(Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 11/21; via Pam Green.)
Here’s a recipe for a terrible play: Characters are rarely in the same room as one another; conversations are typed rather than spoken; one side of a dispute can’t be heard by the audience.
Not great drama but, in 2015 America, the stuff of real life, where the rapid spread of mobile technology has redefined the way people talk, the way they shop, the way they walk down the street.
As a result, it is redefining how they interact onstage and, in the process, challenging playwrights, directors and set designers who are trying to figure out matters as technical as how to let theater audiences know what is being said on screens they cannot see, and as cosmic as what technological change means for human interconnectedness.