Kaiju by Dan Caffrey

Semi-Finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, 2021

Two 250-foot-tall monsters debate the morality of the destruction they just caused. A group of human theatergoers argues after a play they just watched. Destruction becomes a means of conversation and conversation becomes a means of destruction in this satire of monster movies, post-show talkbacks, and both the power and self-cannibalization of theatre.
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Kaiju

Recommended by

  • The Workshop Theater:
    30 Jan. 2022
    “ The Workshop Theater is pleased to recognize Dan Caffrey as a playwright selected out of a competitive pool of applicants for our Fall 2021 Writer’s Intensive. The Writer’s Intensive is an eight-week long, playwright-driven process geared towards revising an existing play. A parallel story, a parody on ignorance, a group of people talking about nothing as destruction tears through the city. Kaiju touches on large conversations, while contextualizing these small words in larger-than human action. Caffrey explores how comfort, passion, and anger can make anyone a monster.
    ”
  • Ky Weeks:
    11 Oct. 2021
    “ Starts with an image that takes an iconic monster movie elements and not just twists them, but makes them something wholly different. The gigantic characters discuss humanity from a perspective distant and removed, and they build to these funny, awkward, intimate moments I'd never imagine seeing in a kaiju story. The second act, meanwhile, contains just about everything I ever wanted to say about talkbacks, and by comparison made me yearn for the primal energy of the big stompy monsters over the human pretensions on display... and Caffrey does not disappoint. ”

Development History

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