FAIR GAME: Or the Importance of Being Honest / A Musical Comedy of Manners Based on a True Story about Fake News by Andrea Markowitz
Winner of BEST ORIGINAL SCRIPT, ariZoni Theatre Awards of Excellence (also nominated for BEST ORIGINAL SCORE). - Imagine Googling your name and discovering more than 160,000 websites that spread defamatory lies about you. That’s what would happen if you were Sarah Winchester, the real-life Winchester rifle company heiress whose San Jose, California, mansion was turned into a tourist attraction after she died....
Winner of BEST ORIGINAL SCRIPT, ariZoni Theatre Awards of Excellence (also nominated for BEST ORIGINAL SCORE). - Imagine Googling your name and discovering more than 160,000 websites that spread defamatory lies about you. That’s what would happen if you were Sarah Winchester, the real-life Winchester rifle company heiress whose San Jose, California, mansion was turned into a tourist attraction after she died. FAIR GAME combines investigative journalism with suspenseful storytelling to expose the lies that became the foundation of a still thriving travel destination. The lies began decades before Winchester passed away in 1922, when newspapers first printed articles that questioned her sanity for building a 250-room mansion. After she died, John Hamilton Brown, an amusement park pro, transformed Winchester’s home into a haunted house and built his new business by exploiting the unsubstantiated gossip that Winchester was a deservedly haunted soul. FAIR GAME uses twists, turns and humor as it explores the roots and consequences of fake news by uncovering historic newspaper articles that reveal how John Brown, his wife Mayme, and three real-life reporters used the press to promote the Browns’ new business by keeping alive the mean-spirited rumors that made Winchester an involuntary legend. These characters get a taste of their own medicine when stories about them spin out of control. The difference is, the stories about them are true. FAIR GAME blends stylistic elements of Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie and Kurt Weill to tell this cautionary tale. Sarah Winchester does not appear in FAIR GAME. She deserves to rest in peace.