Crisis Actors (working title) by
A work in progress commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre. CRISIS ACTORS 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...
A work in progress commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre. CRISIS ACTORS 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. As her grief is invaded and her marriage crumbles, the mother takes the dangerous step of persuading Stryker77 to meet with her face to face.