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

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

Forgive me, readers, for having abandoned you for so long. There have been many changes in my state of mind and health in recent months that have led me to take more of a hiatus than I had intended when I set off for home in late July.

There have also been many changes to the UA and the Dante Effect, I have discovered upon my return, although I am still sorting through them all. It seems that Stone, Ritter and Ste.Croix are not content with being the only spirits to torment me in my waking hours, and I now find myself with a good deal of compiling to do regarding the new faces and names to which I have been introduced.

I have resigned myself to accept that they will persist in their adherence to their staged identities, and this pattern was repeated by the new characters to whom I have now been introduced. Truth be told, Braxton Carroll is a somewhat familiar face, as he has assisted with several of the performances to date, although I had not really had a chance to sit down and speak with him. Sigmund Engel, on the other hand, was completely unfamiliar to me.

I promise to update this blog soon, and share their stories – fictional though they may be – with all of you.

– VKB Angell

Well, I, at least, have survived ‘Dust and Shadows’, and done so without needing to resort to throwing Ritter, Stone or DuMort off the John Hancock tower.

I suppose the same cannot be said for all of us. Blood, I have learned, is very difficult to get out of white lace tablecloths.

For those of you who attended ‘Dust and Shadows’, thank you. Your attendance helped to make the run an absolute success. I am sorry I was unable to attend all the performances, but I understand that they all went quite well – at the very least, none of the patrons were in any danger (per Ste.Croix’s promise) of physical harm, although I am given to understand that both Stone and DuMort made any number of illicit offers that threatened the virtue of various attendees.

If you came to the show, you will soon receive an email from me at Ste.Croix’s behest. I am as uncertain about what to do with it as you – let me know (here, in comments or via email) what you make of it.

–VKB Angell

As is customary the day before a new show – or so I am told by those who are more familiar with the experience than I – I am a bit jittery, despite the fact that I am not even one of the performers. My concerns, however, have nothing to do with performance anxiety and everything to do with worry for the relative safety of the audience, given the instability of Stone and Ritter and the utter mindless selfishness of DuMort.

Ste.Croix assures me that ‘no one has ever or will ever be in danger as a consequence of our actions’, and she seems to be confident in that pronouncement, but Ritter and Stone’s behaviour yesterday does not inspire me to a similar confidence.

While working on the final touches for ‘Dust and Shadows’ with Ms Kingsley, Dr Bezio and Mssrs O’Brien, Griswold and George, Stone was possessed by the perverse impulse to begin dancing about in the performance space, tossing noodles up into the air and attempting to catch them in his mouth (I must admit that his ability to do so is a bit impressive, if not flawless, the result of which left several spatters of tomato sauce on his clothing and the floor which fortunately Ste.Croix insisted that he clean up).

When this became too infuriating for Ritter to tolerate any longer the shouting and shoving started, which naturally led to the launching of said noodles at Ritter rather than straight up into the air.

Ste.Croix stepped in and put a stop to it at this point, although I fear that there may have been a stray noodle or two that escaped Stone’s lackluster attempt at cleaning up. His insistence that Ritter assist him in the process met with a series of rather creative insults that demonstrated Ritter’s felicity with a variety of crude metaphors (contrary to his customary attitude of propriety).

I suppose there will have to be some sort of prize if an audience member manages to find a days-old noodle hiding somewhere in a corner.

–VKB Angell

Given some of the context of ‘Dust and Shadows’, I am inspired to ask my readership to consider the following: what happens in a séance? Do you believe that it is possible to make legitimate contact with the departed? Do you think that television mediums – like John Edwards – are actually capable of contacting the dead, or do you consider them skilled charlatans capable of reading subconscious bodily cues?

I have recently been reading Mary Roach’s Spook and Stiff, and some time ago was reading Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things. While it is fairly clear to me that Roach and Shermer do not place terribly much stock in the afterlife (although Roach seems to be more open to the possibility than Shermer), I wonder about the tendency of people to believe that such contact is in fact possible, contrary to the assertions of modern science.

So – do you believe not simply that we shall one day see the dead again in another plane (call it heaven or whatever you will), but that we are actually capable of speaking with them in this one?

If so, would you really want to?

– VKB Angell

While I wholeheartedly understand and respect the fact that as a production of the nature and calibre of ‘Dust and Shadows’ nears completion that tempers grow shorter, I have reached what may be considered my ‘breaking point’ with Ritter. He is rude, classless and boorish, and not in the strangely endearing sort of way that Stone manages to affect.

Since our interview I have suspected that Ritter’s hatred of psychologists is far from a put-on persona and his recent behaviour toward me has confirmed my suspicions that while the character of ‘Ritter’ may be a fictional construction, his general malaise and animosity toward myself – and people in general, Ste.Croix being a noted exception – is almost certainly not an act.

And yet from my observations of the Steampunk Convention show and the Opening Gala, people are strangely drawn to him – although admittedly in a much different fashion than they are to Stone’s gregarious outrageousness. Ritter’s stand-offish personality are reminiscent more of BBC One’s recent Sherlock and less of outright hatred for the human race, but what the average person fails to recognize is that while Benedict Cumberbatch may be putting on what is in essence an oddly lovable sociopathic persona, true sociopaths will just as soon watch you be run over by a lorry as have a pleasant conversation with you over a cup of tea.

I am starting to believe that Ritter may in fact be at least moderately – if not extremely – sociopathic, given his utter lack of empathy toward any other member of the human species. Even his grudging respect for Ste.Croix appears predicated on the notion that he feels she somehow has power over him – and not on anything that a normal person would recognise as affection.

Suffice it to say that were it not for the considerable amount of temporal and financial resources already invested in this project, my contempt for Ritter might have caused me to throw the entire thing out with the proverbial bathwater.

–VKB Angell