Act 1 Part 1 Summary

August speaks into a hand-held tape recorder, making a recording for a woman named Dianne, whom we understand to be a secretary or writer, and whom August wants to transcribe the tape. He says that after months of putting it off, he intends to examine "the wreckage of last summer's expedition." As he continues, a series of slides shows the things he's referring to: the house where he and his colleagues stayed during three years of preparatory excavations, the site of their archeological dig, and the man-made lake that threatened both the house and the dig. As lights come up on the house, August concludes by saying that the dig continued with the lake constantly expanding behind them.

Act 1 Part 1 Analysis

At the core of both this play's action and its themes is the idea of legacies, of what people leave...