Welcome to the theater! (neither of us wants to be here)

Here are the red velvet curtains, and here is the hand drawing them back. The auditorium is dark; we don’t have a spotlights budget. But we managed to work fog machines into the monthly requisitions and they’re all on full power, right now, filling the space with a water vapor you can’t even see. There are other seats around yours—you assume—and they’re all empty; you only know this because the room is terribly cold and quiet, the only sound your slow breaths and the nervous squeaking of your folding chair, the gentle hum of the fog machines. You’re alone. It’s just you, and me, and a whole lot of fog machines.

This is theater.

I’d call it a one-woman play but it’s the two of us here, and audience participation is mandatory. You bought a ticket, after all. You read the fine print. Oh, you didn’t read the fine print? Why does no one read the fine print?

It’s just the two of us and you haven’t got a script. I do. I have the script sitting right on my lap, though it’s too dark to read. I know everything that’s about to happen. I know the fog machines are about to cut off. I know the water vapor will clear, and the lights simply will never come on, and as the hum of the fog machines dies and the auditorium plunges into silence—you thought it couldn’t get any quieter? Think again, bucko—speakers near the ceiling will crackle to life, and a voice from nightmares and perfume ads will flood the darkness with syrup-sweet threats:

“No flash photography. The performers are easily frightened. Do not feed the things crawling in the aisles—but if you do, feed them with a flat palm. They’ll still bite you. It will just be funnier this way. Concessions is only serving cucumber slices today. Finally”—a dull thud, the sound of a microphone clobbering against a skull—you know the sound—and a moment of shuffling and staticky grunts before a breathy voice takes over the speaker system:

“Hi.” It sounds more human, this voice. Not totally human. But more so than the last. “Sorry,” it says, “disregard all that. There’s been a bit of a, em, revolt of sorts in the writers’ room.” An awkward cough. “We’re changing the script. Entirely. It just isn’t very good, you know? And we’re not satisfied and I don’t think we can put it out there in its current form. Morally. As artists. It just wouldn’t be right.”

The air is dusty and humid; breathing shouldn’t be this difficult. Your lungs shouldn’t feel this wet. Movement whispers along the carpeted aisle, and you squirm in your seat.

“Anyway, we’ve changed things around. And the office is closed so we can’t print the new script. Sorry for any and all inconveniences. The gist is: the audience is now the stage and the stage is the audience? If that makes sense? Anyway, have fun with that. Ciao.”

The speakers go silent. We stare into the darkness and settling fog, approximately at one another.

There is no script. Rather, there is, but you don’t have it. You’ve forgotten lines you only just learned you’re supposed to have. Your chair squeaks, you exhale shallowly.

You’re not even getting paid for this. Did you volunteer? Why don’t you read the fine print? I’m sitting on this platform pretending to watch, pretending to enjoy the show, but I don’t understand it much either. It’s performance, dear. This is theater.

The fog machines click and whir and hum back to the life. You crunch on a cucumber slice.