It starts rather innocently. At first, it is no more than a toy, an apparatus, something well-crafted, timeless, and intriguing. It’s a peculiar apparatus, the tale, that stage on which a person is sent forth to open up to the reader. We enter, we listen, we look—up to the point where the apparatus takes over and starts working entirely on its own. And when it does, it cannot be stopped.
Play works this way. At first, it is a deliberate effort: you take out the toy; you establish what the toy will do; you engage. Let your mind drift until it finds the places that gratify. You follow the flow of things, and soon comes the moment when things take on a life of their own.
In the process of make-believe, every creative gesture unleashes elements that develop their own momentum. Eventually—in play, in reading, in myth-making, in politics—things become larger than those who created them.
Just so with stories: in any well-crafted story, there comes a point when things move on their own, and the work of bringing things to life is no longer done by the reader but, as if by magic, by the narrative itself. A reality unfolds inside your mind without your having to do anything but stay with it.
This collection of stories is theatre. It is a dramatic procession of characters telling their tales. D.P. Watt sends out person after person onto a widening stage, saying, “I did this,” and “I felt that,” and “This is me.” It is a book of voices, in which every story adds another layer to the performing choir. Some of the voices repeat, or riff on, the concerns of those who came before them.
— Florence Sunnen