AustLit

Written in a slightly absurdist style, Judgment Day plays heavily with the theatre's fourth wall convention. It is essentially a play about a theatre company having no play to present to the audience, and begins as audience members are still being seated.

The Stage Manager: You could find nothing suitable then?

The Director: I could not! Nothing at all! Why dramatists will not supply us with plays which are short and at the same time unusual is beyond my comprehension.

Having observed the Stage Manager adjusting a camera on a tripod outside the leading lady's dressing room, the Director hits on the idea of staging a play in which the audience co-operates, suggesting that this would 'greatly stimulate their interest.' After discussing the merits of audience co-operation and how one accesses when a play is a failure or not, the two men are joined on stage by the leading lady, and a little latter by two women and a young man from within the audience. An on-going theme within the play is the leading lady's attempt to work out a six-letter word from a cross-word puzzle denoting 'a basic impulse.'

Characters

THE STAGE MANAGER                   
THE DIRECTOR                        
HEKLA, THE LEADING LADY             
THE WOMAN WITH THE REMARKABLE HAT   
THE WOMAN WITH THE CONSPICUOUS GOWN 
THE YOUNG MAN                       
THE AUDIENCE