Oh. Hi There.

Why hello blog. It's been a while. I think I'm going to begin writing here again about my current project. I'm creating a piece, and would like to blog about the process. It' sad to think the last time I wrote here was nearly three years ago. I've been doing theater pretty regularly since then, but never my own work. I've also been steadily writing more journalism type stuff. And I did a research project about Minnesota theater history, and some other stuff. The project I'm going to be working on is a dystopia. It' a world where all the information is controlled by a large corporation. Today I had my first brainstorming session with my friend Rakel. We kind of hammered out my ideas for characters and a skeleton of a plot. Here are the characters so far: Paige: sort of the central character Thomas: An anarchist- type. He tells Paige the truth about the corporation. He is murdered- but it's made to look like a suicide. Sally: A reporter. Tired of endlessly only reporting about celebrity gossip and trivial news, she follows her hunch about the murdered activist. Melody: A columnist/policy wonk. A mastermind of manipulating thought. One Percent: I don't have a name for him yet. Possibly Paige's friends, and maybe a jailor. Of course, I only have a cast of three currently, so I'm either going to need to cut down the cast list, have actors play multiple roles, or make some new friends quickly who can help me with this. What we talked about today is that it's the future, and everyone is constantly connected to the internet, except not through any device but rather, their brains are just automatically connected. All they have to do is think- or maybe tilt their head or give audible commands to weave through the internet. There's a relationship between Thomas and Paige. Thomas tries to convince her about the corporation. He takes her to an abandoned science museum. He says something- something controversial, and either Paige or one of her friends "report him" by making a status update about it. Because of what he has said, he is killed- because he's a "scarerist". When Paige tries to find out about him, she's labeled as a scarerist too, and put in a prison. There's a confrontation scene between Sally and One Percent. I imagine Melody only speaks in isolated monologues, directly addressed to the audience. That's all i have right now. It's a bit narrative-heavy I realize. I'm hoping that my other collaborators can help me tease out the movement/abstract elements, and I want to draw from news sources and also dystopian texts such as 1984. I'm excited.