Walking Shadow Theatre
1926 PLEASANT

Edward and Grace

Edward and Grace enter from the patio.
Edward and Grace enter from the patio.

As they enter, Edward is telling Grace the story of the mysterious owl migration of 1926. "They traveled east over the wooded Great Lakes," he says, "snatching up voles, mice, rats, pets. Each one settled in their own abandoned ruins, alone, and waiting." Grace, not at all perturbed by his attempt at being spooky, insists that they have procrastinated enough, and now they need to continue picking out tile and a sink for the bathroom.

Grace with tile samples.
Grace looks at tile samples.

They work for a little while, but are distracted by the need for food. Grace opens a welcome packet from their realtor, finding menus, and a letter with information about the history of their condo. The letter reveals that the original owner of the house, coincidentally, was also named Grace. An ornithologist and his daughter lived at the address until 1926, when a fire partially destroyed the house. It was repaired, and housed many other people over the years.

Edward continues unpacking while Grace looks at the mail. He finds an enormous, 3-D jigsaw puzzle piece, but doesn’t seem to find it at all strange. "Is this yours?" he asks. Grace replies, "If it's not yours, it's mine. That’s how it works."

The puzzle piece is placed in the large window between the kitchen and the hallway—the space above the kitchen counter, if there were a kitchen counter.

Grace, going through the mail, finds another letter labeled "Open Me," and drops it in front of the audience.

Grace drops the third clue.

An audience member opens the clue and reads the following message:

The owl boasts of its wisdom, but has no knowledge of where that wisdom came from. Unless it was witchcraft.

I can begin to show you what happened. Complete the puzzle that has been started. The pieces are underneath the sheets. Read the text.

John: Every performance began with Cherri and me drinking beer on the patio in full sight of the audience. I found this to be simultaneously the most relaxing and nerve-wracking part of the show, as there was no way for us to assist the audience if they had trouble with the first puzzle. We had to wait until we heard the bell - and sometimes that was a long wait indeed. 

Because we wanted an unrehearsed conversational tone as we entered, we never officially set the dialogue for this first scene. We established several key points, and then worked our way naturally to those points. This gave us considerable freedom to change our interactions from performance to performance. Variations were especially common in the tile names. Two that kept coming up were "Stardust Spectra" and "Khaki Brown Tempest", both of which we took great glee in mocking.

Continue to 6 - The Jigsaw Puzzle

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