A new play by Jonathon Young

Produced by Electric Company Theatre

Co-Presented with The Cultch

World Premiere: Apr 13-17, 2004 - The Cultch, MST Territories/Vancouver

“A portrait of the Prospector writing a self portrait of the Prospector”.

This is Krapp’s Last Tape set against the fallout of the Klondike Gold Rush and the decline of vaudeville theatre. In 1898 a writer/explorer known only as Walker goes north to reclaim an abandoned mine in a remote ghost town. Months later he arrives, barely alive, and holes up on the stage of the decrepit Palace Grand theatre. His final means of survival, the only way left to impose order on the world as the killing cold of winter sets in, is to write. And then consume his writing as fuel. Read. Write. Re-read. Re-write. Speak it aloud. Hear it spoken. Perform it.

In a distant cabin, a distress call is received: “Save Me”. A mysterious Tracker is sent to find Walker and bring him back alive. Abandoning all the comforts of home, he sets out, hauling his outmoded equipment on his back, transmitting dispatches from the trail. He tracks Walker to the Palace Grand.

Dark, poetic and stylistically daring, the play is an utterly physical evocation of an ill-fated expedition that makes northern exploration a metaphor for the writer in his quest to truthfully portray himself.