A few weeks ago, I went to see a theatrical performance named Pangea. Located at the Drake Union on The Ohio State University campus. I was to write a review of it for one of my classes. Here is what I thought….
Life on Pangea
First impressions of walking into the room was “wow this is intimate… a bit too intimate for my liking.” I’m not used to watching a play in a small room (twice the size of a class room at cscc in the tech building). But as I sat down, I decided I was then committed to the remainder of the play. Which btw, turned out to be brilliant.
Long story short, Pangea is about an evil corp. that a fifteen year old hacker found out about that are conducting experiments using nanites to control peoples behavior in order to get them to buy things. but instead the things make people go insane
It ends with the fifteen year olds stripping to his undies in front of a webcam and talking about how the future is kinda screwed due to all the wars and dwindling resources. Synopsis finished, lets get into some detail.
A small cast of people, delivered an very intriguing story that all linked together and ended in a fifteen year olds bed room who, apparently was fairly intelligent. A hacker and an independent soft-core pornographer to make money to support his technology addiction (which is where most of my money goes to… technology, not porn… and I’m not a pornographer).
The beginning kinda reminded me of The Thing. A team of scientists, living in a research camp (boring ice and taking atmospheric readings, etc.). Everything was running smoothly until a crewmember started giving out daily vitamins. It turns out that these vitamins were either placebos or some sort of hallucinogenic drug that made the other four crew members go nutty; turning them into religious zealots. Turns out to be nanites in pill form. Anyway, the idea is that there are alphas and omegas. Omegas share and obey the ideas of the alphas regardless of how crazy it is. It turns out its more of a deeper scheme to get people to buy things. Borged out they get caught up in the moment, the next big trend and run with it. However, it backfired and maked them go crazy so the idea of people buying things won’t really work; at least not this version. This is theme is shown throughout the play but isn’t fully revealed to the end of part one of the second act and the final monologue.
The second act (part one) consists of interrogations. Information gathering to better understand what was happening to the people in the research facility. One very informal interrogation takes place in a Turkish strip club in Istanbul. There an American gathers information from the owner of the club and eventually bribes him for the information ($3000 Turkish). It is finally revealed after some dialog that the American is after the stripper who is also present. She was a victim of the corporation, a test subject for the nanites. Later, the American reveals himself to be a representative of the company (Pangea Inc). He threatens the club owner and makes him kill the stripper. Thus cleaning up one of many mistakes the company made.
At the same time another interrogation was going on. This one in a dark room somewhere in Kazakhstan as well (as I understand anyway). They were interrogating a prisoner who did some work for Anna B. She appears in video, telling of the undoing of humanity. It appears to be a terrorist video but through Ali (the captive) points out that it is a fake because terrorist wouldn’t try to hide a microphone. In fact it is a viral marketing campaign, which was all the rage a few years go. It still happens but doesn’t have the same impact as it did. Mostly because people get bored with little hints and checking back constantly for the latest vid. They just want to know what it is so they can either buy it or ignore it!
Well back to the story, in the end they get all the information they require out of Ali about who the woman is in the video (btw. They make Ali drink a lot of green tasting water, an interrogation tactic, the goal is to make the subject think the water tastes better and therefore is putty). As a result, they create another video with Ali as the star and assumedly sent it out into the great wilderness; the WWW.
I would like to point out that both the scenes were put together and preformed and executed brilliantly. A very seamless transition between the two. I really did feel like I was actually in these scenes.
The final scene which took place solely in echo-booms bedroom was an exceptionally well thought out performance. The scene put together all the missing pieces though left some random details out, for instance, how what happened to the reaserch team because the scene ended abruptly. Echo-Boom also tacked on a (for a better word) rant which ties well into the theme. The Pangea Ultima. The echo-boomers place in the world at large. How will their future be shaped with newer technology that will shrink the world even further. Their identities changed by technology (nanites or media). How will the generation survive? Knowing the dwindling resources, massive population growth, lack of cultural identity, etc. get’s deeper ever day.
I got an A btw. :>
