I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.

One thing I have to say about the past month here in Boston is that it has been exceedingly snowy and slush-ful. As a child in York I have fond memories of the few snowfalls we would see each year, as though some sort of magical weather faerie had dusted the countryside with confectioner’s sugar and set it all sparkling in the sun. Snow in Boston, whether because I am now an adult and no longer look at the world through a child’s wondering gaze or because it is Boston, is thick and heavy and very quickly turns a dull sort of grey.

Or perhaps you will believe that the mundane nature of Boston snow has more to do with my present state of mind than it does the comparative quality of snow in New versus Old England. Perhaps you are right. But there is very little that is magical about recent Boston weather and I fancy that you would be hard-pressed to find someone in this city who would disagree.

The weather has allowed me to miss some of my otherwise semi-weekly meetings with the members of the Dante Effect, and I confess that there have been some of those weeks when I was not entirely disappointed to miss my encounters with Stone. However I must say that last week’s meeting was a pleasant surprise as Ste.Croix had set out a very proper tea for herself, Ms Velazquez and myself. I do not often have a chance to speak with Ms Velaszquez, who is also decidedly unimpressed by this winter, and it was quite possibly one of the most pleasant conversations I have had with either woman since beginning this project. It gives me hope that not only will their future ventures continue to be successful but that I might in time come to not despise the other members of the company. With the exception of Stone and Ritter. I will for the time being withhold my judgement about Engel.

It is at any rate something hopeful in a dismal winter that has yet offered very little promise of a pleasant spring.

–VKB Angell

On behalf of the Dante Effect, the Unorthodox Arts Foundation and myself, I would like to extend a most sincere thank you to everyone who attended last evening’s performance. I do somewhat regret my decision to depart prior to the performance, although I have the feeling that had I not Stone would have been utterly insufferable and my presence would perhaps have detracted from the performance. I am glad to have been able to provide what small assistance I could.

On that note I would like to further extend my personal thanks to the members of the audience who saw fit to exact some token revenge on Stone… even if my earlier plea had nothing to do with your ultimate decision, that is the primary reason I regret my decision to depart. Perhaps this chastening will contribute to better behaviour in the future, although I must confess I rather doubt it.

–VKB Angell

I am afraid I must extend my most sincere apologies to any and all who perhaps expected to see me at the ‘Dust and Shadows’ show tonight.

I am quite simply not endowed with the capacity to handle Stone’s insults and innuendos tonight. After only an hour and a half of sleep augmented by the grogginess of the sleep-aid medication that clearly isn’t working, I am simply not prepared to tolerate being insulted, propositioned, and then insulted and propositioned at the same time for longer than three hours, which is the point at which I gave up and departed. That man is completely without empathy or remorse.

Although I did intend to assist in whatever way I could, given my complete lack of technical or theatrical skills, I’m certain that my departure will not negatively impact the performance in any way, as I was really only there as an observer. I’m sure someone else will step in to open the front door.

While I am of course disappointed that I was not able to view tonight’s performance, I would love to hear from anyone who did attend about their thoughts, reactions and other impressions… including the desire to strangle, stab, shoot, defenestrate or disembowel Stone. (And should you actually have succeeded in the attempt I will forever be in your debt – and if you tell me that information in confidence, be assured that doctor-client privilege will apply and I will keep your secret.)

–VKB Angell

The curtain goes up tomorrow on yet another ‘Dust and Shadows’, this time a single-evening’s run. As I understand it, if you have not yet purchased your tickets, you have missed out! Ms Kingsley tells me that they have a sold-out house, which is fantastic news!

I confess to my usual level of pre-show trepidation, as a sold-out house gives Stone even more opportunities to commit lewd or otherwise wildly inappropriate acts involving relative innocents, and so I encourage any regular attendees who are reading this blog to be on their guard.

In the past few weeks, Stone has actually shown some level of interest in contemporary political events, and has been following the recent debates in the States about violence and video games. He has decided that if, in fact, playing such games causes violent behaviour, he wishes to take full advantage of the opportunity, and has practically glued himself to the telly playing Call of Duty and Manhunter. I know this because during my telephone conversations with Ste.Croix I can hear the sounds in the background, and can only imagine how insane he must be driving them all.

But my ruminations about Stone’s psychopathy aside, I hope many of you will be in attendance tomorrow night in spite of the bitter cold!

–VKB Angell

The Unorthodox Arts Foundation and the Dante Effect have been featured in LiveDesign’s January online issue! Ms Kingsley should be quite proud of having her efforts featured there.

I am amused to note that even Ste.Croix’s elusive Mr Carmine managed to get a note, although I had to shake my head at the continued persistence of the Dante Effect to perpetuate their fiction, even to the news media of the theatre world!

–VKB Angell

I’m very pleased to be able to have my first post of the new year (admittedly a bit behind the times) be a piece of good news!

The Dante Effect will once again be presenting ‘Dust and Shadows’ on 26 January 2013 at our familiar old stomping grounds at the King’s Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street. I must confess to being rather fond of the building, as I know it was the residence of Dr Lloyd Vernon Briggs, a pioneer in mental health in the late nineteenth century.

As I understand it, Ms DuMort will be on holiday in Paris, and I must confess that I am not disappointed at the prospect of working through this process without her. That woman is beyond irritating. I am fortunate that Dr Ritter, too, will apparently be absent, due, apparently, to his passionate hatred for my presence in this process. Ste.Croix hinted that he had repeatedly threatened my safety and that she was unequivocally forbidding him from attending unless and until he had come to accept that I am a part of the proverbial team.

As I understand it, Stone will still be a part of the production, and I cannot say that I am thrilled by this news, although given the audience’s love for him, I suppose it is a smart tactical move on the part of Ste.Croix. He will be joined by Ste.Croix herself, of course, and by Mr Braxton Carroll, with whom I have had fewer although far more pleasant encounters.

Tickets may be purchased from the Dante Effect Website – here!

–VKB Angell

I suppose that the title of today’s post should rightly be Happy Boxing Day but there is very little I find at the moment that fills me with pleasure. Despite a delightful Christmas Eve dinner with a few compatriots from the psychology lab who are also without families for the holiday, I am afraid the evening’s cheer did not extend beyond the doorway.

At first I often dreamed of Henry after his departure but as the years passed they came less and less frequently. I often could not decide whether to feel relief or sorrow was the more appropriate response, nor was I certain which of them I felt whenever they did break the surface of my sleeping mind.

Last night’s dream did not cause such confusion. It is one thing to dream of pleasant memories, another to dream of sad and still a third to envision an afterlife of the most horrific nature. Not for the first time in the last year I am questioning my line of research and the effects it is having on my own psychological state.

But even as I sit still chilled by my own perspiration, turning to the comforting electronic glow of the friendly computer to whom I pour out all my fears and insecurities in a moment of helplessness, I know that this is a project I cannot let go. And now I find myself analyzing my own words, focusing on the choice of ‘cannot’ rather than ‘do not want to’ and finding that I feel compelled to persist in my inquiries, even though those with whom I work so frequently harass and disparage me.

There is something in this project, I think, that is driving me onwards. Something, perhaps related to Henry, that is unsettling my subconscious. And as uncomfortable as the dreams and lack of sleep have made me, I know – as both a woman and a doctor – that the more unsettled I become the closer I come to a realisation of some sort. And right now I am in desperate need of that realisation.

So, lay on Macduff, and damned be he that first cries, ‘Hold, enough’.

–VKB Angell

There is something about the Project that is not quite right, although I have no idea what it is. The audience is fulfilling every expectation I could have of them – for the most part they are willing to talk to one another, talk to the actors and talk to me. Certainly they tend to socialise primarily within the groups with whom they are attending the performance, but they are far more likely to interact than the audience at an average theatre, for instance.

Yet I am unsatisfied with the results of the research. I find I am more interested in the variations in the show itself from performance to performance than with the minutiae of the audience-response. They are predictable, for the most part, and each audience is fundamentally similar to every other in core respects.

What I am impressed by is the facility with which Ste.Croix, Stone and Ritter are able to manipulate their audience into responding to them, not simply on a theatrical level, but on a more primal, drive-oriented level. They appeal to something instinctive in certain members of the audience that is quite intriguing.

Perhaps I will begin to refocus my research on the repeat visitors in our crowd; they seem to have a particular attraction not only for the occult context of the performance, but for the characters adopted by the players. Perhaps the interactions of these ‘fans’ will begin to yield the kind of results I crave from this grand experiment.

–VKB Angell

Transcribing this second portion of the interview with Mr Engel took somewhat longer than I had anticipated and hoped, due to interrupted sleep and a rising frustration with being continuously insulted by the members of the Dante Effect. It seems to me, indeed, that the menfolk are particularly prejudiced against my presence and tolerate it only at the insistence of Ste.Croix. With such a woman in their midst I marvel at their continued misogyny.

–VKB Angell

VICTORIA: Let’s continue with this line of inquiry. Would you tell me more about your education?

SIGMUND: I was from a poor family so I had no education until my sister and I were taken into custody by the church after our parents’ deaths. We were…

VICTORIA: Would you mind elaborating on the nature of your parents’ deaths?

SIGMUND: My mother in a fire when I was very young, my father two years later in a hunting accident. I thought you wanted to know about my education.

VICTORIA: I apologise if this is emotionally difficult for you, Mr Engel.

SIGMUND: It is not difficult; it is insignificant, much like your feigned sympathy.

VICTORIA: Most people generally find the deaths of their parents significant, regardless of their willingness to admit it.

SIGMUND: You look down on me because I am a man of faith. I have met many like you: professors, physicians, scientists who think that belief clouds the judgment. They are wrong. Belief is everything; knowledge is nothing without the conviction to use it. I will tell you something about myself: I was born on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas; he believed that faith and science were intertwined and I share that belief. My fa-mentor taught me that our knowledge of the natural world and our knowledge of the spiritual world grow together. So do not look at me like I am the kind of maniac that would deny Galileo or Copernicus or Darwin.

VICTORIA: Just the kind that believes in witches and evil spirits.

SIGMUND: Do you not believe there is evil in this world?

VICTORIA: I am not certain I define ‘evil’ as you do.

SIGMUND: Do you not believe in forces greater than yourself?

VICTORIA: ‘Forces?’

SIGMUND: Regardless of what you believe, the simple truth is that beyond the trivial concerns of this waning mortal sphere there is a great battle between good and evil. Daily the agents of righteousness and the agents of corruption vie for the souls of all mankind. People do not simply act justly or sinfully by chance they are influenced by an infinite and shifting spiritual cosmos that one such as you can never hope to understand.

VICTORIA: Indeed, I never have been able to understand anything that wasn’t at least slightly based in reality.

SIGMUND: Your sceptical condescension is duly noted Doctor, I pray you do not ultimately suffer for it.

VICTORIA: I see no way in which your moral contemptuousness is any better. I propose we simply attempt to overlook our mutual disdain, at least for a few more minutes.

SIGMUND: The only way to defeat evil is through constant vigilance. I cannot overlook the fact that evil promulgates through the wilful ignorance of the learned, such as yourself, who are blind to anything that cannot be measured by scientific tests. It is your caste of scientific elite that encourage the world to turn their eye away from the ethereal to focus on the empirical. I watched for many years as humanity succumbed to the idolization of scientific and industrial progress. The world has been losing its faith; misplacing it in these quantifiable things, machines and money, which offer the soul no more reward than a golden cow. As we lose our faith, so too do we lose our souls to the machinations evil. As good as your intentions may be the road to hell is thus paved. Is it not my responsibility to show…

VICTORIA: That is quite enough, Mr Engel. First, I hardly think that your assumptions about me are predicated on anything more than your anti-intellectual prejudice. Second, the notion that science is somehow linked to moral degradation…

SIGMUND: That’s not what I’m saying.

VICTORIA: Then perhaps you would care to clarify further?

SIGMUND: The pursuit of knowledge in itself does not cause an absence of faith. It is the dismissal of faith as an impediment to knowledge with which I am concerned. When we look at this world scientifically we cannot forget to see God’s hand in all things. It was one of the greatest physicists of all time I believe, who said, ‘Gott spielt nicht mit dem wurfel’, or ‘God does not play at dice’. The more we understand of our universe the more we realize the complexity of its design and the more praise we should give to its designer.

VICTORIA: I see…Am I correct, then, in believing that you would consider yourself a man of science?

SIGMUND: Yes, I can understand why you would dismiss my more colloquial title of ‘demonologist’ but I study the ways in which spiritual energy interacts with the corporal world.

VICTORIA: A ‘demonologist’. And how exactly is one educated in demonology?

SIGMUND: I studied under Dr. Caius Mueller. He was the most recognized scholar of spiritual entities in Europe.

VICTORIA: And he was a demonologist?

SIGMUND: He was a doctor of divinity. You should not mock him. He was a great man who cared for me like his own son since I was ten. We travelled together and he taught me all that he knew.

VICTORIA: And if I were interested in his work, where would I find it?

SIGMUND: His life’s work was collected in a compendium entitled Auf Schutzen die Seele, On Protecting the Soul. The copies that were not lost were destroyed and even if you were to acquire one the book is encrypted so that only those on the side of the angels may read it.

VICTORIA: How convenient…

SIGMUND: I tire of your scepticism, Doctor. A sense of practical suspicion is healthy, but I have never seen someone who so fervently attempts to deny what appears plainly before them again and again. If you refuse to accept the improbable truth about the witch or myself or any of the other residents of this halfway house for the damned you are practicing self-deceit not scientific rigor. When you allow yourself to believe in something beyond this world of flesh, perhaps your eyes will open; then I should be glad to converse with you further, until such a time, farewell.

Happy All Hallow’s Eve. Time to enjoy the cool weather, the rustle of leaves and the laughter of children as they consume far too much sugar.

–VKB Angell