The curtain rises on an ordinary street scene, with actors coming and going rapidly. There are bits of ordinary conversation ("Wines ... windowglass ... gold’s going down"), suggestions of violence and insanity ("He’s undressing me. Help, he’s ripping my dress off..." "I’m on fire, I’m burning, I’m going to jump") and, finally, the word "Sirius" repeated in every tone of voice and every pitch of the scale:

SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... Then a loudspeaker thunders: THE GOVERNMENT URGES YOU TO REMAIN CALM.

Actors rush about claiming that the sun is getting bigger, the plague has broken out, there is thunder without lightning, etc. A reasonable voice tries to explain, "It was a magnetic phenomenon...." Then the loudspeaker tells us:

STUPENDOUS DISCOVERY - SKY PHYSICALLY ABOLISHED - EARTH ONLY A MINUTE AWAY FROM SIRIUS - NO MORE FIRMAMENT

(Antonin Artaud, There Is No More Firmament, 1933. He never knew Lovecraft.)