Elaborate Plays for Audience of One: Odyssey Works

“I was led, with my hands tied behind my back, to the back of a van and put in a box,” says Carl Collins, an information architect living in Brooklyn. He was kidnapped a few years ago following dinner at a community garden in Manhattan’s East Village. He had recognized all of his assailants. One was an acquaintance, whom he met just months before. He saw the man’s face before a second kidnapper snuck up behind him and threw a black hood over his head. He deduced the identity of the second and third culprits, who were driving the van, by their voices. They were both old friends of his—although one was supposed to be in Singapore for work. When they removed the hood, Collins even recognized the box he had been stuffed into—his girlfriend, a woodworker, had built it in the apartment they shared, purportedly for one of the drivers.

The kidnappers drove Collins to a rural area a couple of hours upstate. He was hooded once more, then led up a steep trail—which reminded him, uncannily, of exercises he had been practicing with a dance instructor he had met just months before. As he continued up the path, the sounds of chanting, drums and tribal music grew louder. At the end of the trail, Collins