Entering the Aurora Fox's black-box theater for K2, audience members were confronted by a steep cliff (a miraculous piece of design by Charles Packard), where two men were sitting on a ledge. Pakistan's K2 is the second-highest mountain in the world, and it kills climbers; these two men are stranded there. One of them has a gruesome injury on his leg; the other makes a few attempts to climb the cliff and summon help. It's bitter cold and growing dark. The two debate survival strategies, muse about mortality and consider what their lives have meant — and that's pretty much it for the action. The play asks a lot of both actors and viewers, trapping them together in a static situation and a bleak and terrifying place. But under the direction of donnie l. betts and in the hands of two veteran actors, Jude Moran and William Hahn, K2 proved a riveting evening of theater.