It’s all about possibility – “One of Emily’s favorite terms,” Wendy Kohler explained as we gathered in pairs and singles at the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, ready to embark on “an immersive journey” inspired by her letters, poems and hometown. Kohler is co-producer of the event, with the Dickinson Museum. Before You Became Improbable was masterminded by John Bechtold, who has made peripatetic theatrical adventures his special province, exploring the worlds of Shakespeare, film noir and now the Belle of Amherst.
“I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable” is a line from Dickinson’s eight-year correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who was her “preceptor,” as she called him, and eventual editor of her collected poems. Excerpts from the letters and some of her poems form the text of this piece, which was spoken, as it were, inside our heads: The soundtrack of words and music unreeled in individual headphones as we navigated the antique/modern terrain of Bechtold’s vision.
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is within our power
In her briefing, Kohler told us in general terms what to expect, without giving away any specifics of the evening’s “possibilities,” so I won’t either. I will tell you, though, that my partner and I spent a magical hour traversing Emily’s town with newly heightened senses.
It was an improbably perfect evening. A bright crescent moon hovered over the town as dusk gave way to soft darkness (we were also equipped with flashlights). The journey wasn’t narrative but impressionistic, a series of seemingly random encounters with flesh-and-blood spirits of the night.
Grand go the Years,
In the Crescent above them …
Twenty-some men and women in turn, aged from middle school to middle age, greeted, led and interacted with us. 
I don’t want to call them performers, as the brief unfolding episodes were more spontaneous and organic than traditional actor/spectator relationships. Let’s call them inter-actors.
Only one of them spoke, but their voices were in our ears and their actions echoed the words without imitating them, embodying each participant’s insight into their allotted text, mingling thoughts of death with musings on the precious fragility of life. They welcomed us warmly, playfully, with a sense of joyful wonder. Some wore Emily-white gowns, others blended unremarkably into the hum of streetlife. The guy with earbuds lounging against a lamppost, the young woman at a bus stop, might well have been our next escort – or not.
God permits industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
We snaked through the town that Emily knew and into the one she most certainly did not, through narrow passages, across lawns and gravesites, down shadowed corridors and along bustling neon streets. 
We were gently invited to dance, to drink, to gaze into lighted windows and dark mirrors, to admire the moon and stars, the trees and leaves.
One surprising interlude shed fresh light on the famous line “I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you Nobody too?” Another presented us with the teasing question, “Would you have the time to be the friend you should think I need?” Yet another found a dancer in solitary salutation to the moonlit night: “’Tis not that Dying hurts us so – ’Tis Living hurts us more.”
Along the way we were handed simple gifts: a leaf, a sprig of grain, a coin, a scrap of antique text, a portrait of ourselves, a key. A leitmotif of small stones played across the encounters, as ghostly rooms gave way to pulsing sidewalks which led back to shaded pathways steeped in the living past.
One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain has Corridors surpassing
Material Place.
Before You Became Improbable plays Sept. 24-26 at the Emily Dickinson Homestead, 280 Main St., Amherst. Departures at four-minute intervals between 6 and 8 p.m. Reservations at emilydickinsonmuseum.org.
Photos by John Bechtold
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