Some Theatres and Musical Plays of Jail. The Theatres. The theatres in Jail acquire their names through a public upsurge of opinion, a silent, osmotic process that oozes through the streets and culminates in a descriptive sentence. A theatre might be nameless one day, and by the next, every tongue in town will be urging its neighbour to visit "The Place With That Mudpuddle Out The Front" or "The Theatre With The Tree." Nondescriptive titles are ignored. Here we are listing a few examples of typical and well-known Jail theatres. There are hundreds more. The House where Gustave Sings. Some theatres change their names along with their singers. The House Where Gustave Sings is currently named after Gustave Pot, a lyrical baritone whose rendition of "Fly, fly, my sadness," has been attracting a steady crowd for the past year. When he is replaced, the theatre will be known by some other name. The interior of the 'Gustave' is high and dim and the seats have a gentle, tickling stink of animal urine about them which mixes with the scent of rotting timber that floats down from the roof filling the room with a smell of mouldering sweetness. The Theatre Alex Died Under. This theatre is unusually long-lived. The name has been around for dozens of years, an unusual feat in a town where these things change so quickly. The music is the usual mix of good and bad performers, but somehow the place stays afloat. The owner is a relentless self-promoter. The Room. The Room is as plain as a theatre can get. It is, simply, a room. The patrons and the performers sit, stand or lounge about wherever they please. A typical Room show will be a minimalist, propless affair, but the quality of the writing will be unusually good, and the singers excellent. The Room has a substantial out-of-town reputation, especially in the more bohemian areas of Ex. The owner was once approached by an Exian who wanted to move the whole place to his home city's theatre district. The theatre stayed where it was and the Exian had to leave town that night to avoid being lynched by indignant audience members. The Theatre with the Biggest Pot. A stewpot forms the centrepiece of most meals in Jail. This theatre is known for its enormous iron pot which sits in the middle of the audience, filled with stew for hungry audience members. The shows here usually revolve around the subject of eating. The Place Where They Sing In The Roof. A philanthropic thief once fell in love with a Poidian singer, bought the top floors of a row of houses and knocked down the walls between their attics to create a long room with a triangular ceiling through which the a miasma of sunlight drifted. This was the theatre with which he intended to lure his darling to Jail. The plan failed, she took a Poidian husband and began fishing for a living and he sold his theatre to a cousin. It is appreciated for its unique acoustics. They are bad, but interesting. The Theatre With Wooden Actors. This theatre specialises in puppet operas. Silhouette puppetry is popular in Jail and this theatre boasts the longest backlit screen in town. The area behind the screen is a storehouse for scenery and props. The Musical Plays. Almost none of the musical plays performed in Jail have set scripts or titles. Different theatres take popular storylines and flesh them out with whatever details they please. Most of the stories have one song which is indeliably associated with that play, but the rest of the music is up to the whim of the individual theatre. Each place has an established repertoire of songs which it will fit into any story it decides to perform. Outsiders call the resulting mish-mash of narrative and lyrics "bewildering" and "incomprehensible." What follows are a few basic stories with the nicknames by which they are most often known. Fly, fly, my Sadness. Four people or objects (often a rock, a woman, a fish and a pot of stew) try to cheer up an unhappy countertenor. "Fly, fly, my sadness," is this play's signature song. The Life and Opinions of a Thief. The story for this one varies wildly from production to production. Sometimes it follows the biography of a well-known Jailite thief, sometimes it's a collection of tall stories loosely held together by a central character, and sometimes it consists of an angry, paranoid rant from a disgruntled local, but the play always concludes with a sprightly love aria called, "Fish, sand, fish!" The Only Way You Can Stop Is To Have A Beginning. The Only Way ... is a circular story. The first scene is also the last scene: the beginning is also the end. Usually a fisherperson will arrive on stage about half way through and sing a lengthy comic dirge, "My life as a hole." (which, as the Exian critic Greg Cult has pointed out, can also be interpreted as, "My life as a whole.") Long Play. Long's story is more developed than that of any other Jail musical. It revolves around a lover (of any sex, but we'll refer to them as 'her') who tests her partner's fidelity by disguising her best friend as the partner's long-lost sibling. The best friend has been instructed to pretend to seduce the partner away from the lover. The plan fails when the best friend and the partner fall in love. What happens from then on is up to the actors. In the traditional ending, the best friend kills the partner when she sees them talking with their ex-lover because s/he believes the partner has betrayed him/her. Then s/he realises that s/he has made a terrible mistake, and tries to commit suicide, but the lover murders him (or her) before they can kill themselves. Less often, the partner discovers the deception and kills both the best friend and the lover before throwing themselves into the sea. Whatever happens, everybody always ends up dead. Two Done Together. Two thieves are friends until each one independantly decides to commit suicide for the sake of the other. Sometimes the thieves are enemies instead of friends, sometimes they are lovers and sometimes they are not thieves at all, but they always find an excuse to sing, "We will do it together." "We will..." is one of those catchy songs which people enjoy humming and Two Done Together is an exceptionally popular play. The Clouds. A tight group of friends expels one of its members for the first time. (In some variations, the group member breaks away voluntarily.) Contrary to the group's expectations the expelled member becomes stronger and more confident while the people in the group weaken and the group itself fades out of existance. Watching this play can be a haunting evening's entertainment, with the rebel seeming to absorb the group's strength as they inexorably fall apart. A wordless hum recurs throughout the story, but there is no set song for The Clouds. Ralph, the story of a squid. 'Ralph' is based on the true story of a squid who adopted the northern Jail beach of Rest as its home, and became a beloved favourite of its human neighbours. At the height of its popularity Ralph is murdered. In real life, the murderer was never found, but stage versions often cater to the audience's indignant lust for justice by introducing a murderer who is caught and punished to everyone's satisfaction. The signature song in this play is called simply, "Ralph." You can read about Samara's experience of one of Jail's theatres in Musical Theatre in Jail.