Sibylla

A student-written new work by Lane Kittle-Kamp, Sibylla is an audio-theatre experience that can be listened to anywhere. A study into loneliness, the tenuous boundaries of home, the inexorable nature of the past, and good old-fashioned homoeroticism, Sibylla is a tragedy with a ray of hope at the end.

In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes an Ancient Roman not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. Yet as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality becomes more altered and the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. An examination of loss, memories, and the implacable nature of loneliness, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

An audio drama script that was first intended to be a stage play, this was one of the most unique design challenges I have ever experienced. When it was a play, the scenic concept and stage directions were very stylized, in that the set was supposed to become less detailed as the show went on, demonstrating how the present world was deteriorating as the protagonists continued to change things in the past. When it moved to be an audio drama, this concept could no longer be achieved. I brought forward an alternate concept, suggesting that we do the same thing but with the sound. Instead of the scenery slowly turning into white blocks and disappearing, the ambiance and detail of the sound would slowly shift into white noise, unrecognizable from the detail it had at the start of the show. A very fun design to execute.

Listen Here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dftcusc/episodes/Sibylla---LIBER-I-Whats-It-Like-To-Go-Back-eveqp9
Digital Program: https://dftc85.wixsite.com/dftc/sibylla