In the Castle of Eternal Sunset | BorderLight 2026

Hogan Wayland & Brady Craddock

I might have missed this one entirely, were it not for another company having to unfortunately pull from the festival. I looked at the performance map and In the Castle of Eternal Sunset was playing at the same time so I swapped my tickets for that, without even looking up what it was about.

And it just so happens to be a play about the randomness of experience! Epically poignant.

The show is being presented in the upstairs space at Parnell's, a room I have spent much time in but God as my witness I can't remember if I have been up there since Covid. Waiting at the bottom of the steps I met Lethan Candlish, who is also presenting at BorderLight this year, and he handed me an honest-to-goodness promotional card for his show, Who Am I, Again?

Handing out your card at festivals was such a big deal in the early aughts, by the time we did Double Heart in 2013 it seemed to be a dying art. For And Then You Die in 2009, I handed out actual bottled water with the show attached as a sticker, which was burdensome but I'm proud of it. Which is all to say, go see Lethan's show! He brought cards!

Lethan Candlish

In the Castle of Eternal Sunset is written by Charles Green and comes to us from Knoxville, Performed by Brady Craddock and Hogan Wayland, an audience of twelve circles the game table as these two play Dungeons & Dragons and navigate an epic quest. 

There is a random element; on the throw of a die, an audience member will read a passage from a game manual, a poem of memory, nostalgia, and loss, while the agile performers execute tableaus of connection and discovery. This participation lent the proceedings an element of electricity and alertness.

Our crew didn't play Dungeons & Dragons, we played its scrappy knock-off, Tunnels & Trolls, which had fewer rules and took itself a lot less seriously. The game master was usually Fred, and his adventures were tightly wound, fraught with excitement, and strewn with hoary in-jokes and characters that were usually a thinly veiled swipe and either someone in the room or one of our usual targets. Eternal Sunset is much more earnest, and reflected a sincerity we were all too protective to permit. 

After the show I had to dash, we were seeing Lucinda Williams at the Beachland Ballroom. I have plans to see many more shows Friday night!

BorderLight Theatre Festival at Playhouse Square, July 8-11, 2026