173 - The Hundred Year Play
Quoth the raven:
[bird noises]
Welcome to Night Vale.
Listeners, some exciting news from the world of theatre!
The 100 year play is about to reach its final scene. Yes, this is the play that has been running continuously since 1920. Written by a brilliant playwright Hannah Hershman, designed to take exactly 100 years to perform. And the tireless volunteer of the Night Vale Players Playhouse have been going through those scenes, one after another, for decade upon decade.
There’s little time to rehearse, for each hour brings new scenes and each scene will only be performed once the play moves on, in order to keep up with the tight schedule needed to execute the entire script before a century elapses.
It is a monumental work of theatre, but like all work, it must some day cease. Today, specifically.
I will be in attendance at that historic moment, when the final scene is performed and the curtain closes on the 100 year play.
More soon, but first the news.
We bring you the latest on the lawsuit “The estate of Franklin Chen vs. the city of Night Vale”. As you know, this case has grown so large and complicated that I’ve not had the time to discuss it in my usual community radio broadcasts. But instead, have started a true crime podcast called “Bloody Laws, Bloody Claws: The Murder of Frank Chen”, in which I strive to get to the truth of just what happened on that fateful night when five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels met Frank Chen, and then later Frank Chen’s body was found covered in burns and claw marks. It’s a confounding mystery. The Sheriff’s Secret Police announce that it seems really complicated and they’re not even gonna try to solve that sucker.
“Oh, what?” a Secret Police spokesman muttered at an earthworm he found in his garden. “You want us to fail? You wanna see us fail? That’s why you want us to investigate this case, to see us fail at it?”
The family of Frank Chen say they merely want the appropriate parties, in this case the city of Night Vale, Hiram McDaniels and an omniscient conception of God, to take responsibility for their part in this tragedy. The trial is now in its 10th month, and has included spirited re-enactments of the supposed murder by helpful Players Playhouse performers in between their work on the 100 year play. 3 changes of judge and venue due to “some dragon attacks and constant interruptions from a local audio journalist, who hosts a widely respected true crime podcast”.
Still, with all this, we near a verdict. Judge Chaplin has indicated she will issue her ruling soon.
“Like in the next year or so?” she said. “Certainly within 5 years. Listen, I don’t owe you a verdict, just because you’re paying me to do a job, you can’t rush me to do it. The verdict will be done when. It’s. Done.”
Chaplin then huffed out of the courtroom followed by journalists shouting recommendations for episodes of their podcast to listen to.
I was present, you know, on opening night of the 100 year play. Ah, how the theatre buzzed! Of course this was partly the audience, thrilled to be at the start of such an unprecedented work, but mostly – it was the insects. The Night Vale Players Playhouse had quite a pest problem at the time, and still does. It’s difficult to do pest control when there is a 100 year long play being performed on stage at every hour of every day.
The curtain opened those many years ago on a simple set of a studio apartment, a kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings.
“Come in, it’s open,” the man says.
A woman enters, flustered. She is holding a newborn.
“There’s been a murder!” she says. “The victim was alone in a room, and all the doors and windows were locked.
“My god!” the man says and springs up. “Who could have done this, and how?!”
the woman tells him: “It turns out to be the gardener, Mr. Spreckle. He served with the victim in the war and never could forgive him for what happened there. He threw a venomous snake through an air vent.”
The man sits back down, nodding.
“Aah! So the mystery is solved.”
As a playwright, Hannah Hershman did not believe in stringing up mysteries a second longer than was necessary.
The baby in the woman’s arm stirs.
“Shush, shush little one!” the woman says.
The man looks out the window where he cannot see the sky.
“It might look like rain,” he says. “Who knows?”
Thus began a journey of 100 years.
And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Night Vale Medical Board, which would like to remind you that it is important to drink enough water throughout the day. Drink more water! Your body cannot function without water. Without water, you are just dust made animate. Water forms the squelching mud of sentience.
Try to have at least ten big glasses of water. Not over the entire day, right now. See if you can get all ten of them down. Explore the capacity of your stomach. See if you can make it burst. You will either feel so much better, or an organ will explode and you will day painfully. And either one is more interesting than the mundane now.
You should drink even more water than that. Wander out of your door, search the Earth for liquids. Find a lake and drain the entire thing, until the bottom feeders flop helplessly on the flatlands. Laugh slushingly as you look upon the destruction you have wrought. The power that you possess now that you are well hydrated. Move on from the lake and come to the shore of an ocean. All oceans are one ocean that we have arbitrarily categorized by language. The sea knows no separation, and neither will you when you lay belly down on the sand, put your lips against the waves and guzzle the ocean.
The ocean is salty. It will not be very hydrating, so you’ll need to drink a lot of it. Keep going until the tower tops of Atlantis see sky again for the first time in centuries, until the strange glowing creatures of the deep-deep are exposed, splayed out from their bodies now that they no longer have the immense pressure of the ocean depths to keep their structure intact. And once you have drunk the oceans, turn your eyes to the stars. For there is water out there too, and you must suck dry the universe.
This has been a message from the Night Vale Medical Board.
20 years passed without me thinking about the 100 year play. You know how it is. One day you’re an intern at the local radio station doing all the normal errands like getting coffee and painting pentacles upon Station Management doors as part of the ritual of the slumbering ancients. Then 20 years passes and everything is different for you. Your boss is gone and now you are a host of the community radio station, and there are so many new responsibilities and worries and lucid nightmares in which you explore a broken landscape of colossal ruins. So with all of that, I just kind of forgot the 100 year play was happening. But they were toiling away in there, doing scenes around the clock, building and tearing down sets at a frantic pace, trying to keep up with the script that relentlessly went on, page after page. And sometimes one of the people working on the play would wonder: how does this all end? But before they could flip ahead and look, there would be another scene that had to be performed and they wouldn’t have a chance. So no one knew how it ended. No one except Hannah Hershman, the mysterious author of this centennial play.
Soon after becoming radio host, during the reading of a Community Calendar, I was reminded that the play was still going on, and so decided to check in. I put on my best tux, you know it’s the one with the scales and the confetti canon. And then took myself to a night at the theatre.
I can’t say what happened in the plot since that first scene, but certainly much had transpired. We were now in a space colony thousands of years from now, and the set was simple, just some sleek chairs and a black backdrop dotted with white stars of paint. A woman was giving a monologue about the distance she felt between the planet she was born on, which I believe was supposed to be Earth, and the planet she now stood on. I understood from what she was saying that the trip she had taken to this planet was one way, and that she would never return to the place she was born.
“We… are… all of us… moved… by time,” she whispered in a cracked, hoarse voice. “Not… one of us dies… in the world… we were born into.”
Sitting in my seat in that darkened theatre, I knew two facts with certainty. The first was that this woman had been giving a monologue for several days now. She wavered on her feet, speaking the entire four hours that I was there. And I don’t know how much longer she spoke after I left, but it could have been weeks. She was pale and her voice was barely audible, but there was something transfixing about it, and the audience sat in perfect silence, leaning forward to hear her words.
The other fact I understood was that this woman was the newborn from the very first scene. Not just the same character, but the same actor. 20 years later, she was still on that stage, still portraying the life to the child we had been introduced to in the opening lines. She was an extraordinary performer, presumably, having had a literal lifetime of practice. And that was the last time I saw the play, until tonight, when I will go to watch the final scene.
But first, let’s have a look at that Community Calendar.
Tonight the school board is meeting to discuss the issues of school lunches. It seems that some in power argue that it isn’t enough that for some reason we charge the kids actual money for these lunches. They argue that the students should also be required to give devotion and worship to a great glowing cloud, whose benevolent power will fill their lives with purpose.
Due to new privacy rules, we cannot say which member of the school board made this suggestion. The board will be taking public comment in a small flimsy wooden booth out by the highway. Just enter the damp, dark interior and whisper your comment, and it will be heard. Perhaps not by the school board, but certainly by something.
Tuesday morning, Lee Marvin will be offering free acting classes at the rec center. The class is entitled “Acting is just lying. We’ll teach you how acting is just saying things that aren’t true, with emotions you don’t feel, so that you may fool those watching with these mistruths.”
Fortunately, Marvin commented: “Most people don’t want to be told the truth and prefer the quiet comfort of a lie well told.”
Classes are pay what you want, starting at 10,000 dollars.
Thursday Josh Crayton will be taking the form of a waterfall in Grove Park, so that neighborhood kids may swim in him. There is not a lot of swimming opportunities in a town as dry as Night Vale, and so this is a generous move on Josh’s part. He has promised that he has been working on the form and has added a water slide and a sunbathing deck. He asks that everyone swim safely and please not leave any trash on him.
Friday, the corn field will appear in the middle of town, right where it does each September, as the air turns cooler and the sky in the west takes on a certain shade of green. The corn field emanates a power electric and awful. Please, do not go into the corn field, as we don’t know what lives in there or what it wants. The City Council would like to remind you that the corn field is perfectly safe. It is perfect and it is safe.
Finally, Saturday never happened. Not if you know what’s good for you. Got it?
This has been the Community Calendar.
Oh! Look at the time. Here I am blathering on and the play is about to end. OK, let me grab my new mini recorder that Carlos got me for my birthday. It’s only 35 pounds and the antenna is a highly reasonable 7 feet. And I’ll see you all there.
Ah.
What’s the weather like for my commute?
[Shallow Eyes” by Brad Bensko. https://www.bradbenskomusic.com/]
Carlos and I are at the theatre! The audience is a buzz, with excitement yes, but also many of them are the insects that infest this theatre. The bugs became entranced by the story over the years, passing down through brief generation after brief generation, the history of all that happened before. The story of the play became something of a religion to this creepy crawly civilization. And so now the bugs are jittering on the walls, thrilled to be the generation that gets to see the end of this great tale.
The curtain rises on a scene I recognize well. It is the simple set of a studio apartment. A kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings.
“Come on, it’s open,” the man calls.
A woman enters. She is very old, tottering unsteadily on legs that have carried for her many many years.
“Please take my seat,” the man says with genuine concern.
“Thank you,” she says, collapsing with relief onto the cushions and then looking out, as if for the first time, noticing the audience.
I know this woman. I first saw her as a baby and later as a 20-year-old. It seems she has lived her whole life on this stage, taking part in this play.
“My name,” the woman says, “is Hannah Hershman. I was born in this theatre, clutching a script in my arms that was bigger than I was. My twin, in a way. I started acting in that script of mine before I was even aware of the world. I grew up in that script, lived my entire life in the play I had written from infancy to now.”
And she rises, and the man reaches out to help, but she waves him away. She speaks, her- her voice is strong, ringing out through the theatre.
“The play ends with my death, because the play is my life. It is bounded by the same hours and minutes that I am.”
the audience is rapt, many have tears in their eyes. Even the insects weep.
“Thank you for these hundred years,” Hannah Hershman says. “This script is complete.”
She walks to the window.
“It might look like rain,” she says. “Who knows?”
The lights dim.
Thunderous applause, cries of acclaim, and Hannah Hershman dies to the best possible sound a person can hear: concrete evidence of the good they have done in the lives of other humans.
Stay tuned next for the second ever Night Vale Players Playhouse production, now that they finally finished this one. They’re going to do “Godspell”. And from the script of a life I have not yet finished performing,
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Many are called, but few are chosen. And fewer still pick up. Because most calls are spam these days.