All Year Round, There is Work to Do 03 (Patreon)

Cattor, 

How long has it been? And so good to hear you are well. I remember the first day you entered my classroom at the Lycée with some fondness. 

I’m grateful that you would think of me when faced with a difficult problem. “Crossroads” is an interesting work to adapt, and I must admit that I am curious to see how some elements are going to be handled. Still, that’s none of your concern. If I were you I would be feeling some measure of relief that the adaptive duties were left to the writers, and I could simply focus on the sounds. 

But perhaps that is where the problem lies. You asked me for advice on “reproducing the sound of the Devil.” If I am not mistaken, the old man himself does not appear anywhere in the novel “Crossroads”. Thus, a problem of adaptation. The Devil is somewhere he was never intended to be.

I am not inexperienced here. In some productions, I have made the Devil speak - a low whisper, a bellowing roar, a cacophony of joined voices that drowns the other performers - in others, I upended a barrel of sharp rocks onto a metal plate. Sometimes the Devil is the hiss of a tea-kettle, boiled on stage. Sometimes the keen of a Marchmont fiddle. Once, the sound of the Devil was the cries of a yellow-billed bird sitting on the shoulder of the stage manager. When she was not performing she watched the play intently. 

But again, here He is, for an audience that did not expect to see Him. He is the hand falling suddenly on the shoulder. Two eyes open among the clouds on the skyline. Focus on that intercession. That moment of noise in a silence you thought was complete. 

As ever, your teacher, 

Marlena V.Z.T.

Lycée Saint-Sébastien

Featuring: Ali Acampora, Jack de Quidt and Janine Hawkins

Music by Jack de Quidt

Description by Jack de Quidt

Grandpa's Farm is available at Possible Worlds Games