-------------------------------------------------------------------------- HELP US BUILD PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE AS A LIVE NITETIME PUPPET SHOW -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nitetime.net has decided to do something that probably should have happened decades ago. We want to turn Plan 9 from Outer Space into a live puppet show. Not a slick, polished, expensive theatrical production. We mean puppets on sticks and strings. Cardboard gravestones. Shower-curtain spaceship walls. Steering wheels that pop out of the stage. Silver-painted pie tins dangling from fishing poles. Smoke. Flashlights. Falling scenery. Audience participation. The whole thing. And we already have a stage. The Nitetime puppet theater currently consists of a large sheet of plywood with a stage opening cut into it and painted black. That gives us exactly what we need: a big empty canvas that can become a graveyard, a backyard, an airplane cockpit, an alien spacecraft, or wherever else the story needs to go. The goal is to build the stage like an old-fashioned mechanical contraption. Instead of changing scenery by carrying everything around between scenes, the sets will be built into the stage itself. Pull a handle and the graveyard rises into view. Lower it and the tombstones disappear. Drop a curtain from above and suddenly we're inside an airplane. Pull another lever and steering wheels pop up. Another curtain, a few blinking lights, and now we're aboard an alien spacecraft. No giant digital video wall. No computer-generated scenery. Just wood, string, rods, hinges, pulleys, gravity, paint, fabric and questionable engineering. THE FLYING SAUCERS ================== Obviously, the UFOs need to be pie tins. Paint them silver, hang them from fishing line, attach them to the end of a fishing pole and swing them dramatically over the stage. The audience may even catch a glimpse of how it works. That's fine. Actually, that's better. The whole production is being designed around the idea that you can see just enough of the machinery to understand that a bunch of people really built this ridiculous little universe by hand. THE AUDIENCE BECOMES PART OF THE SPECIAL EFFECTS DEPARTMENT ============================================================ This is also going to be an interactive production. At the beginning of the show, the audience will be given one important instruction: When the green light goes out, shine your flashlights at the stage. That becomes part of the story. A flying saucer passes overhead. The green light goes dark. The entire audience hits the stage with phone flashlights. The saucer swings across. The puppets get knocked over. The scenery shakes. Alien energy has arrived. The audience isn't just watching the special effects. They are helping create them. There may be other moments where the crowd supplies sounds, light, warnings or other effects. We want the room itself to become part of the production. CRISWELL WILL BE THERE ====================== The show will be introduced live by Criswell. Well, our version of Criswell. I'll come out in front of the stage, introduce the shocking events you're about to witness, explain the audience participation rules and prepare everyone for the horrors from outer space. Then I'll disappear behind the stage and start pulling strings, pushing rods, raising gravestones and flying pie tins around. At the end, after everything has gone terribly wrong, Criswell returns. Because naturally he knew this was going to happen. WHY PLAN 9? =========== Because Plan 9 from Outer Space is perfect for this. The graveyard is simple. The airplane cockpit is simple. The spaceship is simple. The flying saucers are simple. Characters dramatically fall over. Dead people rise from graves. Aliens make enormous speeches about humanity. Everything already feels like it wants to happen inside a miniature theater. We're not trying to make fun of the movie by making everything cheap. We're celebrating what makes it wonderful. The original film had enormous imagination and limited resources. That's exactly the spirit we want to bring to this production. If we need a spaceship wall, we're going to make a spaceship wall. If the spaceship wall happens to be a shower curtain, then congratulations: we have a spaceship wall. WHAT WE'RE RAISING MONEY FOR ============================ This is where we could use some help. Nitetime.net is opening a small production fund to turn this idea into an actual live show. Money raised will go toward things like puppet materials, paint, fabric, lumber, hardware, hinges, rods, pulleys, lighting, smoke effects, costumes, mechanical stage pieces and, presumably, several pie tins. This is not an investment opportunity. Nobody is buying stock in the Nitetime Space Program. We're simply asking people who think this sounds like a wonderful idea to throw a few dollars into the production fund and help us make it real. Five bucks buys paint. Ten bucks buys puppet materials. Twenty bucks might help build a graveyard. Somewhere out there is probably a person willing to finance the entire Flying Saucer Department. HELP US MAKE SOMETHING WEIRD ============================ There are plenty of things in the world that are polished, optimized, focus-grouped and produced by enormous teams. This isn't going to be one of them. This is going to be handmade. It is going to be mechanical. It is going to be live. Things will move because someone pulled a handle. UFOs will fly because someone swung a fishing pole. The dead will rise because there is probably a string attached to them. And an audience full of people with flashlights may ultimately determine the fate of Earth. Help us build: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE A Live Nitetime Puppet Show Coming from the people at nitetime.net, assuming we can acquire enough cardboard, fishing line and reckless enthusiasm to finish it. NITETIME.NET // COMMENTARY SEPTEMBER 8, 2026