Lol :/ and Other Modern Devised Plays

lol :/

A comical investigation into how we miscommunicate with technology as revealed by the story of two women reconnecting through Facebook.

Truth in Advertising

An emotional commentary on our twisted relationship with advertisements that exposes how anyone can be turned into a product.

Wild World

The journey of two New Yorkers through a harsh city where you are the most alone when surrounded by others.

*****

lol :/

and other modern devised plays

Terry Fletcher

Maddy Noonan

Gretchen Vietmeier

Becca Lill

Brandon Cieslak

David Mayberry

Irene Handley

Laura Blum

Melia Schurig

Cleverbot

Kenzie Batali

Charlotte Markle

William Jenks

Webster Rasmussen

Henry Kreiman

Asher Ely

Christopher Khatami

Shanan Wolfe

*****

lol :/

and other modern devised plays

Terry Fletcher

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2013 Terry Fletcher

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

lol:/

Copyright 2011 Terry Fletcher All Rights Reserved

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Copyright 2012 Terry Fletcher All Rights Reserved

WILD WORLD

Copyright 2012 Terry Fletcher All Rights Reserved

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that lol :/, TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, and WILD WORLD" are subject to a royalty. Each play is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all the countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights including professional and amateur stage performing, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved.

All inquiries concerning stock and amateur stage performing rights should be directed to TERRY FLETCHER at 915 SW Mies, Pullman, WA, 99163

Table of Contents

Preface

Notes on Process for lol:/

lol :/

Notes on Process for Truth in Advertising

Truth in Advertising

Notes on Process for Wild World

Wild World

About the Authors

*****

Dedicated to anyone that has succeeded when they were told they would fail.

*****

Preface

Put this book down. As soon as you finish these first two paragraphs turn off your device. Go, find a dream. Fulfill that secret aspiration. Don't just write a chapter in your closet novel and call it good. Finish it. It is not enough to just visit France for a week. Live there for a year. A single painting or poem will not suffice; I expect gallery openings and poetry readings. If you wish to be an astronaut, you better build a damn spaceship. Shoot for the moon because if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. And I don't want to hear those excuses you give yourself, Things are really busy at work right now. I've never had any talent. I can have a life once little Billy graduates coll-. Bullshit. You will always be too busy until you make time. You can learn to do anything these days (have you seen the internet?). And there's no better way to get little Billy to follow his dreams than to show him that you are following your own.

I could list more excuses, but a mind that is set against accomplishing its goals will always have a fresh one close at hand. Instead, I'll give you first step: set your morning alarm one hour earlier. Devote that hour to your dreams. Rip out the snooze button. Know you will sleep all the better when your project is done. Think I'm kidding? Think this is just a clever way to start a book? Don't fool yourself. Remember, when this is all over ninety-nine people out of a hundred will have read a book. But one will have begun to realize their wildest dreams.

If you have made it this far, I can only assume that you have been to the moon, opened a restaurant chain and written your own fantasy series. At the very least, you have set your alarm clock. In either case, you are probably wondering what new-age self-help has to do with devised performance. Everything. It is this philosophy that is responsible for these plays as much as any of the authors. It is what drove us to rehearse everywhere from parking garages to park benches. It is what kept us working from Sundays at 7am to Wednesdays at 1am. We created these shows on weekends, after work, in between classes, and during a hurricane. We did them for no glory or fame, but rather for the joy of doing them. But wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Before we go any farther allow us to explain why these are devised plays. All of the plays contained within are what is known as devised performance. Devised performance is why there is an et al on the cover. Devised performance is why all of these plays have been both written and produced. Devised performance is a show that is created by a group of people working as a collective. Instead of having one playwright, one director and several actors, you have a cast of people who may each do some writing, some of the acting and some of the directing. At the end of the process you have an entire performance instead of just a script. A full definition of the term and its uses would occupy another book entirely. For now, you should know is that it is the reason that this book has seventeen authors instead of one, and it means that all of these plays were being rehearsed at the same time they were being written.

Each of these plays represented a unique process and a novel challenge. There are many differences between them, but there are some themes that tie them together. Most importantly all of these plays are topical. They strive to represent life at a certain point in time: now. They are a snapshot of one slice of life. They each speak to experiences that we have all shared. They look to use this common ground to uncover uncomfortable or insightful truths about our changing world. And they strive to represent life with whatever tools the theatre allows them. This adherence to life embodies the liminal nature of all of these plays (another aspect they all share). They cannot be fit solidly into a category of comedy or tragedy. They flirt between the abstract and the realistic. They are occasionally grandiose but often simple. They use all the methods we know to express the human experience in all of its horror and wonder.

I will save any analysis of the characteristics specific to each of these plays for the notes that I have included on process before each play. I have included these notes to offer insight into the disparate and intermittently strange methods that went into the creation of these plays, as it is said that devised performance focuses as much on the process as on the product. The works are presented here in the order they were written. We started work on lol :/ in August 2011 and it was performed in October of the same year. Truth in Advertising began production in May of 2012 and was produced the following month. Wild World began production in September of 2012 and was first performed the following December. I know I speak for all of the authors when I say that we are very proud of these works. They have been crafted from what speaks to us in the world; we hope that it speaks to you as well.

-Terry Fletcher

*****

lol :/

The Process

In January of 2011 I was sitting, at home, alone, having a conversation with my computer. Rather, I was having a conversation with a website known as Cleverbot, an artificial intelligence machine that you can chat with. I was having a great time reading through the many transcripts of past conversations when I realized that these would make very interesting scripts. In fact they read much like the Ionesco play that I was reading at the time. If Tristan Tzara can make poetry by pulling cut up newspapers out of a hat, I think a computer could do a pretty good job of writing a play. I scrawled the idea down in my list of plays to write when I get time and promptly forgot about it.

Flash to March of the same year. I was sitting in total darkness listening to a crowd of people engaged in a heated discussion in a language that I understood maybe five words in. I was in the living room of the Njaay family in Dakar, Senegal. We had just been hit with another of the blackouts common to the country and my host family was, as best I could tell, complaining about the government. Frankly, they could have been discussing cookware for all I know. What struck me at that point, however, was how the dynamic of the room had changed as soon as the power went out. Before the blackout everyone was watching TV, or texting on their phones. Now they were all engaged in a common discussion. The loss of technology had brought them together.

This realization led me to another idea for a show, one in which people were pulled apart or brought together by the loss or gain of technology. Once again I jotted this down and it fell out of my mind. It wasn't until a few months later that I put the two thoughts together and started the process for auditioning a devised performance with the working title of Cleverbot and the Language of Tomorrow.

At the first meeting with the cast in August I had a very specific structure in mind. Some devisors will shun such a strategy claiming that this pollutes the true nature of an entirely group created production. I find that it is very useful for focus and organization. As long as one is open to change, it can be a