Latest news with #Summerworks
CBC
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
New play asks what happens when technology comes for all our jobs
It may seem very of the moment, but the new play, Truck — about a retirement speech by America's last truck driver some time in the near future — actually predates the current artificial intelligence boom by several years. Playwright Graham Isador has been working on the script in one form or another for eight years. Originally, he says, it started life as a theatre workshop monologue — a meditation on how our personal identities get wrapped up in what we do for a living, and what happens when a machine takes over one of the things that makes you you. But the work started to feel more and more relevant as time went on. "I wrote that thing sort of as a fictional, pontificating thing… but more and more over the last eight years the themes in that monologue became really relevant," he says. It also became more relevant to Isador personally. In addition to being a playwright, he's also a journalist — including producing the podcast Short Sighted for the CBC — and for many years, made the bulk of his living as a copywriter. Over the past couple years, he saw copywriting work dry up as clients turned to ChatGPT and other AIs, in spite of the fact that, to Isador, none of what they're doing "is any better than what a human can do. But for a lot of companies, it's good enough." Truck became less of a "pontificating thing" and more of a way for Isador to work through his own fears. "If all those jobs disappeared, what happens next?" he says. "So it's a fear that I was feeling very much myself, like, on a kind of existential level with AI, and it's also something that I've noticed that's coming up more and more in these other industries." But as personal as the project became, Isador wants to make it clear that Truck is also about the future of work as a whole, for all of us. "There's a lot of myself and some of my own thoughts within this play," he says. "But there's also stuff that's coming up about the idea of the future of work and unionization and how bigger corporations can put the profits before what humans are doing for them. So it was stuff that I was seeing between Amazon workplaces and how those companies have kind of changed the way that people are monitored." Isador put on a staged reading of Truck back in 2023 as part of Toronto's Summerworks festival. The reading sold out and garnered enough positive reviews to convince Isador that the project "had a bit of legs." "As an independent theater producer, it means that you really have to believe in the work and believe it can sell and believe what you're making is really important," he says. "And that reading in particular, that gave me the gusto to be able to follow that… the feedback that I'd gotten just from talking to people afterwards and the emails that we got later, really praising the work were enough for me to kind of be able to pursue this" Putting on a play like this as an independent producer is challenging says Isador. He's gotten a thousand dollars in grant money, but other than that, he's had to "beg, borrow, and steal" to get the production to the stage. The Factory Theatre, who are co-producing the show, donated rehearsal space. Ultimately, though, Isador has stuck with it because he feels Truck is a play whose time has come. "What I'm always trying to do with my work is figure out, 'Why now?'" he says. "And the answer to that, a lot of the time, can be like, 'Well, I think it's good, or I think it's funny or I'm really enjoying this' but… this one in particular just feels like it's the time for this play."
Forbes
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Loss And Laughter Collide In Abe Koogler's ‘Deep Blue Sound'
Maryann Plunkett and Mia Katigbak in Clubbed Thumb's 'Deep Blue Sound' 'Lately my plays have been about how fragile the world is, and what it feels like when something you love disappears,' says playwright Abe Koogler. That sense of loss—whether it's the vanishing of an orca pod, a failing relationship, or the slow erosion of community—permeates the wise, funny and heartfelt Deep Blue Sound, now playing at The Public Theater's Shiva Theater. Premiering at Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks festival in 2023, the play—largely comprised of intersecting vignettes, with shades of Our Town—follows a small island community navigating both personal and environmental upheaval. For Koogler, the story is deeply personal. 'I grew up on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, filled with unusual characters and a lot of natural beauty: the water, the woods, the wild animals,' he recalls. 'When we took the ferry boat to Seattle, it would often slow down so as not to disturb the orcas.' While the environmental crisis looms over the play, its characters are equally preoccupied with their own lives. 'They're wondering what their lives mean or have meant,' he says. Though the script has remained largely unchanged since its debut, the production has evolved. 'Some plays come out pretty much fully formed; this was one of those plays,' Koogler says. But the move to The Public has allowed for a richer visual experience. 'There is more weather now, more presence of the natural world. The world of the play has expanded to fill the larger space, while remaining intimate scene to scene.' One of the play's most poignant storylines follows Ella, a woman facing a terminal illness and preparing herself for assisted suicide via the Death with Dignity Act. Koogler approached the subject with nuance and restraint. 'Having known people who made use of assisted suicide to end their lives, I know that it's an emotionally complicated time,' he says. 'There can be a lot of happiness, anger, surreal and absurd moments, fear, connection—it's just as complicated as the rest of life.' Tony Award winner Maryann Plunkett reprises her Obie-winning role as Ella. Koogler calls her 'one of the greats.' 'She is incredibly honest onstage. You never feel like she's acting,' he says. 'She is also so, so funny. And it's incredible to watch how she works on her performance, never settling, always finding new colors and new depths.' Despite the play's weighty themes, humor remains essential: an ineffective mayor (Crystal Finn) and a mysterious, chainsaw-wielding figure (Ryan King) offering side-splitting moments. 'Plays need to be funny first, before they're anything else,' Koogler insists. His previous play, Staff Meal, which ran at Playwrights Horizons, explored similar themes of change and uncertainty, centering on characters also grappling with the loss of something they love. 'In Staff Meal that thing was a restaurant; in Deep Blue Sound it's the whales,' he explains. 'The people in my plays feel upset about the way the world is changing: they can see it happening, and they don't know what to do about it. I think everyone can identify with that confusion and sense of loss in our world right now. 'Like all of my plays, it's about lonely people struggling to connect, My characters are always trying to find their place within larger systems—political, economic, ecological—that are operating in ways they cannot understand.'
