilateral and between 1.5 and 3 feet thick. These platforms are also all suspended from the fly space by sturdy cables and can move up and down into different configurations when needed. Right now all of the platforms are resting on the stage. Things look very jagged and cold.

Once the audience has regained its sight, it is time for the actors. There are five characters, three of them male and two female and they enter in the following order.

James Masterson, 32 a novice professor of history.

Cynthia Van Loon, 28, author of a best selling fitness book.

Francis McStier, 18, college freshman and apprentice of sorts to Masterson.

Sid Cawley, 40, writer of creative nonfiction, adventurer.

Daisy Edison, 21, actress, and lover of sorts to Cawley.

They convene in the center of the stage, each person carries a large knapsack and stands on a separate platform. Daisy sits down, pooped.

SID: You all right Daisy?

DAISY: Yes, yes of course. I just wanted to have a sit.

FRANCIS: How far do you suppose we've gone Jim?

JIM: I'd say we're a third of the way up.

FRANCIS: (Writing in a note book) Day 3: 3:45 P.M. one third of the way up.

CYNTHIA: One third eh? I happened to have brought three bottles of champagne. I say we drink one for each third we go.

DAISY: And not save any for the way down?

CYNTHIA: Who cares about the way down? We'll have already seen the world from its highest point.

DAISY: It does sound nice. Just don't let Sid have more than one glass.

FRANCIS: I'd like some champagne.

CYNTHIA: You're not old enough boy.

JAMES: Of course he's old enough. This mountain doesn't have a drinking age. Give me that bottle. We're going to toast the mountain.

Cynthia takes a bottle from her knapsack.

JAMES: Do you need help with that Cynthia?

CYNTHIA: Of course I do not.

Cynthia lets the cork fly off stage left. The audience should jump at the sound, and before they have landed back in their seats, the loudest, most catastrophic noise your audience has ever heard in a theatre goes off.

The lights get brighter, the stage fills with mist and the platforms shake. Seconds later the platforms begin to shift into a configuration where each is at a drastically different height level. It is also of utmost importance that the five platforms carrying actors are at such a configuration that it is believable that none of the actors can see the others. From now until the final pages whenever an actor speaks he should be hit with a pure white follow spot. If he is not currently speaking he should be hit with an ice-blue follow spot.