In the middle of the summer this year, I desperation-wrote a play that required the entire TML cast at the time – but mostly me – and one night, actually, mostly Tif Harrison – I wrote a play that required the cast to binge eat a seemingly never-ending quantity of Jell-O Instant Pudding – all of us eating from the same bowl – from the time the play was called, during every transition, until the end of the show. It got in and we did it. In the middle of the hot, hot summer. Sometimes we did this while wearing tight blue dresses over our clothes, which was also my fault.
That play will not be in the TOO MUCH LIGHT: BEST OF 2014 shows this weekend. You’re welcome.
For a theater that embraces failure as passionately as we do, a “Best Of” show is both thrilling and sort of uncomfortable. Most plays we write come from a certain moment in our lives, and they have a certain life in the show, and then they go away. All of us Neo-Futurists are into that, the going-away. They have awesome nights and off-nights and we love them and hate them and wonder why the fuck we wrote them but regardless when they move us we slingshot them into the audience and see what happens, without trying too hard to make them the best of anything. We do and then we learn and we keep doing.
What we’re really doing this weekend is less of a blue-ribbon contest and more of a joyride: we’re performing the plays we most want to do again. Because we miss them. Because they taught us something. Because they’re [hilarious/heartbreaking/creepy/short/destructive/strange/dreadful/wet]. We’ve got six more shows and they’re going to be the absolute best shows of 2014 mostly because at our theater tonight is the best night every night – even if it’s kind of a bad night because you consumed a half pound of pudding while running.
We’re also selling a deliciously affordable, relentlessly illustrated BEST-OF-2014 ZINE. It includes some plays from the Best of 2014 show and a bunch of plays that aren’t in the show but that happened, gloriously, and that we want you to read. We’ve also got images, inkblots, drawings, and secret invisible messages, all in limited release, available for purchase these next two weekends ONLY.
Ultimate Pudding Challenge is not in the zine either.
In case I ran out of ways to shame myself about the pudding, I asked the Neo-Futurists to email me something they learned over the course of the past year. People indulged with the various words of insight and wisdom you see here. It’s that time of year; everyone’s reflecting; everyone’s sentimental; everyone’s including pictures in their emails to you that you might never understand.
A final reason to get to the show in the next two weeks is a THIS-WEEKEND-ONLY reason: superhero alums Chloe Johnston, Noelle Krimm and Jessica Anne will each be performing a few of the killer plays they gifted to us during the year, BUT ONLY TONIGHT, SATURDAY and ALSO SUNDAY.
