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

Play a Day: Here Be Dragons

Rachel Lynett

For Tuesday I read Here Be Dragons by Rachel Lynett and available at New Play Exchange.

When I was a kid in the late 1970s, my brothers introduced me to a Dungeons & Dragons knock-off called Tunnels & Trolls. Like Marvel at that time still positioned itself as the younger, hipper version of DC comics, T&T was an RPG with an attitude, and a sense of humor which was absent in its rival.

T&T originated out of Scottsdale, Arizona as a mail order RPG where their DMs would play games with folks in far-flung areas by mail. Campaigns took some time, I can tell you. To more easily facilitate game play for those who did not yet have a cohort of players they created the “solo adventure,” like a non-lineal book that took you from one page to another, back and forth, by a roll of the die.

For the record, the first T&T solo adventure, Buffalo Castle, predates the first Choose Your Own Adventure book by at least a year, in case Netflix wants to use that in their defense in the Bandersnatch lawsuit.

The version of Here Be Dragons I have read is a draft version, one currently in process, but it is an exciting concept with a troubling premise, and one I hope the playwright pursues and takes to greater extremes. The “game master” character presents the audience with several opportunities to either alter the outcome of certain circumstances, or to see exchanges from varying points of view, through the use of dice, or other decision-making devices.

The subject is toxic masculinity within the gaming community. The bros have always lorded over alternate worlds (much as they have this one) often with tragic results. My first solo T&T adventure was Lee Russell’s Labyrinth. The cover art features a muscular hirsute Minotaur holding a maiden by the wrist. She is wearing a dress featuring a breast-exposing bodice, and her face is turned away. I first played this game when I was ten.

This is an intriguing narrative, not just about abuse but complicity, and the kind of mania which can overtake an individual when an imaginary world holds more interest, excitement -- and safety -- than reality.

Who should I read tomorrow?