ph_logs | MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

Entry tags:

event

MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats

You find yourself at the theatre.

You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.

There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.

A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

Observer’s Overture

First Movement in E Minor

adagio, con dolore
PP

Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.

Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.

vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P

The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.

Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.

Opera Infernale

Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)

chorale concerto a tutti, con affetto

F

Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.

segue

Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.

segue

On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.

CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor

There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him.

Ensemble's Lament

Third Movement in G Minor

bocca chiusa
PPP

There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.

pesante

Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.

declamando, letando

There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.

The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…

freddo, pietoso

Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.

Reprise - Observer’s Overture

Fourth Movement in E Major

impetuoso
FF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.

presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.

Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.

Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.

The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.

Homeward Aria

Fifth and Final Movement in C Major

tiempo di fanfara, vittorioso
F

When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.

It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.

enfatico, mancando poco a poco

| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Behind the Mask
feat. Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy & John Crichton
AS
SPIDER-WOMAN & CAPTAIN GEORGE STACY

Lights up. In the centre of the stage stands a silhouette of white and black, interrupted only by touches of pink and blue. The girl's face is concealed behind the wide-eyed mask, itself cast in shadow by the hood. En pointe, she has the perfect, practised posture and poise of a ballet dancer and a gymnast in one.

The lighting shifts, the stage becomes drenched in ever shifting pastels—like a watercolour painting brought to life, even the stark geometric lines of the suit streaked with watery tones that fluctuate, subtly, every time you look at them, every time she moves.

Stillness breaks into the fast, twisting spins of a fouetté and then she is leaping, graceful and powerful, onto set-pieces of buildings, colourful and bold. From wall to wall, from rooftop to rooftop, the music swells with exhilaration and pride that builds and builds and builds the longer she is in motion, the longer that she is in the air, her feet never touching the ground. Alone, but triumphant.

Pinks and blues dominate the sky and she stands stark but cohesive against them, a part of the world.

And then it inverts. Greens and reds swallow the stage and a shade, huge and dark and monstrous, tears through the structures and throws her to the ground.

Even fighting for her life is rendered in graceful, showy kicks and grasping arms, beautiful in a way that is discordant with the violence, with the memory in her mind. The shade flies back, hits the nearest set-piece so hard it cracks and topples and lands in the debris with a crash of cymbals.

Reds bloom across every surface and when the dust settles, the figure is so much smaller than it should have been—than it was before.

Flying leaps and artful, reaching arms replace the desperate scrambling and clutching that she remembers, cradling the ruined shape in her arms.

That, of course, is when [GEORGE] arrives.

Uniformed and uniform, he does not move with the same grace. But then, as she runs, either does she. The dance falls apart, the moves all there but the energy changed, bogged down in desperation as the stage turns black and blue.

[SPIDER-WOMAN] runs and hides and runs again, drawn back to [GEORGE] in flurries of frantic motion, spinning circles around him as he reaches out to try and grab her. He never catches her, she always slips out of his reach at the last possible second, but he keeps trying.

Until, finally, he catches up. Her back is to a wall and there is no way out, not with his arms raised, weapon in hand.

Red and pink and blue and black. The world a mess of angry, conflicted shades.

A single bullet fired toward the sky. The cacophonous CRASH of cymbals and screech of strings and woodwinds pushed to their limits piece the air. [SPIDER-WOMAN] flinches, hands up.

There is only one thing that she can do.

The mask lifts. A young, terrified face of a young, terrified girl lies beneath and she clutches the material in her fist so tight the colour bleeds into the space around her.

She looks at [GEORGE] and she knows that there will be no relief. No change of heart. Not now. Not this time.

The mask falls to the floor. And the world goes white.

As he waits in the wings and watches, he is steeling himself for the role he's been cast. Wearing these clothes feels like... some kind of sick joke. Is it? He never meant to step into this man's shoes; it just happened. Crichton saw a young girl, young woman, calling out for help and stepped up.

He always will. Even if that means he must now leap out onto this stage a second time, feel his muscles move against him another time. At least, when he feels himself aiming the gun, he doesn't have enough space to care for himself when he's too worried about her. His suffering is nothing in comparison. Because, whether he meant it to happen or not, he very much feels like Gwen is his adopted daughter and that means she will always come first.

That also means that as soon as the performance finishes, he's racing to her side with one urgent question on his lips above all else, "Gwen, are you hurt?"

The curtain falls and so does Gwen, down to one knee ass the ache in her feet sets in and the emotional exhaustion of the performance follows fast behind. She flinches back on reflex at the sound of motion across the now-dark stage and has to remind herself that no, this isn't real, it's just Crichton, Crichton in a costume and a prop weapon and nothing more.

"No, no, I'm— I'm fine, I'm fine. I mean, my feet hurt, I haven't done proper ballet in— ha, forever, but I'm fine."

He tosses the prop weapon away as he runs, and falls to his knees beside her, hands hovering as he wars with the need to embrace her over the need to let her breathe.

"That makes only one of us, then, because I sure as hell am not fine. Not hurt, but I ain't fine." And he doesn't really think she is, either.

"You look good on point, but I'd rather get these off of you. Can you stand?"

"Whoa, hey, now," Gwen laughs, not a happy sound by any means, "you didn't ask about mental stability, if you want a comprehensive answer you gotta phrase your question better, spaceman."

Even now she doesn't actually answer the unspoken question, preferring instead to try and push up from the ground.

"I think so. Maybe. Though maybe not fast enough for the, y'know, demonic stagehands. Even superdurability's got nothing on dancing in pointe shoes that haven't been broken to my feet, ow—" she grabs out loosely for his arm.

"I'll take it under advisement." Well, if she can joke then hopefully that means the mental break isn't imminent.

"No need to give them the satisfaction of seeing you limp, come on, let me help." He'll stoop lower to get under her arm and hoist her on his shoulder. "Let's go get you into some real shoes and then we can go complain to the management and throw these ones at their head--test your aim again."

Watch the time between jokes. The closer they get together, the closer to the event horizon you're getting.

Up she goes, no resistance to the help this time. "Good plan, good plan. Wonder if throwing one at one of the littler guys would make them, like— dissipate their head around the shoe so they don't get hit, or something. I had a guy made out of sand do that to me once. Pretty weird, honestly! Think too hard about those physics and it's just nasty. Ha."

"You get to fight all the weird ones, don't ya?" Crichton responds with a chuff of strained laughter. He's making good time getting her down off this stage, though, and he still seems to have enough air to continue the banter as they make for the green room.

"As a holder of a doctorate in physics, I have to agree. Thinking too hard about these things has never done anything good for my sanity." That's another huge understatement. "Add magic to that and, well, who even knows?"

"Oh, yeah, half my rogues gallery are total freaks of science. Which fits, I guess, since I'm also a freak of science. And the PDNY still thought they could handle them on their own, go figure, huh—"

Crossing through the threshold to the green room is a relief, despite the bustling atmosphere of other unfortunate people being forcibly costumed for their performances. No more stage.

"Didn't meet any magic until I left my universe and, ha, now we can't seem to get away from it."

"Even if they did agree to work with you, they'd still find a way to make sure they took all the credit," he grumbles bitterly. Politics. He hates politics.

"I didn't meet magic until I left Earth, so that's another thing we have in common. Now, I'm one of the people that can use it."

He frowns slightly, "I wish that made me better at keeping the people I care about out of danger from it." People like her.

"Ha, yeah. Fun fact, having superpowers feels the exact same way! You think you're going to be able to save the world and everyone in it but turns out 'everyone' isn't actually as all-inclusive as it sounds."

Especially when some of the people you care about go and try and give themselves superpowers too.

"Okay, uh—shoes. Shoes."

"Wish I could say that surprises me," he answers wistfully. Maybe some day people will learn to rise above.

"Did you get dressed in here?" he's looking around, too. "You know, I don't see my clothes in here anywhere."

"I did, but yeah, I don't see what I came in wearing either. Crap. They can never just make things even a little easy!"

Whatever, she's in a full body suit she's spent years running around fighting crime in, she can cope with the lack of normal clothes. The shoes, however, are coming the heck off—she starts tugging at the ribbons.

"Guess that would negate the point of torturing us in the first place," he says with a kind of grim resignation that comes with torture being a part of everyday life so frequently.

He at least shrugs off his jacket and outer shirt, holding them contemplatively in front of himself, "I know I chose to be an enforcer but... wearing these still doesn't feel right. We're doing better at it here in town, aren't we?" Fever is always on his case about being a cop. She's not right, is she?

"I think it'd be hard not to," is more bitter commentary on home than a proper answer, so she breathes and starts again. "I mean—as far as I've seen, you guys are actually trying to solve the barrier problem and all the big, weird questions, so. Yeah."

She unties one shoe and tosses it away, not caring where it lands.

"When I first took up the mask— dad was a lot of what inspired me. You know? I always thought he was the good kind of cop. He wore that badge because if he didn't, someone else worse would, and— I admired him. But then everything with Peter happened and..." She sighs. "I think he got lost. So— you've just got to try and not get lost. I don't know. I don't know if I'm making sense."

"You are. You're making perfect sense to me. I think I agree with you. The man I met wasn't evil; he was lost. He was afraid. But, he might still make it back to the light one day."

He braces her shoulder to help her balance while ripping that shoe off, and also because touch is grounding to him, always.

"hey, if you catch me starting to stray, you tell me. I'll listen. I'm making that a promise."

"Maybe one day. I don't— I don't think he was ready when we talked. I mean, sure, he at least accepted that I didn't kill Peter on purpose, but he still didn't understand."

Why she couldn't tell him (he wouldn't have listened) why she couldn't do things more 'by the book' (the book wasn't good enough for threats like that, it was never good enough). He just couldn't see things from her perspective and she's not sure what it'll take, anymore—doubts she'll ever find out, given what going home would set in motion.

"I'll let you know, spaceman. Promise."

"I'm still so proud of you for talking to him anyway. We can't know if our efforts will work, but we have to try. That's what the real heroes do. You did your part; now the ball's in his court." And that might not feel like enough, but at least the onus isn't on her anymore. She doesn't have to have that particular regret now.

"Thanks, squirt. Last thing I want to do is lose sight of what's really important." Never again.

"Yeah, well, I think his court's where it's going to stay." For a whole array of reasons, at this point.

She throws the second shoe away and sags with a sigh. Whatever. She did what she can. They're all just doing what they can.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

Half of who I am [for Crichton and post-performance threads]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: torture

no subject

no subject

no subject

good place to wrap?

wrap!