THE STORIES: Stage Directions. A man and two women (brother and sister?) meet after attending a funeral (their father's?), a time when so much needs to be articulated and understood. And yet, somehow, they cannot bridge the gulf of self-consciousness that separates them, and can only speak at each other, and via the stage directions which are normally meant to be unheard by the audience. The effect is oblique speech, as though they were present and yet not present, but what is unspoken becomes eloquently clear—and, in the end, reveals the deeper truths that direct statement could only hint at. (1 man, 2 women.)
Spared. Viewed as if suspended in time and space, a man recounts the jumble of events and people that are his life. Good, bad, success, failure, happiness, unhappiness—all merge into a revealing mosaic as his tale continues, punctuated by taped voices and screams that underscore the irony of his existence. He has had so much, and yet so little; has seen and done so many things, and yet the emptiness consumes all. Repeatedly he has tried to end his life, only to be spared by some turn of fate. In the end we perceive that his life is all life—the human condition made real through the random pattern of living which is our lot in a world we never made. (1 man, 1 woman, taped voices.)
