BLACKER NAE
A Memoir Of The Fourth Crusade

Professionalism Within Despair

  The Fourth Crusade was a venture undertaken by the barons of France to recapture the Holy land. The republic of Venice agreed to create a fleet that would transport that army.

In 1202 a smaller than expected army finally arrived at Venice. These desperate knights soon realized that they were  unable to pay the full amount for their passage, and were consequently  forced to serve other Venetian agendas---ending at Constantinople in 1204.

This project examines one of the humbler camps that may have existed within that army--a group that may well have threatened that city by her northwest side--at the gates of a  fortified palace named Blachernae


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This study works through the essence of the Stanley Milgram experiments on authority and obedience; placing the audience into the role of "Experimental subject".
The spin on this thoroughly modern study is the fact that the  authority here is atypical and insidious---emerging as a "subculture".


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Erik Fraser as Pessl
Mark Quinn as Gerhardus
  A pair of distinct characters will vie for the audience's favour, as the audience holds control over the production's various possible endings:

                    Gerhardus (called Gerhard) :  is an upstanding knight who is charged with the task of maintaining order in a mixed camp of soldiers and "low people''(ie: labourers, simple tradesmen,  and general riffraff). His motivation is simply to serve his term at arms and then to return to his newly betrothed love in Germany. An audience who believes in honour, love and steadfastness will tend to take Gerhard's side in most matters

                   Pessl (called 'Piglet'):  a peasant war orphan who  was taken in by the kindly master of a carpenter's guild. Piglet has thus been exposed to the craftsman's effective work ethic, ingenuity, pride and the expectation of  rewards.
He is nevertheless of  peasant stock --and such groups are known to express their base nihilism at open times...Enriched Piglet is worse than these, for he has developed a sense of ambition and a working knowledge of propaganda. He and his kind may work to entice  viewers over to irresponsible , even depraved ways.