Director's Notes Ep 164 - The Faceless Old Woman (live) (Patreon)

I have a lot to say here, and little of it that I feel up to saying.

What a fun night this live show was. Jeffrey and I were in LA for other reasons. We have a good relationship with the Largo theater there, and so we figured we could do some sort of Night Vale Presents live event as long as we were in town. We ended up doing a three part show. The first part was a live Alice Isn’t Dead, the recording of which you can find on the Alice Isn’t Dead feed. The second was a live Within the Wires. And the third was this, the first ever Faceless Old Woman live show.

Meg, the Night Vale tour manager, emcee, and my wife, preparing to sell merch at the Largo

I’ve been making live theater for almost a decade now. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. We bring people together into a room, and try to make them feel like they were transformed in even some small way. Good theater points us at the other people sitting in the room with us. It reminds us that we are community.

Last week we had to postpone the new Night Vale live tour.  We performed it in Northampton and, watching backstage, I turned to Jeffrey and said "I think this one's really good." We got a standing ovation that lasted a couple minutes. I cried the entire time. Because I knew that it was going to be a long time before we got to do that again. Before we got to go into theaters, and see live shows. Before we got to go on stages, and do live shows. It’s an experience that cannot be replicated. Now I sit in my home, and I try to remember all of the stages, and all of the rooms, and every audience. 

We saved this recording for now because we have a book coming out next week. It is The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home. I love this book and I’m so proud of it. There is a small section of this live show that secretly refers to the entire plot of the book. It is an easter egg for if you go back and listen after reading. This book is maybe exactly what people need right now. It’s pure escapism, a grand adventure that covers two centuries and dozens of countries. I hope people can find a way to buy it. I hope they love reading it like we loved writing it.

It’s hard, because the kind of attention economy that Patreon supports means that all of us artists kind of have to be in sales mode at all times, especially now that our income has been drastically hit by the postponement of our live shows. There has to be this cheeriness. “Come check out what I’m doing online! Hey I’m doing a livestream!” It doesn’t give us space to feel despair, as we all I’m sure have felt some despair this week.

It’s sad, what’s happening right now. It’s really sad. And it’s ok to feel that.

But we will come back to those rooms. We will come back to those stages. Theater has outlasted every plague humanity has ever faced. No matter how bad the devastation, we always eventually gather back together in the dark, and we tell each other stories.

We’ll get through this together. Because it’s the only way we will get through it.

-Joseph

Info on the new book here. 

Here's a new podcast I just started about this exact moment in history, called “Our Plague Year”. I hope you find it useful 

And don’t miss our new livestream, happening in a little less then an hour, and then hopefully every Wednesday and Saturday evening. It really will be a good time. No depressing talk, no discussion of the news. Just some fun storytelling and some good music. See you soon.