Episode 1 Reflections
EPISODE 1: ASSEMBLY
EPISODE 1 REFLECTIONS SET 1
40 begins ten days after the baffling Event that has emptied the city. During that time, the CHARACTERS have assumed that they alone have survived. They have wandered the empty streets, searching for loved ones, neighbors—anybody– but to no avail.
CHARLOTTE: I don’t know when I left the house. The day after? The next day?
ABLE: I searched the neighborhood, from Arlington to Crenshaw. That took what–? Two, three days? Nothing.
On Ash Wednesday we acknowledge that we, too, are left behind. Somehow, through sin or dispassion, neglect or compulsion, we have lost our way. We are wanderers– abandoned, confused and isolated.
EPISODE 1 REFLECTIONS SET 2
In Lent, we claim solidarity with the disenfranchised, the vulnerable and the defenseless. We become pilgrims. We hit the road, searching. We search for what we lost.
ABLE: It was like with no people to look at, my eyes started to shut down. I was losing my what do you call it, sideways vision…
Isolated by sin, lacking the consolation of community and the nourishing intimacy of family and loved ones, We ask Who am I? Alone, solitary, with no one to acknowledge my presence or look in my eyes, Am I still me?
EPISODE 1 REFLECTIONS SET 3
It is only when the CHARACTERS allow themselves to be lead by a cloud of smoke that they discover the parking lot and learn that they are not alone.
TOM: Then I saw the smoke.
We, like the characters, can search in vain or strive mightily with little outcome. We, too, have experienced the sudden liberation, the opening of possibilities, that can only occur when we stop insisting on doing things our way.
ABLE: Are we the only ones?
TOM: There’s a guy— in there. We don’t know—
EPISODE 1 REFLECTIONS SET 4
Has the PREVIOUS MAN intentionally drawn the survivors to the parking lot? Is the smoke from his fire a call to assemble? Has he “prepared a place” for them?
PREVIOUS MAN: More of you! That’s fine. Everything’s ship-shape.
WE listen for a call to assemble. Keenly aware of our vulnerability, of how dependent we are on the hospitality and charity of strangers, we strain to hear a horn or a bell or a kindly word—any sound that might signal relief or offer solace.