←Recommendations of Jan Kultura, Substitute Teacher, and the Matriarchy of the Ants

Ian Thal is a verbal stylist, and he has let it all go with a fantasia on Orwell's Newspeak Gone Wild, which like many dialects, seems strange at first but gradually becomes easy to understand. The heart of the piece is the pitched battle between scientific inquiry and the almost inevitable desire of governments to to control thought -- words being one of the most efficient tools. (How can you think about things for which there are no words?) There are laughs, but the story is not really funny.

A thought provoking examination of the behavior of ants and human beings particularly in power cultivation through the lens of science. Well done.

It's not just the hilarious double-speak (written in a language Ian Thal has invented), or the ant-on-ant puppetry, that's so effective here. It's the increasingly unsettling feeling that the science film enacted onstage describes not just ant behavior but also humans' relentless need to dominate, enslave and feed on each other. This is such an inventive and playful way to discuss both science denial and some truly disturbing realities about humans. Would love to see it staged.

This short but effective puppet piece is a searing condemnation of the influence of politics on science. The modern analogy would be the five o'clock follies pandemic press conferences when the scientist are sidelined by politicians speaking over them and undermining their words.

There so many staging options to make this play perfectly of the moment, including making the characters wear masks, putting posters about the pandemic in the room, or by testing students as they walk in the classroom.

Ian is a genius.