001. Introduction [4-18-07]

Darkness.

The theatre is consumed by it. It blankets the stage. It swallows the pit orchestra whole. It surrounds you, replaces you, sits in your theatre chair. But eventually your eyes adjust to the darkness and what appeared as blackness is revealed to be merely deep shades of grey. In this darkness, everything is equal. In this quiet, a shadow is a person, a coathanger is a gun, and everything has the potential to be anything. But this potential is left undisturbed, until...

A pool of light floods the stage, and everything is illuminated. In full view stands an actor, concealing nothing, but look around her. The darkness has deepened. The elements have seperated. The battle lines have been drawn. And yet still in the darkness lies that potential, like prizes waiting in our grasp, if only the light would conquer the darkness that we might truly own them.

Deep secrets await us in the darkness, the powerful stuff that lies in the deepest abysmal recesses of our own souls. That thing that drives us all. The truth which, too strong, must mask itself, and present itself concealed in human emotion. That rage, that primal instinct that cries to be free but stays tied and bound, in fear of exile from this society we have so carefully crafted for ourselves. In this darkness..is love. Sweet, sweet poison that thickens in our veins and saps us of our reason, that makes us do terrible and wonderful things, all in its name. That joy, pure and unadultured, that bubbles up from inside and presents itself as a simple happiness, that by simply existing makes the world a little brighter.That sorrow, which knows no floors, stretching down to the depths of our souls where it scars us worst. This spectrum of wild reality, concealed by darkness, consumed by shadow.

And yet, in this small, illuminated fraction of the stage, we can see all of this and glimpse worlds more! But let us not be confined to a single, small pool of light.

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Pnelma's Pen