Six Short Plays

[elfs]

Omaha and I managed to score a babysitter for Friday night, so we had the pleasure of being allowed to go out and be adults. We ate dinner at a little Thai place up on Queen Anne, which made my two-star red duck curry hotter than anticipated, whereas Omaha's two-star ginger chicken was so mild as to be kid-friendly.

We were attending Little Red Studio's new "Erotic Short Plays" night. The LRS has moved on from expressionistic short pieces to actually doing small one-act plays, all with love or eroticism as major themes. Of the six, friends of mine were in two pieces, and there were two pieces I especially appreciated, and those don't necessarily overlap. (That said, I think my friends did fabulously; I just don't know that the material they had was as good as it could have been.)

The strongest pieces were the first two: The Art Lover: Girl at the Beach was especially nice because it's a duet with a woman obsessed with a painting and a museum curator trying to convince her to leave for the night. The curator's decision to lead her through one interpretation of the painting, an interpretation that involves her taking off her clothes, has its particular charms, and both actors were strong in their delivery

Androids are Like That was, by far, the best (and for me, the worst) piece of the set. The best in that all of the actors were on, their presentations solid and convincing, and the story clear and concisely paced with a nice twist at the two-thirds mark. In terms of actual story, this piece had the best setup-conflict-crisis-conclusion cycle of any of them.

That said, the very premise of the story upset me: A woman unhappy with her robot husband-- who is not aware that he is a robot-- tries to have him convinced by a third party-- A representative of the company that manufactured him-- that he would be happier with a robot lover of his own. The husband rejects this argument, proclaiming that robots don't have souls and that he can be reconciled with her.

There's a potentially happy ending to this story; the woman decides to try one last time to reconcile their happiness together. What bothered me most about this story is this: during her conversation with the sales rep, he tells her that, well, since he can't be convinced, her only other option is to have him shut down and erased. And that's what bothered me most: She ordered a robot with "the free will option" but became unhappy with him; her followup decision to murder him is not merely an option, but one without real legal complications or moral qualms.

Excuse me?

Characters making good or bad decisions about involving other creatures with varying questions of free will into their lives has been a major theme of the Journal Entries for the past two years, so this is a bit of a stickler for me. I've been pushing the edges and I'm not entirely satisfied with the outcome, but this assumption that "it's just a machine so its wants don't matter" is only used by the villains in my stories.

The third piece was The Toothbrush, which was kinda choppy. It features two couples in different bedrooms gettin' it on. Both present different angles to the whole polyamory schtick, and what bothered me most was that the language used by at least one of the characters (desirae's) was the high-falutin' poly theory-speak that you usually don't associate with bedroom conversation. I'm not sure if her delivery was her decision or the director's, because even high-falutin' theory-speak can be delivered with a bedroom voice, but the "Well, duh," attitude used on stage didn't do much.

Obviously, one could say that this couple was contrasted with the other, which used much more commonplace and straightforward language to describe their evolving poly relationship, but theirs was an old and established relationship, whereas the other was "new," so the contrast was weakened (I might say fatally) by necessity.

The Art Lover: The Doctors featured the same pair of actors. I think this time the story was weakened by the male actor's donning of doctor's garb and paraphenalia. It would have been better if he'd walked in with the clipboard (and if he'd held it in the first episode, too, to maintain backward continuity) and not bothered with the white coat. But the acting was fun.

Our City was weak; it's about a boy and a girl of "a certain age" who've grown up able to peek into each other's bedrooms. The story was weak and typical: she's an "empowered Seattle girl" with the vocabulary of a bi-poly-pervert-youth-girl, he's a clueless twit with a hot body. That he gets the girl by dint of being a good soul is a happy ending; that she remains empowered by her non-monogamy only sets him up for future heartbreak. The male actor was very good, squeaky fun shock at being offered sex by the girl next door, but the dialogue could only have been written by a Seattle woman past her 20s.

The Party is the final and longest piece. j5nn5r plays the host of a party in which everyone has a secret: they know something someone else wants to keep secret. The host of the party accomplishes this by hypnotizing newcomers. The piece was well done (although Jenner wasn't being stretched too far; the host really was cast for him, not the other way 'round). His smirk was very effective.

After the plays, there was the reception with the after-studio dance. Lots of old school stuff, including about half the track of Saturday Night Fever. Fun, but hot with this weather.

Little Red Studio is a fascinating project. It's one of those things I wish I had spare time to put toward, to invest in, and play with. Certainly, it's doing wonders for my friends that do participate. And it's sexy and intimate without having to be either the explicity lizard stupidity of The Lusty Lady, or necessarily participatory like The Wetspot. That's nice, and I'm glad a space like it exists in Seattle.

Comments

[pteryxx.livejournal.com]

"Characters making good or bad decisions about involving other creatures with varying questions of free will into their lives has been a major theme of the Journal Entries for the past two years, so this is a bit of a stickler for me. I've been pushing the edges and I'm not entirely satisfied with the outcome, but this assumption that "it's just a machine so its wants don't matter" is only used by the villains in my stories."

Thanks very much for this. I'm exploring this theme also, mostly through RP and character design, and I will definitely look into your recent Journal Entries.

I got referred to your site originally because of the erotica content, but that's not the (main) reason I stay. ; )