[CLICK]
MARTIN: Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute recording statement number 0092008. Statement of Adonis Biros, given August 20th, 2009.
MARTIN: Statement begins.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): It’s been so hot recently, that sticky sort of hot you only really get in the city. On the beach, watching the clear blue waters swell and recede, it would be wonderful to simply sit, still and alone; to experience it. But in the city there is no stillness, no privacy. The swell is that of rank, sweaty humanity , and to press through them is to work the dirt and dust that infuses the air into your own skin. The stink is deeper than just a simple smell.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I suppose I’m lucky that my work rarely takes me out during the middle of the day. I am an actor by trade, and both skilled and fortunate enough to find myself employed more often than not. I’m not sure I would say I enjoy it, necessarily, but I do find a certain fulfillment in it
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I remember the first time I felt the calling. I was nine years old, visiting my grandparents in Athens, and my parents had taken me on a trip to see the great amphitheatre. It was winter, not the season for tourists. My parents were off in a corner somewhere arguing, but just for a moment I had the place entirely to myself. And I felt it: that strange centering, that spot at the core of everything where you and you alone speak. Your words heard by no one - and in that no one, the entire universe.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Yes, I am aware that normally there is - unless something has gone badly wrong - an audience, or at the very least other actors with which to trade dialogue. And that’s fine. But that is not what I live for. I live for the monologue: when all others fade away and the light tightens on me, excluding all else.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Have you ever had stage lights in your eyes? The brightness steals everything else, and if it’s strong enough, you can look out into the audience and see nothing at all. Just you.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I am a fine actor, and a very capable physical performer, but these are simply the dues I pay to earn my way to a monologue. For the last two weeks, I have been performing the part of Jaques in As You Like It. Do you know your Shakespeare?
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Well, it’s not the greatest production of the play, which can be very funny if done right. The director, a man named David Austin, has neither the vision nor the spark to turn it into something truly memorable, and the reviews reflect that. I don’t care, though. That’s not why I do it. You see, there is one part of as you like it that almost every English-speaking person will know, and that is a monologue by Jaques:
MARTIN (STATEMENT): > “All the world’s a stage, MARTIN (STATEMENT): > MARTIN (STATEMENT): > And all the men and women on it merely players: MARTIN (STATEMENT): > MARTIN (STATEMENT): > They have their exits and their entrances; MARTIN (STATEMENT): > MARTIN (STATEMENT): > And one man in his time plays many parts, MARTIN (STATEMENT): > MARTIN (STATEMENT): > His acts being seven ages.”
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I told you you’d know it. And for all his failings Mr. David Austin made one directorial decision for which I cannot praise him enough: during this soliloquy, he has the other actors in the scene walk upstage, beyond the lights, and has me delivering the lines out into the audience alone.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): For the play, it’s a bad decision: that scene is supposed to be Jaques performing, joking, for the amusement of the Duke and his friends, so this staging makes something that should be light and energetic into a serious and soulful meditation, and it doesn’t work from a dramatic point of view. But for me, declaiming, casting my voice out, surrounded by people watching me, yet completely alone… I have rarely had a part that feeds my soul like this one.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): It helps that we’re performing at the Duke’s Theatre in Covent Garden: it’s about as traditional a theatre as you’re likely to find, and when the light shines, the audience is rendered as mere silhouettes, completely anonymous.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): At least, until four nights ago.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): It was my big moment: Act 2, Scene 7. The others had vanished, the audience was gone, and it was just me. At least, at first. I remember it was as I began to talk about “the justice,” the fifth age of man, that I saw it. It was a mask, a theatre mask. Not one of the happy-sad ones you might associate with the stage, but like an old Greek chorus mask, neutral with a faint aspect of mourning about the mouth and eyes. It sat on top of a thick black cloak draped to completely cover whoever might be wearing the mask.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): But I knew it was empty. It was a hollow shape of a man that had no life, no presence to it. And I saw it in the middle of the third row as clearly as if it were lit by a second spotlight.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I stumbled. Of course I stumbled. I don’t believe anyone in the actual audience really noticed, though the other actors offered their faux-sympathies over it afterwards. I did make it to the end, and pushed on through the rest of the performance, but the mask did not disappear, and watching the other actors quickly convinced me that either they did not notice the thing in the third row, or they simply could not see it.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Oddly, I’ve never feared for my sanity. I’ve always been… superstitious, and I had no doubt that what I had seen was some sort of spectre or omen. Of what, however, I had absolutely no idea. To be perfectly honest, I still don’t. This is one of the reasons I am here: because I have this deep and gnawing fear that it portends nothing but itself, and within that, there is some strangely aweful fate waiting for me.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I have never been quite as social as I am told an actor should be. Rehearsals have always been a professional thing for me, and have rarely resulted in friendships, and I actively avoid after-show drinks. It will perhaps not surprise you to discover I instead prefer to walk the city, to find those streets and places where the night crowd does not gather, and wander those empty lights, clearing my head as I leave the heat and cloying conversation behind. In the summer months, this ritual is almost a necessity for me to remain stable, my steps taking me through the echoing streets and artificial lights, an edifice to humanity uncluttered by the messy existence of actual people.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): The mask and cloak did not appear at the theater the following night. I looked for it, yet saw nothing but an audience of silhouettes, quiet and intent, save for when applause was required.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): It wasn’t my best performance, on edge as I was, but I got through it. Afterward, Patrick Dunlevy, who played Orlando, was more insistent than usual that I join them for drinks after the show, and it took all my composure to keep my excuses polite, as the sticky heat of his presence pressed through over the fading warmth of the stage lights and the high summer that pervaded even the Duke of York.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): But I did escape him, and fled into the cooling dampness of the city streets by night. Streets which I knew were less likely to be populated were mercifully deserted, and the windows of the buildings either side were lit, but empty of anybody visible. My breathing began to slow, my steps became more sure, and the oppressive thickness of the air lessened just enough for me to relax.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I began to look up at all the darkened windows above street level. It’s a strange truth to realize that, for all the throng of humanity that exists in central London, almost nobody actually lives there. All the apartments and residences that sit above the bustling shopfronts and businesses are almost all empty. Bought as investments by the financiers and oligarchs who have no desire or need to live in them. If you raise your eyes upwards in central London, and count the lit windows, it’s not at all unusual to see none at all.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): But that night, as I caught my breath and raised my head, there was a lit window on the second floor, and within it, a masked mockery of a human figure. My face fell, until I had the odd certainty that my expression matched that of my pursuer, and panic began to settle over my brain, pinprick-crawling from the back, inch by inch over my skull. And I knew that when it reached my eyes I would run.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): The figure didn’t move. Of course it didn’t, there was nothing to it that could move - no will that could make it follow me. And yet, it still watched, its hollow empty eyes drawing me into it.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I ran for some time, through streets I knew should be humming with drunks and nighthawks and insomniacs, but they were all silent. I was alone. Sometimes when I turned a corner, at the far end I could see it, waiting for me, and I would turn away. Sometimes, when I looked over my shoulder, I would see it there, following me with its stillness, its absence.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Once I looked up, and the windows were full of it.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I don’t know how long I ran, but in the end I fell, physically spent, and sunken in despair. Raising my head, I saw it before me, waiting. So I stood, and began to walk slowly towards it.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): It gave no reaction, simply awaiting my arrival. As I got closer, I saw it more clearly: the heavy weave of the black woolen cloak; the shining porcelain of the mask; the hollow, empty space behind the eyes, inside the mouth. I faced my demon, and there was nothing there.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): In a fit of sudden rage, I struck out, my arm catching it on the side of what should have been a head. But the cloth crumpled beneath my blow, the mask fell, and the figure collapsed into a heap. Inside was a simple wooden stick, once propping the thing up, but now fallen to the ground and lying motionless.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I went home quickly, my eyes downcast and furtive, and went to bed. I only once looked out of my window at the street below.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I don’t think it’s going to stop. Last night was the worst yet. I knew they were coming, but how do you prepare for something like that? The first was there in the audience before I even set foot on the stage. By my second entrance, there were five that I could count. And when I began my monologue, the whole auditorium was full of masks.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): All the world’s a stage, and it was empty - my only company, the mocking grotesques of pantomimed humanity. The mewling infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the judge, each eliciting such a roar of nothing from them it took my breath away.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): Perhaps I should have stopped: fled the stage, quit acting entirely. But it was like a lonely avalanche, and it flowed out of me in a wave. And I reached oblivion. An absence of applause that nearly deafened me. Sans everything.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): After the show, David came up to me. He wore his best director’s smile, and made as to shake my hand. His mouth moved telling me how much this performance had meant to him, how right the energy had been, and how whatever I had tapped into within myself, I should reach for it again at the next performance.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I tried to listen, to nod, but his eyes were hollow, and I knew that he wasn’t really there.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I have another performance tonight. In less than four hours, I will be on that stage again, speaking those empty lines to emptier ears.
MARTIN (STATEMENT): I could run, of course, but I won’t. Where would I run to? All the world’s a stage, and I can’t escape my monologue.
MARTIN: Statement ends.
MARTIN: (exhale) That wasn’t so bad… (inhale) I’m… not sure there is anything to say about this one. John’s got us looking into anything that might involve theatres or the circus, but to be honest, I don’t think this is really what he’s looking for. The strangers here seem… er, different, I guess? It doesn’t have any clowns, or dancing, or… skin.
MARTIN: I wanted to ask Tim about it, but he hasn’t been around much the last week or so. Says he’s working on something, which is… I mean, it could be fine? I guess? He’s just… quite… intense at the moment… He - scares me sometimes.
MARTIN: Truth be told, none of us are doing great, but it’s actually Melanie who seems - I don’t know, something’s happened, I think. Her work’s been kind of… off lately, and any time I talk to her, she just finds some reason to leave. I asked her to look into what happened to Adonis Biros, the actor from the statement, and she hasn’t bothered, as far as I can tell.
MARTIN: John called. He’s in America now, wanted her to help with something, but I had to make an excuse for her. He, he doesn’t need that kind of thing on his mind right now…
MARTIN: I just hope he gets back soon.
MARTIN: …You know, saying it out loud, I, I think I’m actually really worried about Melanie. I - (sigh) you know what, Basira knows her better than. I’ve (laugh) been too awkward to ask, but I need to. I really think I need to -
[CHAIR SCRAPES]
[DOOR OPENS AND MARTIN STEPS OUT]
MARTIN: (calling out in the hall) Basira?
MARTIN: …Melanie?
MARTIN: …Tim…?
[HIGH-PITCHED, SQUEALING STATIC BEGINS]
[DOOR CLOSES AS MARTIN RETURNS]
PETER: sigh I hate being a character in a podcast.
MARTIN: (gasp) D-don’t move! And, don’t you come any closer, okay?! I’ve got a, I’ve got a knife!
PETER : I don’t even like wearing headphones. They give me an earache. I am probably giving people earaches right now.
MARTIN: Okay, but - okay, stay back!
PETER : I have tinnitis. That’s the squeaky noise that plays when I appear…
MARTIN: Oh. You’re… one of them, aren’t you? A, a Lukas.
PETER : Why did I have to be a character in a podcast…?
MARTIN: I, I was just, reading? John left some notes, and -
PETER: Now, don’t get me wrong, it would be MUCH worse to be in a Netflix original series, for example.
MARTIN: I don’t - what?!
PETER : What? Much larger audience. Too many people looking at you. Too loud.
MARTIN: Yeah? Sort of - I mean, you know, not you specifically, but -
PETER : It’s fine for that Hopworth guy, he can do what he wants, but I -
MARTIN: I… don’t…
PETER : Can I just walk out of this scene? If I leave, do I stop being a character in a podcast?
MARTIN: I’m really sorry - I-I don’t actually - ahaha -
PETER: Do I scare you, Martin?
MARTIN: Yes!
PETER: Hmm. Probably for the best. The existence of podcast characters is tenuous, sustained merely by the infinitely-fragile consensus reality of social media.
MARTIN: That’s… that’s a lot of it, to be honest.
PETER: Our existence is anchored in the isolation of the commute.
MARTIN: Well, he’s… I mean, you just… you’ve just said he’s watching us.
PETER: Of long, mindless tasks; psychologically-empty stretches of time to be filled by half-heard narrative, noise…
MARTIN: Fine, I guess? I mean, not so much with the manipulation, and… sometimes… the murder?
PETER: Death.
MARTIN: I mean I wasn’t, I wasn’t there, but that’s what he said? And I did see the body. Bodies.
PETER: The sound of violence in podcasts - divorced from image, piped intimately into two headphone-wearing ears - invariably resolves into a simulated experience of violence enacted either by the listener, or upon them.
MARTIN: Don’t…
PETER: Image and written word permit a sort of psychological distance; a fiction that the narrative violence which we consume cannot affect us.
MARTIN: I… suppose!?
PETER: Yet a story whispered in your ear by no one leaves no margin for alibi. It is uncomfortable.
MARTIN: You’re wel…come…
PETER: I will explode in your face.
[DOOR OPENS]
[SQUEALING STATIC FADES OUT]
MARTIN: Y-yeah! Bye?
[DOOR CLOSES]
MARTIN: …what?!
BASIRA: Did you call me?
MARTIN: Yeah! Um… did you see anyone?
BASIRA: When?
MARTIN: Out there, just now?
BASIRA: Um, no…?
MARTIN: No?
BASIRA: No.
MARTIN: (sigh) That figures.
BASIRA: So, did you need anything, or…?
MARTIN: Does the name Peter Lukas mean anything to you?
BASIRA: Oh! Yes, actually. I’ve been reading a bunch of old statements, he’s that creepy old boat captain, right? From the family Elias doesn’t want us bothering.
MARTIN: Yeah, well, apparently that warning doesn’t go both ways.
BASIRA: He was here?
MARTIN: Yeah. I, I mean, I think, I think so…?
BASIRA: Was he… woOoOo?
MARTIN: I mean, a bit, yeah.
BASIRA: Oh. Oh, dear.
MARTIN: Mmmmaybe? I don’t know, honestly, he was just a bit… weeeeird.
BASIRA: Yeah. Is that why you wanted me?
MARTIN: Oh, no, like - you busy?
BASIRA: A bit. I was reading through a bunch of stuff about the Church of the Divine Host…?
[AS BASIRA SPEAKS, MARTIN CONTINUOUSLY MAKES FRUSTRATED LITTLE NOISES IN AN EFFORT TO INDICATE THAT HE DOES NOT WANT TO DISCUSS THIS RIGHT NOW]
BASIRA: Did you look into that statement about the chapel in Hither Green? Because apparently, right around that time, there was a full solar eclipse going on in - guess where…?
MARTIN: I don’t know.
BASIRA: Ny-Ålesund! And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago - well! How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed?
MARTIN: What - Halley like the comet?
BASIRA: Exactly.
MARTIN: Look, Basira, that’s really interesting but that’s not why - uh, uh, you’re close to Melanie, right?
BASIRA: Um, I guess so? Closer than anyone here, I think.
MARTIN: Is she, she doing okay?
BASIRA: Why? Did she… say something?
MARTIN: No… no, it’s just her work’s been… look, she’s always been quite, you know, conscientious, but then recently, everything’s -
BASIRA: Okay, look. I don’t know what the situation is, she won’t tell me, but she’s not doing well. We were meant to go for a drink last week, but… I think it has something to do Elias.
MARTIN: Elias. Oh, god…
BASIRA: Yeah.
MARTIN: Well, well, maybe we can - what?
MARTIN: Oh. Right.