AN EXCERPT FROM The First Line of Dante’s ‘Inferno’

KIRK LYNN

CHARACTERS (appearing here)

ANN ESPINOZA

Early forties, tall, self-possessed. Hiking in the woods in search of her missing sister.

CRAIG GORDON

A young park ranger, late twenties. Pretty. Slim. Strong.

NOTES

The play is formatted like prose; however, it is intended for performance. If actors simply perform the dialogue in quotes, the audience need never know about the world-building stage directions presented elsewhere in the text. And, as has been the case in readings and developmental workshops, it is possible that some of this world-building text can enhance productions when performed by an unnamed voice or presence. Most important is that the natural world and our longing for it are portrayed in the theater.

1.

As I remember, there were trees everywhere, thick, so they made the day dark with shadows. No such thing as an unobstructed view. You don’t like it. I don’t care. Find yourself another forest. Birch trees. Rich black dirt underneath.

Randomly set in these woods was a very small, one-room cabin. What else would you call it? A handmade shelter? The walls were stolen plywood. The window was borrowed from a bigger building. It was all put together with duct tape and weird hinges. If you walked up to the window, here’s what you would see inside: a little propane camp stove, a sleeping bag on a cot, and a big mason jar, lid on.

The woods were a national park. It was a squatter’s cabin. It was illegal. The cabin was nowhere near a path or a stream. It wasn’t even near a game trail. The cabin was sort of trapped by the trees surrounding it. It was as if the trees had captured the cabin in a more reasonable spot and dragged it out to the woods where they could hide it and keep it forever.

Dawn there lasted twenty-four minutes, starting from the eigengrau, which is what you call the gray your mind sees in complete darkness, to the moment you would notice someone walking through the woods.

And one day a woman stepped out of the trees. She was forty-ish years old. The woman was tall; when she hiked she took those long slow steps. She wasn’t going anywhere so she didn’t have to make any noise. Ann Espinoza. She was “camping clean.” You wouldn’t want to stand next to her in an elevator, but if