Wyatt Dykas and Lila Stadler in “The Gift”
To kick off the fall season, the Wolfpack Players present you with “The Continuum Tales”, a play jam-packed with odd and ominous short stories, being compared with media like “Black Mirror” and more. Originally a book written by Jason Pizzarello, Timberline is the first Idaho high school to premiere the book as a play script. The play contains a three-part prologue, interlogue, and epilogue, along with seven short stories from the book. The play starts with the prologue titled The Gift, where two lovers get hold of a restricted book. Elliot, played by Wyatt Dykas, opens the book and begins to read.
There begins the short stories from “The Continuum Tales”. It starts with The Results, in which two expecting couples sit in a waiting room expecting results on their babies. It ends with an odd discovery. The second story is The Rescue, where a man named Gregory is trapped in the basement of a woman. You’d think it’s a story of rescue, but it quickly turns to something more sinister. Next is The Birthday, where a man can’t remember his own birthday. Surrounded by his coworkers, the story unravels into something more unhinged. My personal favorite story, The Pimple, is a story of a girl who wakes up with a concerningly large pimple on her forehead. What seems like a comedic story of adolescence rapidly turns into a story of something else entirely.
The Gift returns for the interlogue. The couple continues to question these strange stories in the book. They seem afraid that some authority will find and punish them for containing the book, nonetheless, they open the book and read more. The next story, The Happy, gives an interesting outlook on emotions. Teachers quarrel about their experiences within the job, with an unnerving twist at the end. In the second to last story, a personally jaw-dropping display on the topic of love and loneliness, we have The Proposal. A man and woman are on a date. However, the man is running out of time. The end reveals what exactly he is running out of time for. In the last story, The End, four people end up in a strange hotel building because of a tornado hurdling towards them. The end, funnily enough, isn’t just the end for those four.
Then comes the epilogue. Wyatt Dykas and Lila Stadler in The Gift return one last time to complete the story. They close out the book and hear helicopters outside that could be looking for them. But, Elliot wants to keep reading. What he reads brings the play to an end. I was still questioning lots of things after it was over, and what it all meant. If you’re one of those people and want to see an in-depth review of what it all means, make sure to look out for our official analysis of “The Continuum Tales” on our website!
