Image from Wikimedia
Climbing Mount Everest was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I wish I’d never gone. I suffered for years of PTSD and still suffer from what happened. I’m glad I wrote a book about it. But, you know, if I could go back and relive my life, I would never have climbed Everest.
– Jon Krakauer
I’d been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care.
– Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air, 1997, p. 5
The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I’d been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace.
– Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air, 1997, p. 136
TIME AND PLACE
Scenes 1, 2 and 4: 1995, Rhino’s Forehead Pub, Boulder, Colorado.
Scene 3: 1995, Rocky Mountain National Park (Blitzen Ridge), near Boulder.
Scenes 5, 6 and 7: 1997, Camp IV on the South Col (elevation 25,919 feet) – the final camp below the summit of Mount Everest, Nepal.
Scene 8: December, 2020, Rhino’s Forehead Pub, Boulder, Colorado.
Stage left: Rhino’s Forehead Pub (on the first floor). Two floors above it is Bobbie St. George’s one bedroom apartment and art studio, filled with her work.
Center stage: snow covering the ground, leading to a mountain peak rising upstage.
Stage right: A cabin-sized yellow tent on a platform 10 feet or so above the stage. During Scenes 1 to 4, and 8, the tent and the platform it is on are in darkness.
CHARACTERS
BOBBIE ST. GEORGE, female, 30 in Scenes 1-4.
JON DAVID AMBROSE, male, 25 in Scenes 1-4.
MARK OBERON, male, 40 in Scene 5.
MATTHEW PRESTON, male, 45 in Scene 5.
LUCAS COBOS, male, 35 in Scene 5.
Waitress in Rhino’s Forehead Pub, Scene 1 (nonspeaking part).
SCENE 2
ST. GEORGE and AMBROSE are back down in the Pub, having just finished breakfast together.
They are drinking what appear to be morning Bloody Marys.
AMBROSE
I don’t get what you’re up to.
There are better lays out there than me, aren’t there?
ST. GEORGE
I wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t care.
It’s you I want to get to know.
AMBROSE
Why?
ST. GEORGE
Because, for me, you’re the chosen one.
AMBROSE
The chosen one?
What’s that supposed to mean?
ST. GEORGE
When we get to know each other better, maybe you’ll understand….
I still haven’t heard you say your last name yet.
AMBROSE
Picasso.
I told you.
ST. GEORGE
Your real last name.
AMBROSE
[pause] Jon David Ambrose.
ST. GEORGE
That’s what I thought.
AMBROSE
Thought what?
ST. GEORGE
“Ambrose.” It means eternal, doesn’t it.
AMBROSE
I have no idea. It’s just a name I got, to call myself.
ST. GEORGE
Beware of names you get to call yourself.
They can become yourself.
AMBROSE
Like Mark Twain, you mean?
ST. GEORGE
Like Pink Floyd.
AMBROSE
Or Deep Throat.
ST. GEORGE
Or Barabbas.
AMBROSE
Who’s that? Barabbas, you said? Or was it Barbados?
ST. GEORGE
Barabbas means the son of the father … in Aramaic.
AMBROSE
Jesus?
ST. GEORGE
He was called that.
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