ZUPPA THEATRE’S NEW PLAY will open with Jasper (Stewart Legere), staring meditatively ahead, a piano accompanying his silence. It will be in the basement of the Historic Farmers’ Market, so the lights will be dim and the audience crammed all around him, part of the scene itself. He’ll start slow, with a monologue, but then the lights will cut out and he’ll shoot up, ranting like a neurotic poet in his frantic and desperate opening monologue. “The end of the world!” he’ll yell out later, but lower his voice immediately after. “It’s kinda…weird, don’tcha think?”

“We’re doing a show about the end of the world, so we can’t have ‘Stairway to Heaven’ soundchecking upstairs every night.” He thinks it over, then adds: “Although that may have been appropriate.”

What’s that? Halifax arts stuff? MUST be from The Coast. And while you’re there, check out some smaller things I wrote on the Pop Explosion.