You Can't Say That! (A New Comedy) by
You Can't Say That is a comedy about the labels we attach to each other as if those labels capture the sum total of who we or they are.
The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman as his TA. Chris attempts to act ‘woke,” but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University’s...
The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman as his TA. Chris attempts to act ‘woke,” but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University’s...
You Can't Say That is a comedy about the labels we attach to each other as if those labels capture the sum total of who we or they are.
The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman as his TA. Chris attempts to act ‘woke,” but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University’s poorly produced diversity and inclusion training webinar “You Can’t Say That” only complicates things. The department decides that all faculty and students are to wear name tags which label their personal nouns and pronouns. But Chris, doesn’t know who he really is, or which labels define him. He’s trapped in a society that forces us to clip the edges of our identity to fit ready-made social expectations. Then he discovers that his politically incorrect gaffes and personal struggles with his sexuality are going public and that he must stop hitting the "accept" button on his or others’ identities without first reading the terms and conditions - in other words, without understanding who he or they really are.
Our purpose in writing this comedy is to draw people out of their bubbles. When you laugh at something, you never look at it again the same way. Laughter can open our minds to new perceptions, which is the beginning of change.
This quick-moving comedy features a diverse cast and is filled with ridiculous webinars and student-written absurdist plays-within-the-plays that demand an after-performance talkback.
The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman as his TA. Chris attempts to act ‘woke,” but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University’s poorly produced diversity and inclusion training webinar “You Can’t Say That” only complicates things. The department decides that all faculty and students are to wear name tags which label their personal nouns and pronouns. But Chris, doesn’t know who he really is, or which labels define him. He’s trapped in a society that forces us to clip the edges of our identity to fit ready-made social expectations. Then he discovers that his politically incorrect gaffes and personal struggles with his sexuality are going public and that he must stop hitting the "accept" button on his or others’ identities without first reading the terms and conditions - in other words, without understanding who he or they really are.
Our purpose in writing this comedy is to draw people out of their bubbles. When you laugh at something, you never look at it again the same way. Laughter can open our minds to new perceptions, which is the beginning of change.
This quick-moving comedy features a diverse cast and is filled with ridiculous webinars and student-written absurdist plays-within-the-plays that demand an after-performance talkback.