Play: 'interlace [falling star]'

Allow me to quote our marketing materials:

In this epic blend of science-fiction and fantasy, a mysterious amnesiac finds herself in the lobby of an infinitely tall building located in the center of the multiverse, the headquarters of the United Association of Interdimensionary Travelers. Her unexplained presence sets off a series of increasingly catastrophic events that not only compromise the security of the Association, but threaten to unravel the entire fabric of creation itself! Can a superhero with a divine pedigree, an android companion, and archangels and devils together combine forces to help "Andrea Change" find her true identity, and prevent the impending apocalypse? Drawing on influences as diverse as the metaphysical explorations of Philip K. Dick, and the scrappy tradition of low-budget sci-fi television, interlace [falling star] is a unique saga of love, loss, and redemption.

I know, doesn't that sound ridiculously exciting? Tickets are now available for this fringe theatre sci-fi extravaganza!

As an orientation kiosk helpfully explains to our mysterious amnesiac, "The United Association of Interdimensionary Travelers is comprised of thousands of cultures working in cooperation to improve the state of the multiverse. We offer a wide range of services, including biological and morphological engineering, technology seeding, aesthetic realignment, strategic catastrophe deployment, and paradigm reorganization." Its headquarters - and the setting of the play - is "an infinitely tall building, an immensity of transdimensional architecture! Association operatives from around the multiverse gather here to receive their assignments, engage in training, conduct important research, and even make homes for themselves on the residential floors." Unfortunately, without proper identification, the nameless woman is shuffled into the bureaucracy of the Association: first scrutinized by a psychic member of the Security branch, who discovers a powerful block on her memory; then shunted to the Medical branch, which manages to determine she's a human from planet Earth (a non-Association world) but not much else. She befriends a superhero who calls himself The Amazing Dr. X (with a straight face, even) and an android companion named Trickle, who ally themselves with her on what becomes a wild quest throughout the building. Trickle dubs the woman "Andrea Change."

Of possible interest to the DoseNation crowd: at one point, Andrea falls in with some dicey underground club kids, who have their own ideas of what constitutes fun inside the building:

PRINCESS: Listen, I don't suppose you could hook us up with something interesting for the end of the world, could you?

MURRAY: End of the world? That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?

JOHNNY: We checked the news on the way over, Murray. I think it's going to come down to riots and gunplay, personally, but as for me, I'd prefer to spend my last few weeks in a drunken haze.

PRINCESS: I wasn't thinking drunken. Do you have any freefall?

MURRAY: Might.

ANDREA: What's freefall?

PRINCESS: Takes about five minutes to hit, lasts about forty-five minutes, almost all of which is peak.

ANDREA: And what happens while you’re on it?

PRINCESS: Well, your whole entire existence gets sort of uprooted, and your soul gets released from your body for about a half an hour. Pause. I don’t know, it’s something to do.

JOHNNY: There’s other drugs you could try. Jazz, or bones, or meltdown, or serene.

PRINCESS: Yeah, whatever you’re in the mood for.

ANDREA: What would you recommend to someone who’s suffering from severe amnesia and may never have tried a drug like this before in her life?

MURRAY: I might recommend caution.

Later, after Medical has failed to figure out what's wrong with her, Andrea pays a visit to Shamanic Services, a branch of the Association with a different approach to problems like these:

RAMON: Let me explain what's about to happen, then. You and I are each about to take pills containing a small dose of a very powerful psychotropic agent.

ANDREA: I think I've had enough pills for today, thank you very much.

RAMON: While I do appreciate your earlier adventures, rest assured, this will be a completely different experience.

ANDREA no longer as quick to trust: Oh really.

RAMON: These are not “recreational” pills. You see, a few short moments after swallowing these pills, we will enter a mutual, consensual, holotropic zone, in which our conscious minds extend and merge, joining energetic boundaries and allowing us to have a true interstanding of how we each perceive our realities. I'll be able to see inside of you; you'll be able to see inside of me. We'll spend about, oh, five minutes in that zone, just sort of chit-chatting, one energetic aura to another, and then the pill will wear off and you should feel a lot better.

ANDREA: Really.

RAMON: Yup.

ANDREA: But… how's that work exactly?

RAMON smiling patiently: If we knew exactly how it works, we'd be in Medical, and not in Shamanic Services.

But shortly after Andrea's arrival, the entire building is mysteriously quarantined by an immensely powerful energy field that seems to be supernatural in origin. As the building slowly teeters toward chaos at the news that no one can get in and no one can get out, we soon learn that an archaic "containment crypt" in a previously secret sub-basement has been forcibly breached; and soon, the building's inhabitants are threatened by an ancient elemental force that is as trapped inside the quarantine field as everyone else. As Andrea struggles to recover her memory, the Association fights a losing battle to defend itself against the ravenous appetite of this unexplainable menace; and soon Andrea and Dr. X are on a race to find a way to the very top floor of this infinitely tall building, in the hope that someone from Management - a branch that long ago ceased all communication with the rest of the Association - is paying attention, and is willing to take action.

At any rate, we open August 1st and run Fridays/Saturdays all throughout August. Hope to see you there - and if you can't make it, you can check out the script over on my web site. Once the show opens, I suspect I will be back to a more regular DoseNation posting schedule. Cheers!