Welcome to Night Vale - 163 - Bravo

Episode Date: March 1, 2020

A new play premieres at the Night Vale Asylum. (Part 2 of 5) Weather: “One One Thousand” by Raina Rose rainarose.com Our 2020 World Tour kicks off in just a few days! Join us across North America this spring for Cecil Baldwin’s last live tour and be one of the first to see our new show, “The Haunting of Night Vale.” Tickets available now! http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live/ Our third novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, comes out on March 24! Pre-order today to get cool, exclusive patches and art, and come see Joseph and Jeffrey on their 13 city book tour this spring: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/books/ Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville.com. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you

right now is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th. So make sure you are still subscribe to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool nightbale merch? Go to Welcome to Nightville.com, click on store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things

for the summer, tank tops, beach towels. And if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com and click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe. And hey, thanks.

It's something else here now. Something new. From, exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From, binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Our moral compass has been demagnetized. Welcome to Nightvale. Nightvale, Carlos and I went to see a new play the other night. It's been ages since we went to the theater.

I think the last show we saw was Hamilton, which is a Tony and Pulitzer-winning hip-hop musical about figure skater, Scott Hamilton, who died in a duel to fellow Olympian Catarina Witt. Hamilton was wonderful, but live theater is so expensive. It's a rare treat for us to get out of the house, what with the cost of tickets, plus dinner, parking, a babysitter, tuxedo rentals, and all that time spent watching YouTube makeup tutorials for jamming facial recognition cameras. But my friend Charles Rayner invited us as his special guests to watch the premiere of a new play at the Night Vale Asside. where Charles is the warden.

The play was called The Disappearance and Cover Up of Flight 18713 as performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Nightvale under the direction of undercover agents from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau. Or 18713 backslash NTSB for short. I'm used to seeing plays at the new old opera house or in the high school auditorium. There's also the black box the is. Also the Black Box Theater, which presents some of Nightvale's most experimental drama from young performance artists. No one has seen any of these shows, or if they have, they've never emerged from that doorless black box.

Its walls perfectly smooth and faintly warm. But this particular play was at the asylum itself. The Night Vale Asylum perches atop a craggy peak in the sand wastes. brutalist concrete walls intermittently slashed with slivers of windows. I do not personally know anyone inside this intimidating institute, other than Warden Raynor himself, and I'll admit to being a bit nervous venturing out at night to a heavily guarded home for the criminally insane. But Carlos put me at ease by rolling his eyes. He said it was neurotypical ableism that makes us think this way, that movies and TV shows often play

a harmful tropes about psychopaths and lunatics, planning daring escapes so that they can return to a life of criminal misdeeds. Carlos explained that asylums are merely places where we hide away the people who most remind us of the inexplicable fragility of the human brain. Driving out past the scrublands under an indigo sky. The full moon, low, over the horizon, backlighting the night veil asylum, atop its jagged, rocky ridge. My nerves returned. I thought I heard coyotes howling in the distance, but it was the car stereo. Carlos had put on his favorite new Frank Ocean album called Various Animals Screaming.

When we arrived, Warden Rainer greeted us at the gates. Two guards wearing army-style green dress uniforms flanked him. Their right breasts were laden with medals, chevrons, and stripes. They each were armed with billy clubs, tasers, and slingshots, and one of them was wearing an eye patch, but it was positioned in the middle of his forehead. The warden escorted Carlos and me to our seats, which were simple wood chairs. There were only ten seats total, all in a single row along the rear wall. There was no standard stage to speak of, no curtain.

The actors were all in costume in the center of the room, already in character. The other seats were already filled, Warden Raynor, Sheriff Sam, three of Sam's secret police officers, two of Sam's overt police officers, and an angel I had never met before, but who introduced themselves to me as Erica, with a K, they added. Nice to meet you, Erica, I said. You got ten bucks? Erica asked.

Uh, sure, I said. What for? Not everyone gets to know everything, they said. You either got it or you don't, man. So I handed them ten bucks, and minutes later, my lower back pain, which has plagued me for the last six months, was gone. I looked back at Erica and I saw them wink at me, or I think, they winked. They have ten eyes, so it could have just been an asynchronous blink. It's hard to even tell what they're ever looking at. The play began with an introduction by Ward and Rainer,

who welcomed us all to this unusual night, the first ever performance of an original play by inmates in his asylum. He introduced the writers slash directors of the piece. There were three of them, each dressed in an electric blue jumpsuit. One of them had a blister on his upper lip, another a swollen red lump along the cuticle of his right index finger. One of them had an unceasing nosebleed. I recognized them as the agents from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau in Washington, who had come to Nightville two months ago to investigate the disappearance of Delta Flight 18, 713.

Sheriff Sam had placed these agents under cover in the asylum to try to meet with an inmate named Doug Beyondy, who claimed to have pertinent information about the missing aircraft. Upon remembering this, I flipped quickly through my playbill to find the ensemble member's names, and there on the title page was the name Doug Beyondy, who was cast as airplane pilot. As the warden returned to his seat and before that, house lights dimmed, I leaned over to Sheriff Sam and asked, how is the undercover operation going, Sheriff? Sam glared at me and said, I've no idea what you mean. You know, with the NTSB officers,

here in the asylum trying to interview Doug Biondi? I asked perhaps a little loudly for a theater. The NTSB officers are criminally insane, Cecil, the sheriff said unironically and with more than a touch of scold in their tone. That is why they are here. They are a danger to themselves and others. I had many more questions, but before I could say anything, the lights faded to black, and I heard the first voice of the play.

Find us, called the voice in the dark. Find us. It echoed again. A faint glow coated like frost. the wild-eyed faces of the inmates on stage. Their frantic visages made all the more manic by deep eyeliner, rouge and lipstick. Most were dressed in common street clothes,

slacks, jeans, button-down shirts, mid-length patterned skirts, two were dressed as flight attendants and one as the pilot. I can only presume a small budget as the uniforms worn by the latter groups were largely suggested by navy blue hats and little plastic wings on their lapels. The pilot wore anachronistic aviation goggles, and so it was difficult for me to see

and remember the face of this actor, this inmate, Doug Beondi. But I could see his mouth, which was unusually wide, the corners of his lips extending well past the width of his eyes. He had an unusual number of teeth in his harsh smile, a smile which never abated, even in his most somber of scenes. We survive, said Beyondy's pilot character, we live, we cannot die, not here, not in nowhere. He said it not like the vague concept of In No Place, but No Where, two words capitalized, like the name of a specific place. Each actor was seated in short, tight rows of four, a narrow aisle in between mimicking

the floor plan of a common fuselage. At the front of the troop sat Doug Biondi as airline pilot. How did we get here? know where, said one of the passengers. And how shall we return? said another. Only, they said in unison, when you find us. This last line, they said with a quick twist of their necks towards the audience. Then the scene shifted, the chairs cleared and all of the actors stood in the profile of a Greek chorus.

They explained the flight from Detroit, the view of Lake Erie. They told stories of different passengers, one who had a job interview, one who was looking for an apartment, another who went to Palm Springs on vacation. They told the story of a bright light and a loud pop. And suddenly, the engines were silent. The plane felt still unmoving, and then the chorus all pantomimed the leaning concern gaze out airplane windows. Instead of tops of clouds or distant shapes. of Great Lakes, though. They looked out and saw

children. In a gymnasium, they heard the squeak of sneakers and the joyful cries of playful exercise. It felt like minutes. Maybe a whole hour. They could not understand

what they were seeing. They could not comprehend an elementary school gym six miles above southern Canada. But they were not six miles above southern Canada. They were only a few feet above the American Southwest, inside an airplane,

inside an elementary school gymnasium, in a town called Nightvale. And as quickly as they had appeared there, they disappeared, off the radar, gone from the skies, out of known existence. Throughout this chorus, the speakers filled up.

our ears with the joyful shouts of children, the hollow metallic thumps of red rubber balls, and the collective panicked inhale of 143 passengers and crew of a displaced plane, and then it was silent, and then it was dark. A single green light appeared on the far wall, a dot, a blip, a radar blinking on, then off. And the voice of Doug Beyondy said, We are actors We are inmates of the asylum of Nightvale But we do not belong here We are people who know truths

People who know more than is allowed And for that are kept We are fed poisoned pills And circular lids logic. And at this point in the play I felt movement in our small audience, the warden had stood up and was shouting, this is not in the script, Doug. But Doug spoke louder, faster. I am not insane, I say. Only the insane would say such a thing they say. Then I am insane, I say. Yes, you are they. I am trapped, I am framed, I spit out your poisoned pills, I reject your propagandist blather,

I know what I know I say, hold him down, they say. Warden Raynor had gone to the tech board and turned on all the lights. he shouted code blue into a radio receiver, and we saw half a dozen security officers in their green metal-laden uniforms lurched from the corners of the room, penning the ensemble of inmates into a tight circle in the center. Return them to their rooms, the warden called.

But as the guards encroached, the three men from the NTSB stepped to the perimeter of the mass of inmates. They were holding little plastic wings just like those on the costumes of the actors playing flight attendants. One of the NTSB agents, the one with an unceasing nosebleed, opened the back of the wings, revealing a long, sharp pin, and thrust it into the neck of a guard.

Simultaneously, the other NTSB agents and several other actors did the same, and the guards fell to the ground. One of the NTSB agents, the one with a blister on his upper lip, Grab the keys and weapons from an unconscious officer. Dearest audience, he said in verse, we mean them no harm. Tis but asleep. A little pharmaceutical rest for a uniformed guard who kept us confined, made life hard for us low-level agents doing our jobs,

trapped neath the lies of a warden who robs our freedom and murders our spirit. At last we can go, approach the wall and clear it, But heed my warning, as we this coop fly. Every man for himself, better run or die. And upon this last line, the alarm bells of the asylum rattled my ears and my nerves, shaking Carlos and me from our seats. The inmates scattered in every direction as Sheriff Sam and their officers gave chase. Carlos was nearly stepped on by one of the escapees,

and as I bent to help him up, I was knocked over by two officers. in full sprint. When the commotion died down, I looked up and saw Erica still sitting calmly in their chair, and I asked, Erica, what is happening? Erica looked down at their playbill, and then back at me and said, I think it's intermission.

And now the weather. You go outside, the leaves are water in the summer night. The air is solid as a butcher night. Stars are hitting on you, yeah, that's right Go inside The floor rises up to creature's steps You give what you got, but there's not much left Staring at you in the face is death

And that's just your balance beam No one's gonna take this away from me No one's taking this away from me From me That sunrise running from what you don't recognize The further you fall away from your fate The harder it hits you in the face And that is a guarantee

No one's gonna take this away from me No one's taking this away from me No one's taking this away from me From each point of thought Spread out into space Further than lies are all we make We are ships on an endless lake And a smile lines on your face

No one's taking that After 15 minutes Carlos and I returned to our seats Hoping But not truly believing it really was an intermission We've seen immersive theater before Like Sleep No More An interactive show in New York City where audience members are placed inside a huge warehouse of actors dancing out the plot to Macbeth.

And at the end, everyone is granted the ability to live out the rest of their lives without sleep. It's expensive and not for everyone, but totally worth it if immersive theater is your thing. But this show was not that. No. 18713-X-N-T-SB. had gone wrong. Or, perhaps it had gone right. Under the strict critique of plot structure,

character development, and production value, the play failed terribly. But as a piece of political or adjut-prop theater, it was a rousing success. The sheriff's secret police have placed roadblocks around the entire city, hoping to keep these supposedly dangerous inmates from leaving the area.

It is bad optics, to say the least, for the entire population of the town's asylum to escape custody. But as Carlos and I left the theater space, we walked down the long corridors, cells and rooms open, no security detail in sight. In one of the cells, below a cot was a journal. It was the journal of Doug. Biondi. Page after page was filled with monologues, narratives and conversations from various people, people who were on a plane, people in transit between checkpoints of life between relationships,

between homes, between jobs, between vacation and work. These stories were written as verbatim dialogue as if Doug Biondi had transcribed them himself. as if he could hear the voices of those very people. Like former air traffic controller, Amelia Anna Alfaro, I wonder if Doug heard the same voices, the same passengers of the missing plane. I had my intern Seamus go down to the library and look up public records on Doug Beondi,

hoping to find some connection between Doug and Amelia, but Seamus still has yet to return with the library. that information. I even double-checked my playbill looking for Amelia's name and the cast or crew, but she was not listed there. She was likely never in the asylum. One thing I did find, though, was a note in the back of Doug's journal. This note seemed to be in Doug's own voice. They tell us, we are kept here for our safety, but they keep us here for their safety. They fear what will happen when the people on that plane are found,

but I think they have already been found. They should be afraid of what happens when the people on the plane find. find us. Nightvale is on lockdown, so stay home and stay safe, listeners. I do not believe any of us to be in danger from those who escaped the asylum, but I do believe us to be in danger of most everything else. Stay tuned next for a series of audio clicks, which is definitely not federal agents tapping your radio.

Don't worry about it. Good night, Nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Disparition. The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Dispiration. All of it can be found at disparition.info or at dispirition.bancamp.com.

This episode's weather was 1-1-1-000 by Raina-Rose. Find out more at Raina Rose.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvelle radio or decide that it's time for a new you with a new outlook on life and new teeth check out welcome to night veil.com for info about our upcoming live tour the haunting of night veil and info about our upcoming novel the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home today's proverb what if and hear me Now, what if someone made a printer that worked every time you needed it to work?

Hi, I'm here to tell you about Good Morning Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale's official recap show and unofficial best friend food podcast. Join me, Meg Bashwinner and fellow tri-hosts, Hal Lublin and Symphony Sanders, as we dissect all of the cool, squishy and slimy bits of every episode of Welcome to Night Vale. Come for the insightful and hilarious commentary and stay for all of the weird and wild behind-the-scenes stories. Good morning night fail, with new episodes every other Thursday. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, even there.