I couldn’t believe my eyes when he walked through the door. Of all the theatres in Los Angeles, the great playwright Harrison Daniels had chosen to visit ours. It felt like a dream.
Squeals of delight erupted through the company when he proposed that he direct us in his latest play. It had never been seen before – in fact, he had just finished writing it.
Copies of the play were distributed about and everyone retreated to their own space to get reading. I plopped down with the script, eager to find a role to audition for. I had a feeling this could be the break I had waited for.
I looked down at the play. Moonlit Reverie by Harrison Daniels.
An hour later I put the hideous thing down, shuddering. It was an abomination. The opening scene, in which a young boy is beheaded and eaten by a classmate, was the least disgusting scene in the play. The degradations and perversions just deepened from there. The play was so opposite Harrison’s usual fare that it was hard to believe he had written it.
What made Moonlit Reverie so disturbing, though, was the impeccable craftsmanship with which it was written. The thing was a work of art. The creation of something so unnerving, so utterly wrong, required a deep insight into the human condition. It took an almost supernatural knowledge of everything the human heart holds dear. And then it took a complete rejection of those things.
As I sat there in silence, reflecting on the play’s confusing ending, I was able to place a sense of déjà vu I had gotten while reading.
The last time I had felt like this was when I was 14. I had been sitting in church, my final year as a true believer. The pastor delivered a speech about the devil and the eternal torment that awaited those who rejected Jesus. The powerful religious dread that had gripped me as I imagined hell was a feeling I had hoped to forget.
Moonlit Reverie had brought it roaring back.
Opening night arrived a month later. The first showing was exclusively made up of Harrison’s friends.
As I made my first entrance on stage, I was nearly shocked into flubbing a line. The theatre was completely full, and every single audience member had on an animal mask of one type or another. My skin crawled.
Worse still, they were responding in unison to lines in the play. It was like being back at church, a twisted Lord’s Prayer being recited.
As the scene went on, I realized that the audience participation was completing the play. Surreal, nightmarish lines of dialogue that hadn’t made sense on their own took on dreadful, nigh unfathomable connotations when paired with the audience contributions.
When the scene ended I hurried backstage, my mind swirling. I needed to find a familiar face, fast.
“Karen!” I shouted, grabbing her. She wore a huge grin. “What are yo-” I trailed off as I realized she was chattering mindlessly, eyes rolled back in her head.
I sat down, crying.
Gradually, my sobs turned to laughter. Something (someone) powerful was making everything clear for me.
Moonlit Reverie had felt like a religious text because that’s exactly what it was. Harrison Daniels had been used as a prophet, and not by God.
I wiped my face and stood up. I smiled gratefully at the men standing next to me, holding heavy nails and hammers. Gone were the plastic toys of yesterday’s dress rehearsal. The men smiled back at me.
My crucifixion scene was coming up, and we were doing it right this time.
Submitted June 23, 2018 at 10:58AM by movieman94 https://ift.tt/2yzVFy5
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