A few weeks ago, a childhood friend recommended a book to me called Red Rising. I read it, and liked it, but couldn’t help but feel like there was nothing particularly original in it. Nearly every character, plot beat, and twist instantly conjured to mind another book or movie that had done the same thing, usually better. It felt like going to one of those New York City cafeteria’s like Bread & Butter, where nearly every food you could ever desire is available, but at a lower quality, and once you’ve consumed all that sushi and pasta and chicken wings and fruit salad to your heart’s content, you feel a little ill. By the end of this giant mashup of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Tooth of Crime, Star Wars, Divergent, Game of Thrones, and Red Faction, I felt like my imagination was left woefully unstretched.
 

But really, I enjoyed it. In that tub-of-ice-cream-kind-of-way (what’s with these food analogies?? I should go eat lunch… no wait, finish this.) The writing was fantastic, the exposition minimal, and the world-building was vivid. Heck, I’ve been thinking about it so much I even created my second tumblr just as a place to create memes about it. My reaction is similar to how I feel about The Hobbit films— deep inside there is something brilliant just struggling to get out, but man, it’s just not there.
 

Anyway, why am I talking about a book I read to preface a new play? Well my friends, inspired by my new-found hyper-awareness of common plot beats and character archetypes across dystopic tales, I wrote a satirical play making fun of it all. I tried to keep the sarcasm to a minimum and have the play come from a place of genuine love for these kinds of stories– I hope I’ve succeeded. So far the common word I’m hearing from my readers is that it’s “fun.” Good adjective, that.
 

The last time I wrote a ‘parody play’ was my very first, La Salle d’Or, playing with the way stakes get pumped up in even the simplest stories. I took the story about a boy asking a girl to a school dance and morphed it into a larger-than-life quasi-musical about saving the world.
 

Nine years after that first play, I’ve decided this is both a comfortable and fruitful territory for me, so expect more genre send-ups in the future!
 

Dystopiapiapia was written and edited in a mad rush of 3 days (15 rough pages in one day, even dealing with a puppy foster dog!). It’s timely completion was aided very much by Nick Douglas at Slacktory in a Thursday evening of mutually-assured-writing. As I have every year since 2012, I used the deadline of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival to force myself to produce something new. No dice for the last two years, but maybe the third time’s a charm?
 

I’m actually quite happy with Dystopiapiapia and would love to see it get a production, so I’m going to pursue as many one-act competitions as I can. Ideally, an existing theater group would produce it and I could just enjoy watching it come to life, but honestly, I’m interested enough in making this happen that I would happily produce it through WhAT (like my Sims play) if the opportunity arose. Take a glance and let me know what you think!
 

Download (PDF, 821KB)