Soliloquy

PROLOGUE

Behind the audience, VICTOR starts to speak as he walks down the aisle, in and out of the LIGHT, towards the stage. He is tall, British accented, the archangelic guardian of the play’s main character.

VICTOR

“Quietly and unexpected come many of the experiences that change our lives. In the most wondrous of these, God touches us from a place of stillness at the depths of our souls and we are…overwhelmed by His Presence, further stilled by His peace, transformed by the knowing that all our questions about the purpose of life have in that instant been released. And when this moment becomes an hour, the hour days and weeks, we know with resolute certainty that we will never be the same. This is the subject of tonight’s play framed, it is hoped, in an entertainment that mixes seriousness with frivolity, comedy with drama, reality with…a higher reality.

He steps to the stage.

VICTOR (cont’d)

“Its central theme was the experience of someone barely known to the author – it was his own experience as it took place in an old Western church many years ago, in a structure not unlike this one. And it has ever been his ambition to one day write about that time and share its beauty with a large audience… well,
(turns)
with a paying audience… much as he has with friends through the years when some of these expressed the need to hear there is a marker of hope by which we journey though Heaven’s kingdom, as Tolstoy wrote, awaits within and the goal is nearer than our very hearts. This assertion will find easy acceptance by some tonight and be resisted by others. In the end, the best we can aim for in our theatrical dealings is that in sharing our most intimate experiences they get honestly retold, their contexts are faithfully rendered, and the recognition is held close that all else is artifice or merely opinion which may or may not have a basis in truth. And while the author does admit to having a cheerful warehouse of opinions, expressing them is not a concern here tonight and you may disregard any that pop up.”

He is joined by JULIA, his counterpart.

VICTOR (cont’d)

“No, rather this work is meant to bear witness a condition of being that is profoundly joyous and, regardless our weight of troubles, ever present to touch us. And it is our fervent wish that on this night that marker of hope will be established for all who need it, that its location will be indelibly fixed for all who seek it, and even that the ultimate Presence will soon reveal itself to all who want it. Here is, and please enjoy, God Touches.”

EXIT Victor with Julia.