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Shakespeare and Darwin, Darwin and Shakespeare. Darwin, Shakespeare; Shakespeare, Darwin. These two Englishmen, these two great minds, these two great thinkers, are obviously connected. They are braided together in some golden harmonious collusion between science and art, between biology and theatre. The one probably could not exist without the other. All theatre is biology, and it logically follows that all biology is theatre; this is what’s meant by “All the world’s a stage.” Shakespeare, Darwin; Darwin, Shakespeare. Theatre is biology, and biology is theatre.

XLIV

Maybe pamphlets were distributed to pedestrians on the streets, maybe posters were pasted on walls to advertise the play, maybe there was a viral campaign, and talk of us spread in waves of excited furtive whispering across the campuses of colleges and universities. However the people in charge of publicity chose to do it, I’m sure they did it in such a way, as Leon had thoroughly drilled them on how to behave in accordance with the true spirit of the Shakespeare Underground: it was cultural guerilla war, an underground political resistance movement—keep it secret, dangerous, subversive, conspiratorial. Somehow, people found out about us, and they found us, and they came. People arrived from out of state to see the play, some of them, I am told and I believe, coming from far-flung locations many miles away. Young and old alike, they came. Our audience found Mr. Locksmith’s locksmith’s shop, squirreled away in a drably nondescript brown brick building on a ubiquitous-looking side street on the Lower East Side. His workshop now doubling as a ticket booth, the frail, confused, and elderly Mr. Locksmith took the tickets, wearing his green visor, as his fat black-and-white cat lazed on the countertop, her tail switching like a metronome. Ushers guided the people down the hallway of the locksmith’s shop and past the bathroom—advising them to use it now or hold their pee until the end of the show—and to the elevator, where another usher/elevator operator took them down below in groups of five or six. When they clunked to the bottom of the elevator shaft, deep below the surface of the earth, the usher accordioned back the shrieking brass lattice to let them out, and the people stepped out of the elevator, where they were abandoned. The people would then feel and grope their way through several layers of thick black curtains and into a profound darkness. At first the darkness is so complete that they cannot tell if their eyes are closed or open or if they have eyes to open at all. Here they become disoriented, as if they have all been blindfolded and spun around in dizzying circles. Here the audience members enter dreamtime, are sucked back into the womb, or into outer space, or inner consciousness, into the darkness of their own brains, so that they cannot really be sure—even though they know they have entered the building consciously, perfectly alert, and of their own free will—whether they are awake or dreaming. After exiting the elevator into the performance space, the audience members are free to wander at will. Soon their eyes adjust to the low lighting, and they perceive that they are not in total darkness, but that the room is lit by very dully glowing red lights here and there—just enough lighting to give the illusion that the room is lit without allowing anyone to see exactly where they are, or even who is standing near them. The people bump into each other, they put their hands in front of them to feel the contours of their environment. They speak out to each other in the dark, make attempts at conversation, only to realize that the people who stand near them now are not the friends or loved ones in whose company they entered the building; they are perfect strangers. The room bubbles into a cacophony of voices calling out in the dark to lost friends, and the lost friends only sometimes call back, confused, disoriented. But no one ever finds who they are looking for. The room becomes a swirling gale of separated lovers