Before They Were Night Vale: a single embrace (Patreon)

In November 2016, I was in London with fellow Night Vale friends and former New York Neo-Futurists Cecil Baldwin (voice of Cecil), Meg Bashwiner (voice of Deb), Kate Jones (voice of Michelle Nguyen), and Desiree Burch (voice of Pamela Winchell). We were there to start a new Neo-Futurists theater company in London. 

We performed 3 weekends of our show The Infinite Wrench at the Rosemary Branch in Hackney, and we held auditions for the upstart company. That ensemble became known as Degenerate Fox. Go check them out when theaters are open again. 

That first week we performed our show, we picked a bunch of old plays from the archive, ones we'd loved doing over the years in New York. But we also wanted to leave some slots for brand new plays. The Neos really want to be a "living newspaper," able to respond to what's happening in the world that very week. 

And what was happening the week we began performing in London was the 2016 US Presidential election. We were floored, all of us depressed and low-energy. It was hard to write anything. How do you even begin to address such news? I didn't even know how to write about it for an American audience, let alone a British audience, which had just endured the Brexit vote a few months earlier. 

The play below ("a single embrace") is what I came up with. There's no dialogue, no narrative, just a big ol' group hug (remember hugs with strangers? sigh.) The play makes no mention of Trump or the election. But it was clear in the performance that that's what we were all thinking about. 

One snag, though. Kate and Des had both been living in London for a few years at this time, and they both pointed out that the English do not like physical intimacy the way Americans do. Brits tend to be a bit more emotionally aloof, and it might be difficult to get an audience member to stand up and give me a hug. 

This seemed like nonsense. Neo-Futurist audiences are game for anything. We train our audiences well. We let them know at the outset of the show that they are part of the plays. They might need to say lines or perform a task or even get brought up on stage. We've had audience members strip naked, throw water balloons at us, and even join a dance line in a dance they do not know. Asking for a hug (with gentle consent) would not be a problem. 

Then on the first night of the show, this play got called, and at "Go!" I walked into the audience, found a nice 30-ish fellow on the aisle and I asked "will you give me a hug?" And he stared at me, not moving. His eyes grew wide and I knew Kate and Des were right. Then I said: "You don't have to if you don't want to."

He looked down at his lap and after a pause said: "Okay." It took him a couple of seconds to commit to this promise. But finally he stood up and gave me the most hover-handed hug I've received since junior high. I wrapped my arms tight around his chest and then asked another person to join us. Then another. Each one paused - nervous facial twitches galore! - but those pauses got shorter and shorter, and soon, all 35 people or so in our sold-out show were in a single giant embrace. 

The problem now was that I and my initial hug-ee were crushed in the center of it all. But we all took a single breath together and ended the play. I can't speak for everyone else, but I felt so much better - at least for the rest of the show. It was cathartic. It was communal. And it was lovely. One of my favorite plays I've ever written, and I don't know that it's quite as impactful in a week where there was no upsetting news. 

It's a play I wish I could perform with all of you right now.

Someday, I hope.

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a single embrace

© Jeffrey Cranor, 2016

This play is preferably performed in silence. At go, Neo-Futurist enters middle of audience. They ask an audience member to stand up & have a hug. There is a beat. Then they gesture to another audience member to join the hug. Another beat. Then another. Other Neos then join & silently encourage more to join the hug. The play continues until everyone in the audience is in a single hug - or at least pulled in together into one mass. There's a collective breath, then...

NEO: Thank you. I needed that.

CURTAIN