User:Nine Tail Fox/The Public

Synopsis
The Director of the Theatre of the Open Air, fresh from the success of his production of Romeo and Juliet, is challenged by three passionate, sinister visitors to experiment with a new form of theatre. This 'Theatre Beneath the Sand' will communicate authentic truths that the Theatre of the Open Air has hitherto concealed, but will also demand that its participants discard the pretences and protective masks that they have adopted in society and reveal their true selves.

As levels of reality and consciousness begin to overlap, the protagonists find their layers of pretence stripped from them as their private desires, personal dramas and concealed sexualities are ruthlessly displayed. The staging of the Theatre Beneath the Sand, a version of Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo is played by a thirty-year-old man and Juliet by a boy of fifteen, results in a revolution by the audience and many of the participants are brutally put to death as social normality violently reasserts itself.

The Director, visited by Death in the guise of a Conjurer, rues the failure of his experiment but passionately defends his right to have attempted it.