1926 Pleasant walkthrough

“It’s a puzzle — literally. And you get to help put it together. There are two threads and many pieces to this intriguing, enigmatic trip through an unfinished condo at 1926 Pleasant Av. S. One part of the ghost story has the audience putting together large boxes, small clues and scraps of paper in search of a mystery. The other strain follows two actors who are playing out the increasingly spooky and macabre aftermath of a long-ago fire in this building. And what’s with all the owls?” –– Graydon Royce, Star Tribune

Billed as “a theatrical puzzle game in a new home with a long-forgotten history”, 1926 Pleasant was an experimental theatre piece in which the audience discovered clues and solved puzzles that moved the action of the story forward. 1926 Pleasant had a tremendously successful run at The Minnesota Fringe Festival, selling out 18 of its 20 performances.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Concept and Story by Amy Rummenie & David Pisa, Puzzle Design by David Pisa, Direction by Amy Rummenie, Story Collaborators John Heimbuch & Cherri Macht, Production Assistant Liz Schwartzrock, Illustrations by Kirsten Sevig, Photography by Dan Norman.

FEATURING

John Heimbuch as Edward, Cherri Macht as Grace, with Liz Schwartzrock and Nadia Hulett as owl/girl.

The Complete Walkthrough

1926 Pleasant was a company-created, site-specific, experimental play combining elements of traditional theater and puzzles that the audience solved to advance the story.

1926 Pleasant was staged at 1926 Pleasant Avenue in Minneapolis. This huge old house, built in the early 20^th century, had recently been subdivided into several new condo units, and the intriguing contrast between the long, textured history of the house and the raw, new space was one of the influences in the creation of the play.

The play was performed in an unfinished 2-bedroom unit, with bare cement floors, unpainted sheetrock walls, and no furniture, fixtures or appliances. Everything in the space was brought in by the company.

1926 Pleasant was billed as a mystery. This was accurate, but even more accurate would be to call it a horror story. Lying to the audience about the genre of 1926 Pleasant was essential in achieving the emotional response we intended—in order to be shocked, you can’t know you’re going to be shocked. The play began light in tone, in relatively open, well-lit spaces, but as the play progressed and the elements of horror became more apparent, the audience moved further into the space, into small, dark areas.

The Audience

The audience capacity was limited to 18 people. The audience size was dictated simply by the maximum number of people who could fit into the smallest room in the condo. 18 people, however, was a sufficiently large enough number that one of the key parts of the play became how the audience interacted as a group, since the puzzles forced people to work together.

In every audience were some leaders, some helpers, and some who were content to watch. We had some people who were good puzzle solvers, some people who thought they were good puzzle solvers, some who discovered they had a natural aptitude for solving, and some who knew better than to touch a puzzle.

People came to the play alone or in groups, so that as the play began everyone had to learn about the others they were working with, and decide collectively how to function as a group. Sometimes a natural leader emerged, and sometimes a group carefully took turns. Occasionally a group really didn’t work well with each other.

The following is a chronological description of the play, including company members’ anecdotes about the process of creation and performance.

Instructions

In the hallway outside the unit, the audience receives an envelope labeled “Open Me.” An audience member opens it and reads aloud:

Welcome back.

I saw an owl
He sat in a tree
He opened one eye
And winked at me.

Throughout the next hour, you will see envelopes like this one. Take them. Open them and read them aloud. Each envelope contains important details about the puzzles, and secrets about the story. Go now into the living room.

The audience enters the condo. It is an unfinished space, with bare cement floors, unfinished sheetrock walls, no appliances or fixtures, and very few objects.

Nobody else is present—two characters are visible outside on the porch, taking a break from moving in. The radio is on, playing a contemporary song. In the living room are piled dozens of moving boxes, on one of which is a second envelope labeled “Open Me.”

David: After welcoming people and reminding them to turn off their cell phones, I handed the audience their instruction envelope, took them to the door of the condo, said “Are you ready?” and opened it. The audience had to decide for themselves to enter. It was fun to watch the different reactions: some people looked disturbed, as if to say, “You’re abandoning us? You want us to go in there alone?” while other people rushed in and started looking at everything they could find.

The Moving Box Puzzle

 The audience reads the letter aloud:

You must help me. It is difficult for me to communicate directly. I must guide you through intermediaries, through objects. But please, I need your help. Soon they will become part of the house. They are unpacking.

Take these thirteen boxes. Match against each other the sides with the same number. Do this for each labeled room, one room at a time, for all the numbers in the room at once (for each room, ignoring the numbers from the other rooms) and you will form the clues to unlock the first mystery. You must keep the boxes within the space marked on the floor. The lock waits, hanging from above.

First number in the combination: Kitchen.
Second number in the combination: Bathroom.
Third number in the combination: Den.
Fourth number in the combination: Storage.

 Some cultures view certain birds as protective spirits, the souls of the deceased who, although they have no memory of their former lives, are a helpful force, and should be treated with respect…

Thirteen of the boxes in the living room are different from the rest. On the edges of the top of the box are labels like “Kitchen 10” or “Den 2, Storage 2.” On the floor is a 3×5 grid, with each spot on the grid the size of a moving box. This grid helps keep the audience on the right track by limiting the physical space available to them. To solve the puzzle, the audience must match the labels on the boxes. For example, two boxes are labeled “Kitchen 10,” and those two sides must be placed next to each other. Matching all the “Kitchen” boxes creates this shape:

Which is the number 8. Repeating the process for the other three numbers gets the numbers 3, 7, and 7 again. A security bag hanging from a string has a combination lock with four dials, and the combination 8-3-7-7 opens the bag.

Meanwhile, without the audience noticing it, the radio has started playing music from the 1920s.

David: This puzzle was a great way to teach the audience that they could start solving a puzzle without necessarily understanding what kind of answer they were looking for. The audience had a set of objects and a set of instructions, but they had no idea what would happen when they applied the instructions to the objects. At some point while matching boxes together, each audience had that “Ah-ha!” moment where they saw that they were forming numbers. Puzzles often have many steps, and if you get hung up on understanding every step before you try it, you’ll never get anywhere.

Inside the security bag is another letter. It reads:

…while others believe that some birds, especially owls, are an ill omen, representing approaching bloodshed, battle, or other disaster.

They are still outside. The four numbers I showed you were more than numbers. View them in a different way. (But you need not form the shapes again.)

First letter in the word: Kitchen.
Second letter in the word: Bathroom.
Third letter in the word: Den.
Fourth letter in the word: Storage.

In one of the boxes near the fireplace you must find this object. Use it. Use it firmly and set it on the table.  I have been waiting for so long.

The numbers 8-3-7-7, when viewed in a different way, are the letters B-E-L-L.

The audience searches through the other boxes in the room and finds a bell. They ring it, and the actors enter from the porch and perform a scene.

David: This part of the puzzle really highlighted the differences in how people think. For some, this was a totally intuitive puzzle, and they shouted out “It’s ‘bell!'” immediately after hearing “the four numbers I showed you were more than numbers.” Others needed to write out the numbers, and rotate the page to see how theycould also be seen as letters. Another possible solution, which only one audience tried, was simply to go through the boxes near the fireplace to find an object, without worrying about knowing in advance what they were looking for. The bell was the only object in any of the boxes.

Several audiences looked at the clue in a different way, and thought “First letter in the word: Kitchen” meant “K.” Using this method results in the gibberish “KANR”, which one audience, to our surprise, interpreted as “can opener.” There was in fact a bottle opener on the table, so this audience created their own red herring. They were about to use the can opener to pop open a bottle of beer being used as a prop, when someone in the audience reread the clue and realized they were going in the wrong direction.

Edward and Grace

As they enter, Edward is telling Grace the story of the mysterious owl migration of 1926. “They traveled east over the wooded Great Lakes,” he says, “snatching up voles, mice, rats, pets. Each one settled in their own abandoned ruins, alone, and waiting.” Grace, not at all perturbed by his attempt at being spooky, insists that they have procrastinated enough, and now they need to continue picking out tile and a sink for the bathroom.

Grace opens a welcome packet from their realtor, finding menus, and a letter with information about the history of their condo. The letter reveals that the original owner of the house, coincidentally, was also named Grace. An ornithologist and his daughter lived at the address until 1926, when a fire partially destroyed the house. It was repaired, and housed many other people over the years.

Edward continues unpacking while Grace looks at the mail. He finds an enormous, 3-D jigsaw puzzle piece, but doesn’t seem to find it at all strange. “Is this yours?” he asks. Grace replies, “If it’s not yours, it’s mine. That’s how it works.”

The puzzle piece is placed in the large window between the kitchen and the hallway—the space above the kitchen counter, if there were a kitchen counter.

Grace, going through the mail, finds another letter labeled “Open Me,” and drops it in front of the audience.

An audience member opens the envelope and reads the following message:

The owl boasts of its wisdom, but has no knowledge of where that wisdom came from. Unless it was witchcraft.

I can begin to show you what happened.
Complete the puzzle that has been started.
The pieces are underneath the sheets.
Read the text.

John: Every performance began with Cherri and me relaxing on the patio in full sight of the audience. I found this to be the most nerve-wracking part of the show, as there was no way for us to assist the audience if they had trouble with the first puzzle. We had to wait until we heard the bell – and sometimes that was a long wait indeed. 

Because we wanted an unrehearsed conversational tone as we entered, we never officially set the dialogue for this first scene. We established a few key points, selecting tile for the kitchen and checking the mail, and then worked our way naturally to those points. This gave us considerable freedom to change our interactions from performance to performance. Our favorite tile names were “Stardust Spectra” and “Khaki Brown Tempest”, which we took great glee in mocking.

The Jigsaw Puzzle

Underneath some sheets in the hallway are fourteen more giant jigsaw puzzle pieces. On one side is text, on the other, part of an illustration. The audience puts the puzzle together from both sides.

Some of the puzzle pieces have a lip on one side, which keeps the puzzle from tipping over but also means the pieces can only go in from one direction.

While the puzzle is being assembled, Edward and Grace remain where they are, absorbed in their own small tasks.

When the puzzle is assembled, the picture shows a girl’s hand holding a key, an owl in a cage, and a fire beginning to spread in the background.

The audience reads the text on the back of the puzzle:

Children in many places believe that to guard against a creature’s powers, you must name those powers out loud. Say this:

Owl, owl, tell me the truth
Why do you go where evil things go?
You sing by night, not by day,
And your whole song is “Woe! Woe!”

Owl, owl, tell me the truth
Why do you do what evil things do?
You seek for souls to weave in your nest,
And always you are searching, “Who? Who?”

The text is an original poem based on ideas from the Middle English poem “The Owl and the Nightingale.”

And the front illustration was designed by Kirsten Sevig-Desjardins. 

David: This was the most labor intensive part of the 1926 Pleasant. The jigsaw puzzle took over 70 hours to build—fifteen pieces, each with an internal framework to make them sturdy enough for an audience to handle without breaking. I used over a thousand screws in the construction of this puzzle!

Grace Enchanted

As the final words of the poem are read aloud, Edward snaps out of his trance and reveals that he has finally picked a tile he likes. Grace is delighted, but needles Edward for taking so long to make the decision—for the clock says it is now 10:55. But that can’t be right, since it’s still daylight out. Something is wrong with the clock, and Edward takes it off the wall to inspect.

In a hole behind the clock is revealed a brooch shaped like an owl. Grace puts it on, and dreamily begins walking towards the guest bedroom. “What is it?” asks Edward. “It’s Grace’s,” says Grace. She goes into the guest bedroom and shuts the door.

Edward turns over the clock to reveal, taped to the back, another letter labeled “Open Me.” The audience takes it and reads:

To ward off the evil caused by an owl, my family believed that the owl should be killed, and nailed to the door of the house.

But that was simply impossible for me to do. Now you must come to my aid. A house cannot contain its secrets. The thoughts of those who lived here have lingered on, and now erupt into physical form. Only some of the words are mine.

Take the ribbon. Listen carefully, and you will hear the first words. Find those words where they are written out, and begin there. Notice that the end of the ribbon is attracted to the first spot—that is how you know the spot is right, and how you will identify each of the next spots. Find the next spot, the right distance away measured by the ribbon. Then the next spot.

Look high and low, in any direction. From one to the other, the words form a chain. Find all seven spots in order, never returning to a previous used spot. The words must be heard. Speak them aloud as you progress.

The Word Room

Entering the room Grace is now in, the audience discovers that the walls are completely covered with words. Each word or phrase has next to it a dot about the size of a dime. Grace is in the corner, humming. Edward shuts the door as the last audience member enters.

The audience finds a ribbon, about 8 feet long, with a small magnet at each end. Listening carefully, the audience hears Grace whisper “I unlocked.” Despite the hundreds of phrases on the wall, with 18 people in the audience, it’s not too long before someone spots this particular phrase on the wall near the doorway.

The audience discovers that the magnet at the end of the ribbon attaches easily to the dot next to this first phrase (a screw is hidden beneath it). Keeping one end of the ribbon on that dot, the audience stretches the ribbon out, and finds the only dot that is the right distance away. That dot, too, is magnetized, confirming that the audience has found the correct spot.

The audience continues finding dots. Grace hums continuously. The puzzle is made more difficult by the confined space and the number of people in the room.

The seven phrases are:

I unlocked
the other cages
I won’t leave
you to burn
we need to
find the window
where is

The final phrase is right next to Grace, and when the audience finds that spot, she screams “Where is!” She stands up, and a photograph of an owl suddenly appears where she was. She runs out of the room, hysterical.

This photo slides into the room through a gap in the baseboard as Grace runs out.

John: This was a fairly easy puzzle to solve if the audience listened and observed carefully. Some people overlooked the correct dot several times as they scanned the room, repeatedly passing the string over it. This, plus the cramped conditions and an occasional clue misinterpretation, made the word room the most likely place for intra-group tension to develop. One audience even discovered a falsely magnetized dot. Fortunately, whenever the audience went too far astray, Cherri could always whisper the next phrase. And when she snapped out of her trance and ran, all the audience’s discomfort and careful looking paved the road to a very nice scare.

The Girl

Back outside the room, Grace is breaking down. “Did you hear it?” she asks, but Edward has heard nothing. The audience sees a long, knotted sheet on the ground, moving around the corner. It looks like a makeshift rope someone would create to climb out of a high window. At the end of the rope stands a girl in an old-fashioned dress, slowly pulling the sheet behind her. In her hand is a key attached to the rope.

When the audience sees her, the girl drags her fingernails along the wall.  Edward and Grace freeze. “What is that?” Edward says. “There’s someone here.” He peers around the corner, but the girl has moved beyond view. Grace races for her purse. While looking for her car keys, she sees a shadow pass across the back wall. She turns and finds herself eye-to-eye with the mysterious girl.

The girl locks Grace in place with her gaze, but Edward still does not see her.

“The boxes,” Grace whispers. “There’s something behind the boxes.”

The girl drops her key onto a lockbox and disappears into the master bedroom at the back of the condo. Grace follows her. Edward, concerned about what Grace has said, wrestles aside a large wall of boxes in the living room. Behind it is an enormous grid partially filled with numbers. “Grace,” he calls, “there’s nothing back here.” As the master bedroom door slams closed.

World’s Largest Sudoku

The girl has dropped her sheet. At one end is a ribbon, and attached to the ribbon is a key. Nearby is a large metal box, which the audience unlocks.

Inside the box they find an envelope labeled “Open Me” with this message:

Owls often choose to roost in collapsed buildings, crumbling city walls, or caves. They select areas of perpetual desolation. If you find an owl nesting near your home, you are living in a land that one day will be full of ruins.

Use the numbers one through nine. Each row must contain the numbers one through nine. Each column must contain the numbers one through nine. Each black box must contain the numbers one through nine. If a number appears once in a row, it will not appear in that row a second time. If a number appears once in a column, it will not appear in that column a second time. If a number appears once in a black box, it will not appear in that black box a second time.

Soon you will see what to do.

This is a Sudoku puzzle. Also inside the metal box are the numbers, written on tiles, that need to be filled in.

This puzzle is not terribly difficult – in fact, it is easier than a 1-Star sudoku published in the newspaper – but it becomes difficult when 18 people try to work on it at once. Usually, someone makes a mistake, and the audience has to take a step back and begin again, this time more methodically. The tiles that the audience can move are distinguished by a notch cut in the top, so if the audience needs to begin again they can easily reset the puzzle to the way they found it.

Once the puzzle is complete, the audience notices that certain boxes are outlined in red and orange. The red boxes contain the numbers “6-1-2,” and the audience realizes that this is a phone number, since 612 is the local area code.

David: Creating a Sudoku puzzle with a phone number imbedded inside was a huge challenge. The first difficulty was finding an appropriate phone number, since it couldn’t have any repeating digits (except for the area code). The building where I work was very kind in agreeing to my request for such a phone extension.

The second difficulty was creating the puzzle layout, since I needed to include the area code and I wanted the phone number to be centered in the grid. I found a computer program to randomly generate solvable Sudokus, and generated them over and over until I found one that fit my criteria (the fourth number in the third row needed to be the same as the eighth number in the fifth row, the sixth number in the third row needed to be the same as the fourth number in the fifth row, and the fifth number in the third row needed to be the same as either the first or the ninth number in the fifth row). Then I simply replaced one number for another (replaced all 1s with 5s, all 5s with 3s, etc.) until I had the correct numbers where I needed them.

John: Throughout this scene I sat quietly on the floor, cell phone in hand, waiting for someone to say the correct number aloud. Because the number had been pre-programmed into my phone, if necessary I could skip to the next section, bypassing the sudoku entirely; but this nuclear option would have damaged the audience’s sense of satisfaction so much that I never implemented it – even when it meant they had to start the puzzle over from the beginning. Twice.

Underwater

Edward pulls out a cell phone, turns the speakerphone on, and sets it down nearby. He picks up a flashlight and proceeds toward the Master Bedroom, while the audience uses his phone to dial the number.

After several rings, a recording plays. It is a girl’s voice, a voice we have not heard yet in the play. She says:

Many birds of prey such as falcons and kites, the slate-mantled sparrowhawk, long-crested eagle, and pallid harrier will circle above a lake until they spot their prey.

But owls hunt at night, and cannot see beneath the surface of the water. If you want to hide something from an owl, put it underwater. If an owl cannot find what it is looking for, look for it underwater. You must find the two keys.

The two keys will bring you to the center of everything.

Meanwhile, Edward has walked slowly to the master bedroom door. He tries the handle, finds it locked, and begs Grace to let him in, but to no avail.

The audience decides, based on the phone message, that they need to find something underwater. Following the beam of light that Edward’s flashlight provides, they discover the bathroom. It contains a tub, filled with water, on which are floating pages from a book and leaves. At the bottom of the tub are several large animal bones, including one attached to an old ring of skeleton keys.

On closer inspection, two small modern keys are discovered among the older keys. One of these opens the door to the master bedroom, and the audience enters. Edward enters as well, and shuts the door behind him.

John: It was challenging to maneuver the audience from the sudoku wall into the bathroom. Making small scraping and shuffling sounds as I moved helped draw attention across the condo without distracting too much from the message on the phone, but inevitably there was still a brief “what do we do now?” moment between my pounding on the master bedroom door and the discovery that my flashlight illuminated the bathroom. And because of the small size of the bathroom and the (relatively) large size of the audience, it was always a bit of a clown-car trying to get everyone in there.

The Center of Everything

When the audience enters, they see the girl, now dressed in a coat made of the pelts of small animals. She stares out from the closet and across the room. The master bedroom is mostly empty except for some curious items such as old photographs and suitcases. On the windowsill, hundreds of small bones are arranged.

The girl is looking into the master bathroom, which is unfinished except for a wooden frame that will support the bathtub, where Grace stands, chained.

The second key unlocks her. As the chains fall, Grace screams, “What have you done? You’ve given me to her!” Hidden speakers begin to play the sound of a distant wind and a low heartbeat.

The girl emerges from the closet and approaches Grace.  She holds an egg in her hand and gives it to Grace.

The girl immediately turns on Edward, presenting him with his own egg. She then hands the nearest audience member a note:

Retrieve the other nine eggs from their nests, and protect them.

The walk-in closet is almost completely dark, its walls covered with black velvet which absorbs the light and deadens the sound. Several birdcages hang from the ceiling and line the walls, each one containing animal bones. Small candles in the cages provide a tiny bit of illumination.

Hidden amongst the bones are nine eggs. Edward and Grace hold their eggs tightly, locked in a trance.

Once the audience has reached through the openings of the cages and searched through the bones to find all nine eggs, Edward speaks. “Grace, what’s going on here?” he says. Grace begins to repeat the phrase from the word room: “(I unlocked) (the other cages) (I won’t leave) (you to burn) (We need to) (find the window) (Where is)…”

And for the first time, the girl speaks:

“I opened all the cages and set the birds free, and then I opened hers. She clung to me, leaving blood where her talons dug into my arm. The smoke was so thick, we couldn’t see the stairs and the doorknob burned my hand. I tripped and dropped her and she tried to fly out the window but it was stuck. I tried to make a rope … nobody came for me. I could hear the bells ringing. She fell to the ground next to the window where I fell – her wings were black with smoke and her eyes were bright as flame.”

Edward’s egg explodes in his hand. Inside the egg is a note:

Break your eggs.

John: Wow did the audience jump when my egg exploded. Occasionally people would scream. It was a simple matter of holding the egg in my fingertips and squeezing until it popped, while letting the rising tension of the layered dialogue carry the moment. When we first rehearsed this trick the eggs I used were too small, and I was incapable of generating enough pressure to crack them. We switched to a larger egg and it invariably shattered brilliantly – structural integrity proves once again that bigger isn’t always better.

The Secret of the Eggs

The audience smashes their eggs, and in each one is a piece of a note.

Assembling the notes, the audience reads:

When a fire claims the life of any being, its soul will remain trapped in that place. When a fire claims the life of two beings together, their souls will meld, and become one soul. 

The girl moves furiously, using a marker to write on the photographs on the wall of the room, one letter per photo. Her message reads:

I-A-M-T-H-E-O-W-L

Grace moves slowly backwards into the black void of the closet. Edward desperately tries to save her. “Grace, that was 80 years ago. Come back to me, honey.”  Then he turns on the girl.  “What have you done with her?  Give her back to me!” But the owl/girl refuses. “No. She’s mine now.”

She turns to the audience. “You’ve given her to me and you can’t have her back.

The girl retreats into the darkness among the cages and bones. Finally aware of what has happened, Edward is in shock. Then he speaks, telling the same story he told at the beginning of the play, this time believing it:

“In the heated summer of 1926, a pack, a flock, a swarm of owls was released somewhere in Minnesota. They traveled east over the wooded great lakes, their wings tipped with the scent of smoke. They flew into Canada, snatching up voles, mice, rats, pets, until each one settled in its own abandoned ruin … alone and waiting.”

The sound and lights suddenly are shut off, and the door flies open. Outside, the rest of the condo is blocked off by a high wall built of the moving boxes from the living room. The only open passage is the hallway to the front door, which stands open. The air is full of smoky haze.

The Final Puzzle

On the way out, the audience finds one last message:

When a fire claims the life of one member of a flock while its companions escape, the other birds are bound to perform a debt of service for their immolated friend once they have passed into the spirit world.

Thank you.

Grace, Edward, and the Owl remain in the bowels of the house, and the audience leaves.

If the audience chooses, after they leave the condo they may put the together the bits of information they have heard to learn the final secret: the audience is the souls of the birds from the other cages who escaped the fire. They have died, and have been called back by the owl to perform their debt of service, which is to help entrap the new residents of the house. Throughout the entire performance, the audience has helped perpetrate this act of evil.

Walking Shadow: Our influences and inspirations for this production were many: world mythology about owls, Japanese horror movies, David’s personal experience with creating large-scale treasure hunts, and the actual history of the house (thanks to the Hennepin History Museum’s research library).

Some of the synchronicity between our ideas and real life was creepy: we had already decided that an owl would feature prominently in 1926 Pleasant, when we learned that an ornithologist really had lived in the house. We picked the date of the backstory based on the building’s address (there wasn’t actually a fire there), and then learned that there really was an owl migration in 1926. And we had already chosen the name of our female character, Grace, when we learned that the woman who built the house also shared that name. We wouldn’t be at all surprised several years from now to learn from the people buying our condo unit that on some nights, when the streets are quiet and the clouds thick like smoke overhead, the faint sounds of wings can be heard near the bedroom window, and the soft brush of a young girl’s dressing gown along the floor in the corridor.