THE MAGELLAN PROJECT
PRODUCTION WORKSHOP PROPOSAL

"Faculty X. A term coined by Colin Wilson for 'the ability to grasp the reality of other times and other places.' The sense that sometimes momentarily comes to us of being present at past or distant scenes; 'that latent power that human beings posses to reach beyond the present...it is the power to grasp reality and it unites the two halves of man's mind, conscious and subconscious."

Encylopaedia of The Unexplained, pg 84.

Rebecca Rouse
Kyle Shepard

"In stormy weather we frequently saw what is called the corpo sancto, or St. Elme. On one very dark night it appeared to us like a brilliant flambeau on the summit of a large tree, and thus remained for the space of two hours, which was a matter of great consolation to us during the tempest. At the instant of its disappearing, it diffused such a resplendent blaze of light as almost blinded us. We gave ourselves up for lost..."

-Nicola Ferrari, a poet from Vincenza, keeper of the log
Monday, October 3 1519

MAGELLAN'S TRAGIC TRIUMPH

On the morning of Monday August 10th, 1519, Fernandez Magellan set out from Seville with a fleet of five ships to search for a passage to the Indies. He never returned. According to the log that survives, he was killed in the Philippines by primitive savages resisting conversion to Christianity. As the fighting began, Magellan's men met great resistance. The writer of the log book allegedly saw Ferdinand struck by a bamboo lance and then surrounded by native peoples. Upon seeing their fallen general, the wounded retreated to safety, abandoning their great captain. The men then pleaded with the primitive island peoples to return Magellan's body and those others who were killed. The greedy savages refused to "give up such a man" and allegedly kept him as a memorial, or perhaps, as dinner. No record of Magellan's existence goes beyond that fateful encounter on the island of Mactan.

His epic journey nearly completed, Magellan falls out of the picture. He disappears from the "frame" of history. Was he killed? He was a notoriously terrible military strategist; was his fight with the exotic Filipinos a veiled suicide attempt? A hoax? Where is he now? The first human to nearly circumnavigate the globe. The first human to attempt the most epic journey possible, and the question remains, what did he find at the end of that voyage?

We are searching for Magellan. His mythic travels, perhaps never completed, embody the mysterious vacuum at the end of all stories and highlight the relationship of memory to decay. Magellan's tragic and mysterious triumph can stand as a metaphor for any life journey, which is legendary by nature and ends in death, filled by emptiness, ambiguity, and obscurity. One could argue that Magellan's circumnavigation of the world came from the innate desire to circumnavigate death. He must live on in myths for otherwise the transient and impermanent qualities of human nature win. Six characters from the span of all time speak of their search for Magellan thus perpetuating his myth. Six dancers embark on their own struggle for unity and completion of a journey. Their quest mirrors Magellan's, embodying his epic struggle and with that the struggle of all humanity. Each step is like a foot up Death's ass. The grim reaper (metaphysically present at all times) bends to grasp his ankles as they penetrate and redefine new worlds of space. This assault exists within the soundscape of avant-garde jazz, commissioned for this piece. Fuck yeah. The musicians respond and interact with the action, influencing and being influenced, remaining within their non-traditional idiom. Through different forms of expression and speech the performers will objectify the past in such a manner that the audience will begin to ask itself larger questions. The performers will trigger the exploration of the question of who gets to tell history. The space of Production Workshop accumulates artifacts and art, all straining and reaching toward Magellan, toward meaning, and toward completion. But can these people and objects come to a conclusion or will Magellan's myth continue to evade any semblance of truth? Will they too fall out of the picture? Will they disappear from the frame of performance?

WHY NOW

This project is a voyage of grand proportions unlike any other. This is not a play. This is not a dance. This is not a concert. This is not an installation. (This is us tooting our own horn.) The Magellan Project is a fusion, an attempt to circumnavigate forms of expression, compress and combine them, and present them in the downstairs space of Production Workshop. We are alive in a time when epic gestures of imperialism and colonialist fantasies are very much alive and enforced, although our culture is loathe to label our international policy of "democratization" as such. We are participants, willing and unwilling, in an ancient human tradition of repression, projection, and violence. This imperialist aesthetic can extend from literal wars to the academic's library carrel, where history itself is re-imagined and conquered. It extends beyond, to spaces of performance where spectators are seduced into continuing the compulsion towards objectification and appropriation. But what lies at the end of these struggles? The thesis is finished, graded, and gathering dust on a shelf awaiting the next academic conquistador. Scores of 'conquered' nations lie in our wake, bleeding and reformed, but never equal. Waiting for the next rebellion, the next insurgency, the next opportunity to reassert the power of our arsenal of weaponry and morality. It is no coincidence that Magellan's voyage was taken during a period of political and cultural crisis in Europe. He was trying to solidify an international reputation, he wanted to take on the [New] World.

WHY PW

Production Workshop is the place for this project. There is not another space for this project or projects of its kind. Not on campus, not downtown, certainly not in most cities. PW is a uniquely malleable and forgiving space, and this is what the project demands. More than a traditionally structured and scripted play, this project will develop during rehearsals. PW allows for this kind of process. PW is a fantabulous petrie dish for creativity and artistic force and goddamn it, the amount of potential and freedom that is allowed just fucking rocks.

Theater is very much like the museum space that we wish to adapt. Theater, like museums, has different levels of interactions. Three symbolic spaces overlap in one larger space creating an interaction that is unique and specific to the individual. These spaces exist in both theater and museums. They are cognitive, pragmatic, and dream spaces. There is first the order and rationality of the setting; this is either the theatrical piece or the museum itself. Then, there is the social aspect: who you are with while attending and the reasons why you attend. Finally, there is the interaction between the piece and the viewers "subrational consciousness," i.e. their imagination, emotion, and memories. PW is a place that will understand and cultivate these interactions.

WORKING with PEOPLE

Collaboration, like good sex, can be messy and hard to articulate, but we'll give it a shot. For you guys. This entire project did not begin with a vision or abstract idea, it began with people. People who wanted to make work together. Kyle and Ben wanted to collaborate to challenge their existing sensibilities and boundaries regarding dance and music. After Machinal, Rebecca and Kyle realized they wanted to work together again to further explore and challenge traditional theater making processes as well as continue to develop a fresh performance aesthetic. We began to assemble a project. The piece set sail. This atmosphere of collaboration will continue throughout the project and become more focused.

Over the past three and a half months Kyle has created movement on four accomplished dancers. Ben and Rebecca, inspired by Kyle's movement, began creating complementary elements in music and text. The performers chosen in auditions will also be a part of the process. Since this is not a text based project, we will be looking for versatile, receptive, and creative performers. The dances and monologues will be created on them during the process. This method of creating is not unusual. Both Rebecca and Kyle have successfully created work in this manner and therefore have clear ideas on how to proceed.

The first goal in the rehearsal process will be to establish a sense of community. Everyone needs to realize they are members of an ensemble. While the specific tasks of the musicians, actors, and dancers will differ greatly during the actual performances, the success of this project depends upon their ability to work together. For this reason, all performers (actors, dancers, and musicians) will warm-up together, all partaking in physical and vocal work. There are countless ways to accomplish this; the specific techniques we employ will depend upon the needs and sensibilities of the performers.

The designers will also be intimately involved throughout the process. For example, the walls of downstairs PW will be cluttered with objects, artifacts, remnants, works of art, and other remains of history, real and imaginary. These images will resonate with the text of the developing monologues.

DESIGNING MAGELLAN

Benjamin Bright-Fishbein, Set Design

The Magellan Project is neither theatre, nor performance art. It defies classification. As Rebecca says, we are creating a fusion. I knew when I started this that the design would be unlike anything I've ever seen. I am determined to create not just a set, but literally an environment that transports you to another world when you enter. Everything will be interactive: the atmosphere, the actors, the dancers, all subject to the whims of the audience. We will lather the walls and the ground with artwork and minutia that's eerily connected to the performance. Audience members will be encouraged to get up from their seats and explore, to drift through the space while the performance is occurring. This is essential to the ambiance we aim to create.

Even now I'm having trouble as I write this because to tell you the truth I'm not even sure what the end product will look and feel like. So much of the creation of this project will be subject to improvisation. My general intention is to create a baroque/neoclassical courtyard like something you might find in a room with a glass ceiling at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It could even double for a forgotten and romantic quad/garden you would find at Oxford or Trinity. We should feel like we're in a room that's cataloguing time: its structure will resemble a museum, but its core will be much, much more. This isn't just a place for us to observe the past; it is a place to viscerally take part in it. I remember recently listening to a piece on This American Life that was about our obsession with recreating reality. One of the acts described a wax museum where the expansion of the amount of artwork greatly exceeds the rate at which space could be made to house them. The result is a surreal amalgamation of historical characters: Gandhi with Charlton Heston, Winston Churchill with Ernest Hemingway, etc. This is the kind of feel our environment will have: on the one hand shocking and unbelievable, but also funny in its inanity and randomness, and even humbling in its grandiosity and wonder.

Here are some of the things I envision for the opening moment:

• the audience will walk in all at the same time and will be encouraged to make some initial explorations.
• The musicians will be playing on the steps to the middle arch. It will feel like some kind of late summer festival where classical music wafts through the air like it could be no other way.
• The dancers will be frozen center stage and two of the 6 actors will be flanking the orchestra. They should all look and feel like a Rodin sculpture.
• the air will be clean and bright like it is at the end of summer. Time is captured in our world and to the audience it will feel like everything is standing still.
• Saturated color will invade our eyes on the floors and walls, in the artwork, and with the lighting.
• after a few minutes, the bustle will become dizzying. At that point an overhead message will ring: "now entering Gallery 1." The lighting will change swiftly. Audience members will be confused not knowing what to do or where to sit. They'll feel almost cheated when they realize there aren't enough chairs to fit everyone. (by the way, we'll need to figure out some logistical problems with this, i.e. freakin' old people) Meanwhile, the dancers have come to life from their statuesque poses and will begin some kind of initial movement. The entire mood will have changed from one of observational to inquisitorial.

Garland McQuinn, Lighting Design

Information to be presented at Saturday's interview.

Mara Cerezo and Jillian Waid, Costume Design

Jillian and Mara are excited to work together on this project that is so driven by the process of collaboration. The ideas they have come up with involve subverting perceptions of the past and present. In toying with these perceptions they want to utilize the "marvelous" that is present in the many tales of Magellan's voyage. The design should question representations of the past and present, where they overlap, intertwine, and deviate from one another. Films from different decades as well as period books and magazines will be used for research.

The vision is for each actor to have an array of 3-4 costume changes, which would entail different perceptions/stereotypes of their character. For example the feminist historian could go through the following changes to represent the various images placed upon her by society. These changes could possibly occur in a specific cycle in conjunction with what is happening in the text, music, and movement. First she could be dressed as the bookish image one creates when thinking of a historian - librarian chic. Then she could be in more masculine attire - the classic butch. Next she could be turned into a sexualized figure of power - a dominatrix. Finally, she could end up as a sort of blend of all three images into one powerful 1980s shoulderpad sporting business suit and high heels - career bitch. For the other characters drawn from different times in history their design would like to manipulate period clothing as seen in old movies. An example of this is the 16th century poet, Nicola. He may be dressed in brilliant shiny fabrics, as 16th century sailors were perceived in many 1960s/70s films. The musicians will also be dressed in this same manner - which is how the designers perceive improv jazz performers. They will not have any drastic costume changes, though perhaps a quick piece or two to add or remove.

As for the dancers' costumes, this is something that may need to wait until rehearsals begin, for the relationship between the movement and monologues has not yet been devised. Perhaps if dance echoes text, there may be cue pieces that correspond between actor and dancer. If the dancer/actor connection is complementary than maybe a similar color or texture scheme could draw that correlation. Of course, practical aspects will be taken into account to allow movement.

Amanda Norman, Space Consultant and Props Design

Information to be presented at Saturday's interview.

Todd Lipcon, Sound Design

Information to be presented at Saturday's interview.

Ben Kamber, Composer

A brief note on the music for the piece. My involvement as pianist/composer for this project began when I met Kyle early on in the semester in hopes that we would embark on some sort of collaborative project sometime during the semester, and having witnessed his truly explosive conceptions of contact and movement, both in the studio and on stage, in previous semesters, I knew I had to ask if he wanted to work together. Since a young age I have always been intrigued by improvisational music, and even more by the parameters the artist places on the precision or emotion of his work: at what point does improvisation become experimental, or absurd, or nonsense? When does the honesty of the playing carry meaning for the audience? For me improvisational or free-jazz piano is a window to a very intimate, dissonant interior of the mind that, by nature, it seems, doesn't have boundaries, and is never exactly "total". Yet, there is a certain harmony that comes from sharing that atonal dissonance with another simultaneously; the dissonance exceeds moments of order, beauty, and instead becomes a very percussive, very vibrational duration, alive in every sense of the word -- precisely what I think happens when music and dance find synergy. I think that the recurrent inquiries into the nature of history, narrative, and the inevitable loss of those histories, and narratives of this project, resonate with the type of relationships one forges on truly experimental or impossible journeys, whether in the solitary mind or with others. Regardless, for me, it is the duration of the dissonance, that moves us forward, not the moments, the photographs, the memories of our stories and those before us -- and this is what interests me, about history and improvisation alike.

Kyle Shepard, Choreography

The movement of the dancers will be based on one core phrase that we have been developing over the past three and a half months. This phrase will be manipulated in many ways over the course of the performance, sometimes in obviously recognizable ways, sometimes not. At times the dancers will improvise off of the phrase. They could just alter the order of the movements. They could alter the quality. They could alter facings. The possibilities are endless. Sometimes the dancers will just be performing the legs and feet of the phrase. (This is what they will be doing as the audience enters.) Sometimes just the upper body. Each dancer will correspond to an actor. As the monologue develops we will devise a relationship between the movement and the monologue. Maybe the dancers will echo words from the monologue as they move through space. Maybe they will speak complementary words. Usually they won't speak at all, their silent movement complementing the text.

Rebecca Rouse and Mara Cerezo, Text

The text of the monologues will be created on the specific actors who are cast. Rebecca has created text and performance in this manner at La MaMa ETC and at the NHSI Summer Theatre Institute. Character descriptions and arcs already exist (see appendix B) but in order to ground these fantastical types, much of their language and mannerisms will come from actual people. Other sources will also be used to create the text, including the resources listed in our bibliography (see appendix A). The performers and writers will also very likely employ found text, as well as a collection of free-writings Rebecca has already created dealing with nightmares and memory phenomenon like "Faculty X." (See cover page of proposal.)

TAKE a MOMENT

You are the first audience member to enter the downstairs space. Right away you see a large circular stage space in the center of the room. On it six dancers are performing minimal movements. The patterns seem arbitrary, completely unstructured. As you watch longer you realize the dancers are only moving their legs and feet. Their upper bodies are completely uninvolved. You then begin to notice repetitions. While none of the dancers are in unison it seems that they are all on the same pattern, the same journey perhaps. But not at the same time. It looks almost as if they are striving to get somewhere. To move their way around the circular space. The dancers' faces do not show the frustration of their lack of success, but you as an audience member begin to feel it, hoping that maybe one of them will finally be able to reach his or her destination rather than continually treading water.

You try to make sense of these abstract minimal movements in relation to the rest of the space. There is music. But it does not appear to be coming from the musicians you now notice. The musicians are intermittently miming the actions of playing their instruments, occasionally in sync with the recorded music emanating from hidden speakers. You begin to explore the rest of the room. You find performers frozen in archways. They are labeled like artifacts in a museum. Each performer is ornately dressed with specific references to time and place. But what exactly is being referenced? You can make out that this is a Renaissance period sailor but did they actually have bright orange billowing pants and cloth shoes or have you seen this before in a movie? Next to the sailor stands a stern looking woman in a tweed suit she clutches a history book in her hand. Farther down you notice a pirate sporting an eye patch, well isn't that clichéd you think to yourself with a chuckle.

You begin to notice other sounds. Footsteps are amplified in one section of the room, though you cannot determine where. You take in the complexity of the clutter surrounding you.

After some time has gone by for you to explore this space, you notice that occasionally a dancer breaks away from the minimal movements. Close observation reveals that while the leg pattern has remained the same, suddenly the entire body has joined in. Then a return to minimalism. Then another eruption. Then two. Suddenly the musicians have joined in. Could the actual performance be beginning?

Lights change. One of the frozen actors has come alive. It seems that an audience member chose to press one of the buttons activating the archive light above the actor. The result is a monologue.

The dance and music have been affected by this performance. You struggle to make the connection between the movement and the text. Is there one?

Before you have time to consider this deeply, another audience member pushes a button and a second actor springs to life.

That was one possible score for a performance of the Magellan Project. This piece is conceived as having and element of a choose-your-own-adventure for the audience without the audience knowing all of the operating mechanisms. The order of the monologues and even whether or not they are completed or repeated depends upon the audience's actions.

The general arc of the piece intends to take the audience through three galleries of a museum, each gallery being both a physical and a psychological space. The first gallery is equivalent to setting out on a journey. It is the tip of the iceberg. In the second, the journey is underway, but there are intimations of an ending. Gallery three exposes the nightmare of completion or the possibility that no completion exists. It expresses the moment before the journey is over. The piece then returns to gallery one to find none of the hope, fear, or anticipation that existed in the beginning. Upon returning, there is only emptiness. The story is not the ending. The journey is not the destination.

These galleries will be described in the programs, which will resemble museum brochures. The audience will know they are in a different space because although they remain in the downstairs space of PW, the set is transformable and difference configurations of the space will help signify the three different galleries.

OUR VISION

We want to take the audience on an incredible journey through time and space, starting from a basically comfortable if somewhat de-familiarized museum-inspired setting, and going to a place of nightmare and displacement. We want to explore the illusory nature memory and decay, the location of meaning in journeys, how history is created, and what can take place in a theatre. Instead of finding completion and absolute meaning in a theatre, we want to find structures collapsing in on themselves to form a void. As the audience progresses from Gallery One to Galleries Two and Three, the walls of PW become more and more cluttered with objects, art, artifacts, and texts. The collection of all this information (real and created) does not, however, lead to any zenith of experience or knowledge. Instead, at the point at which the space is unbearably cluttered, the audience finds itself back in Gallery One. Only this time, even this most minimalist Gallery is completely empty. Empty frames hang without their paintings. Push pins stand idle where maps were tacked up. A shelf for books is barren. Even the performers have disappeared. Only the spectator remains. Perhaps now part of the exhibit? Who else could be filling the frames? After all there is no one else in the Gallery.

On a practical note, the movement of all this 'stuff' will be accomplished by the performers and will be choreographed or blocked. The 'stuff' that ends up covering the walls is not behind glass or fragile. If the audience chooses to touch it, they may. If an audience member wants to pluck a book off a shelf and open it, it will be within their power to do so. The book may have blank pages, or be glued shut, or be an actual, legitimate volume. Or there might be a dead roach pressed inside its pages. A dead roach made of plastic. There can be no telling what the audience might find. The hope is to complicate the search for meaning by providing both real and false information.

The transitions between galleries will most likely be defined by a time limit, for example, allocating a certain amount of time for the audience to experience each gallery. We envision the total performance duration between one hour and one and a half hours.

Now, a vision of practicality. The final product. This is somewhat difficult to envision in its entirety from this point. It is as if we stand with Magellan in Seville, looking eastward toward the horizon, clear in what we hope for, clear in our expectation and certainty of success, but somewhat blind as to what exactly that success will look like. Give us the space and resources to collaborate together and develop this project, and we will deliver. We are drooling for it.

THE PEOPLE

Director/writer: Rebecca Rouse
Director/Choreographer: Kyle Shepard
Assistant to the Choreographer: Vaughn Edelson
Musical Director/Composer: Ben Kamber
Writer/Costume Designer: Mara Cerezo
Costume Designer: Jillian Waid
Set Designer: Ben Bright-Fishbein
Light Designer: Garland McQuinn
Sound Designer: Todd Lipcon
Space Consultant/Props Designer: Amanda Norman
Assistant Props Designer: ?
Stage Manager: Michelle Lee
Assistant Stage Manager: ?
Technical Director: ?
Production Manager: ?
Production Manager Mentor: Adam Immerwahr
Translator: Lillian Garcia Cerezo
General Mentor: Adam Griska

MUSICIANS

Piano: Ben Kamber
Drums: ?
Horn: ?
Strings: ?

DANCERS

Sarah Sussman
Caedra Scott-Flaherty
Noemie Solomon
Vaughn Edelson
(2 more dance roles will be auditioned for)

Budget

$250 has been given to this project through a mini-grant from the Creative Arts Council.
Set: $400
Costumes: $200
Lights: $20
Sound: $60
Props: $150
Publicity: $70
TOTAL: $650 from PW plus $250 from CAC = $900

APPENDIX A: BIBLIOGRAPHY

-- Encyclopedia of The Unexplained: Magic, Occultism, and Parapsychology. Ed. Richard Cavendish. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974.

-- Roget's International Thesaurus - Third Edition New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962.

-- To America And Around the World: The Logs of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. Boston: Branden Publishing Company, 1990.

Buranelli, Vincent. A Tale From The Arabian Nights. New Jersey: Silver Burdett Company, 1985.

Collins, Frederick L. Travel Charts and Travel Chats. Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926.

Cooney, Barbara. Miss Rumphius. New York: Puffin Books, 1982.

Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. 2nd Edition New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Engle, Eloise. Sea Challenge: The Epic Voyage of Magellan. New Jersey: C.S. Hammond & Company, 1962.

Flaherty, Julie. "Up Above the Galleries, Misfits Await Their Turn" Special Section - Museums. The New York Times, March 31, 2004. p 23.

Kavanagh, Gaynor. Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum. London: Leicester University Press, 2000.

Pigafetta, Antonio. The First Voyage Around the World (1519-1522). Ed. Theodore J. Cachey Jr. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995.

Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1970.

Staden, Hans. "A Captive to Cannibals," in Gordon M. Sayre, ed. American Captivity Narratives (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), pp 18-58.

Stefoff, Rebecca. Ferdinand Magellan and the Discovery of the World Ocean. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

Stefoff, Rebecca. The Young Oxford Companion to Maps and Mapmaking. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies - Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies - Volume 2 Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Towle, George M. Young Folks' Heroes of History: Magellan, or the First Voyage Round the World. Boston: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1879.

Turkle, Brinton. Do Not Open. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981.

Weschler, Lawrence. Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Wilkinson, Donna. "Beyond the Gallery Walls, Collections of Hidden Gems" Special Section - Museums. The New York Times, March 31, 2004. p 4.

Willard, Nancy. A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1981.

APPENDIX B: CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS

THE POET: Nicola Ferrari, Italian, 1525

Nicola is the Keeper of the Log, the journalist, the Poet. He is a contemporary of Magellan, and accompanied him on his voyage. Nicola speaks from several years after the end of the trip, and is haunted by Magellan, sees his ghost, and believes him to be alive. Nicola sets out once again, to retrace their journey and searches the seas for his lost Capitan-General. Nicola's descent into nightmare is precipitated by his inability to distinguish between Magellan, the man and Magellan, the legend, as well as his fascination with the more brutal aspects of Magellan's alleged death.

THE ACTOR: Madison Pumphfrey, British, 1979

Madison is the Orson Welles who never quite made it. He is a sad character, sort of a Thomas Mann type, but played with a Kenneth Branaugh sensibility. The first film he made, a silent short in the year 1934, was hailed as the break-out work of a true genius who would in time fulfill his great promise. That never happened. The silent short, entitled "Hearts of Age" continues, 45 years after the fact, to be the most artistically interesting and impressive piece of film-making and acting Pumphfrey has ever completed. Pumphfrey is nearing the end of his career and is surviving off of a PBS TV gig on which he reads aloud entries from Charles Lindberg's diary. Pumphfrey and wants to play one last, final, yet-unconquered male lead of epic proportion. Magellan is just the man for him. Pumphfrey's descent into madness comes when he realizes that no great triumph or climax awaiting Magellan at the end of his journey. Pumphfrey cannot bear to think what this might mean in terms of his own personal life journey.

THE HISTORIAN: Patce Dutcher, American, 2004

Patce is a history professor at a prestigious liberal arts college. She ascribes to new historicism and is an ardent lover of feminist theory. She is writing a potentially best-selling book the thesis of which is that Magellan did return to Spain at the end of his journey, but he wasn't recognized, because he returned as a woman. Dutcher believes she has evidence to support her theory that the Filipinos did not kill Magellan, but simply forced a sex-change operation on him. She is obsessed with the circularity of Magellan's voyage and rests her thesis on the "fact" that she discovered that Magellan did in fact complete the circumnavigation. Dutcher's nightmare is revealed when she discovers she suffers from a rare form of amnesia due to which she has been repeating the same research again and again, forgetting it each time. She is stuck in a never-ending repetition of her own history, which ironically, is concerned with history.

THE PILOT: Kory Warren, Australian, 1936

Kory has been flying since she took her first breath. She was born in a hot air balloon and has been obsessed with flying ever since. Her favorite book is "Lost Horizon" by James Hilton, and she sincerely believes that if you crash, it's just another adventure. Magellan is one of her idols, and it is her ambition to be the first person to fly around the world, alone, without stopping. She sets forth in her single engine Lockheed Vega called Winnie Mae, equipped with a Sperry automatic pilot and a radio direction finder. The nightmare begins when Warren crashes on the island of Mactan, the same point at which Magellan was allegedly prevented from completing his journey.

THE DESCENDANT: India Cruickshank-Magellan 1850 Spanish

India Cruickshank-Magellan es una mujer aristocratica la cual siempre esta en busca de adventuras. Simplemente La Paris Hilton de su epoca. Fea, rica, y cinverguenza. Buscando su historia familiar, la cual si tiene mucha fama pero poco detalles. Entre sus antecedores se encuentra Ferdinand Magellan, la figura elusiva de Setebos Cruickshank, el quien ella cree fue el doctor responsable por la operacion la cual cambio de sexo a Magellan. Antes que ella pueda casarse con el mocoso Ty Moddelmog su pretendiente, India necesita conocerse mejor. En estudiar su pasado, ella discubre secretos familiares los cuales era mejor dejar bajo tierra. Presentemente duscubre que Setebos no es doctor, pero un diablo mystico que usa magica negra para acostarse con Magellan. Aqui es que empieza su terrible suenos negros, la vida y muerte de Magellan.

THE PIRATE: Tripp Riddle 1660 Siberian gypsy pirate

Tripp Riddle comes from a small landlocked village named Blinsk. After his beloved wife Sela Sarkisian passed away he was led to a life on the ever open sea. He quickly became your typical swashbuckling buccaneer - in to get rich quick and never thinking ahead. Crude and unreliable he tells tall tales and speaks of his sea adventures on his ship the Cooper Veysey. While Captain Morgan is off gallivanting in the sunny Caribbean, Tripp searches northern icy waters until he begins to navigate south on a quest for Magellan whom he believes is still alive. Tripp thinks the mutiny was staged and that the island of Mactan holds the worlds greatest treasure. As a pirate, Tripp challenges the hierarchical social order with his economic actions of disorderly chaos and views on democracy. Every time he sets foot on land Tripp is filled with an immense fear that it will swallow him whole. He was never afraid of the open sea but instead is terrified of earth because it has trapped his dear Sela and kept him landlocked for so long.