Who has read the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky?
Who has read his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov?

It is considered to be the culmination of his life's work. It was written on two levels. On the surface, it is the story of a death of a father, where all three sons share varying degrees of complicity. But on a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of moral struggles between family, faith, doubt, reason, the deceptive beauty of institutions, and free will.

A chapter that is central to the novel is The Grand Inquisitor. The middle brother, Ivan, is having a conversation with his younger brother, Alyosha. Ivan represents the rationalist and nihilistic ideology that permeated Russia at the time. Alyosha's beliefs counterbalance his brother's. He embodies hope.

Ivan tells Alyosha a vision where The Grand Inquistor, during the Spanish inquisition, encounters Jesus Christ, who has made a return to earth. Here, Jesus is rejected by a world leader who says:
"Why have you come now to hinder us? … We are working not with You, but with him [the evil one] … We took from him what You did reject with scorn, that last gift [or temptation] he offered You, showing You all the kingdoms of the earth. We took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth … We shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of man."

Ivan's vision reveals the suffering in his heart. The doubt he feels in the world. He struggles with feeling separate from all whom he loves. I saw myself in Ivan.

It took me a decade to understand the meaning of this story. My life, my story, is related to it. There were some practical things I had to do.

After first reading it, to better understand it, I needed several years of life experience. There were three years of thinking about how to record it as an audio play. There was a long night in Portland where my best friend and I struggled with an incomplete personal vision of the play.

A year later, there was a long day in his studio where we fleshed out ideas, sketches, storyboards, themes, and voices that became the work that you can see and hear, now.

The audio play covers almost the entire chapter "The Grand Inquisitor," beginning at the tail end of the previous chapter, "Mutiny" (or, Book V: Chapters 4 & 5). At a restaurant, Ivan Karamazov is having a conversation with his younger brother, Alyosha, about his views on God, immortality, and suffering. At first, it seems to Alyosha an intellectual exercise, but then Ivan's vision of the Grand Inquisitor reveals the personal suffering at the brothers heart.

My collaboration with an old friend, Dan Ribaudo, and this website that serves as a multi-media accompaniment, are the products of a decade of befuddlement and interest in the story; three years of a desire to record its theatrical reading; a long night in Portland where Dan and I struggled with an incomplete personal vision of the play; and a long day in Dan's Analog Laboratory where we fleshed out ideas, sketches, storyboards, themes and voices that became the work that you can see and hear, now.