The Crisis Actor (working title) by
A one-person work in progress commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre. THE CRISIS ACTOR explores a central dilemma in our age of pervasive and inescapable digital manipulation: If everything can be faked, how can we prove the reality of anything, even a human life? The play traces the agonizing journey of a mother whose young daughter is murdered when a gunman attacks her school bus. As a way of overcoming her...
A one-person work in progress commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre. THE CRISIS ACTOR explores a central dilemma in our age of pervasive and inescapable digital manipulation: If everything can be faked, how can we prove the reality of anything, even a human life? The play traces the agonizing journey of a mother whose young daughter is murdered when a gunman attacks her school bus. As a way of overcoming her devastating grief, the mother sets up a Facebook page to her daughter’s memory, posting photographs and other mementoes of her brief life. To her horror, a troll calling himself “Stryker77” begins to post messages on the site, accusing the mother of being a “crisis actor” playing a role in a hoax and denying not only her daughter’s death but her very existence.