Distracted from distraction by distraction.
Left To Our Own Devicesnote is a one-act Dramedy written in 2012. The play was written and performed in collaboration with Santa Fe University of Art and Design students, who originated the show in April of 2014.
The play is a look at the negative affects of social media on teens nowadays. It dives into dark topics like suicide, bullying, and racism in today's society. It's mostly told from the perspective of three teens in "detention", Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana, as they recount stories from their high school and try and connect.
Left To Our Own Devices provides examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: After having to transfer schools and delete all of her accounts because of the ruthless bullying The Girl was facing, what does she do? Why, join social media again, of course! Justified, since she only joins because she wants to fit in.
- Ambiguous Gender: Most of the chorus members are written so they can be played by any gender.
- Anachronic Order: The story is made of many circulating, related anecdotes all told through the Framing Device of a conversation between Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana.
- Aside Comment: The chorus members frequently go off on tangents of comments to the audience about the internet and social media.
- Bilingual Bonus: Chorus member 6 (CM-6) speaks Spanish and English, and often will intersperse the two languages in their dialogue.
- Bittersweet Ending: Doubles with Surprisingly Happy Ending because of The Girl's failed suicide and Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana finally connecting, but the chorus members deliver some closing thoughts that end on a melancholy tone.
- Black Comedy: Immediately after a girl's cat gets hit by a truck, the entire cast turns out to the audience and yells "Oh no! #roadkill!!"
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: After the person finishes saying the opening announcements, they turn to the cast, who are all on their phones, and say that the "no phones" rule applies to them, too.
- Break the Cutie: The Girl. She starts off as a Wide-Eyed Idealist new to the internet and excited about its possibilities, until her online boyfriend is revealed to be cheating on her, and she gets bullied so hard she has to transfer to a different school. From there, the bullying only gets worse, until eventually she's Driven to Suicide. Thankfully, though, her attempt fails and she is metaphorically and literally supported by her peers.
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The Cast Showoff: CM-9 sings a song called Blue, a blues song about the blue light from cellular devices.- This actually is a part of the whole show - the entire cast is always fawning over CM-9, whether he's singing, playing a celebrity, or playing a UPS delivery guy.
- Cerebus Call-Back: During a scene early in the show, Advil is mentioned, comparing it favorably to the internet. Later in the show, this is twisted, as various chorus members interject with wishes to overdose on Advil.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The Blue song, which repeats the word "blue" over, and over, and over again.
- Disproportionate Retribution: After stealing shoes from a classmate, Joe is shot and killed in prison.
- Distracted by the Sexy: One skit features a woman being distracted by the hot UPS delivery driver and not noticing until too late that her cat is escaping the house.
- Driven to Suicide: The fate of The Girl. Thankfully, she survives the attempt.
- Ensemble Cast: The show is written in a way that the chorus members are essential to telling the story, and in stagings, hardly anyone will leave the stage over the course of the play.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: CM-9 notes that people often spiral into completely different topics through the use of hashtags. The story from then on is frequently told through anecdotes, some recurring, split up by flurries of hashtags rocketing you to the next.
- First Law of Tragicomedies: After Joe dies, the show goes from a Comedy that happens to deal with dark subjects into a full on psychological drama.
- Framing Device: Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana are placed in "detention" to work some unspecified differences out. The story is told mostly from their perspective, as they recount various local stories as they try to connect.
- Freudian Excuse: Joe stole a kid's shoes because he was tired of people making fun of him for having holes in his shoes. Of course, that doesn't mean he deserved what he got at all.
- #HashtagForLaughs: The chorus members frequently speak in hashtags, often that derail the subject of the current story.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lyle says he was supposed to be reading As I Lay Dying, but got stuck looking at his phone for 5 hours. Later, Briana interrupts him in the middle of complaining about how long reading the book would take to say that the book takes about 5 hours to read.
- I Want My Mommy!: A heartbreaking example: During Joe's interrogation, his one request is a phone call to his mom.
- Insistent Terminology: Nicolai and Lyle insist that being told to stay after school to work things out is really detention.
- Internet Jerk: The people that bully The Girl definitely count as this, so much so that she's Driven to Suicide.
- Irony: The Girl trying to fit in by joining social media to make friends leads to her attempted suicide.
- Joins to Fit In: Discussed by some bullies when they say they only bullied The Girl because it's what everyone else was doing.
- Minimalism: The show is only about 60 minutes, and the set typically contains just 14 chairs, one for each cast member. There's only four named characters, and one of them doesn't even really have a name.
- Motifs:
- The word "Blue" recurs through the story, typically referring to the blue light cellular devices give out.
- The theme of distraction also is featured regularly.
- Many times, the characters are too distracted to work on an essay or read a book because they get distracted by their phones.
- The story is also told this way. Various ensemble members shift from anecdote to anecdote by interjecting with related topics and shooting us into a different story.
- Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana "balancing the space". Once, in the prologue, but the energy is awkward and they break their gaze. The second time is in the middle of the story, but they sense there's still work to be done and sit back down. And the third and final time, around the end, when they finally are no longer at odds with each other, they are able to balance the energy.
- No Name Given:
- Rarely is a chorus member given a recurring character with a name.
- The Girl, while being one of the "named characters", is also an example of this, as she is referred to by everyone as just "The Girl".
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Given that this is a play about the effects of social media on teens, it explores this trope deeply.
- Police Brutality: It is implied that Joe is shot and killed for stealing a pair of shoes because he's black.
- Rule of Three: Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana attempt to "balance the space" thrice. It finally works out the third time.
- School Bullying Is Harmless: Subverted. This show takes bullying very seriously, whether it's The Girl, who was Driven to Suicide because of it, Joe, when all of the bullies pretend they were his friends after his death, or CM-10, who has a monologue about how growing up as a "weird kid" and the bullying that followed affected them.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism:
- Most of the characters are very much on the cynical side, except for The Girl, who is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who just wants to fit in with her peers. And guess what happens to her?
- The story is also pretty cynical, especially with Joe's fate and the treatment of The Girl mentioned above. At the end, though, we have a Surprisingly Happy Ending, with The Girl being supported by her peers and Nicolai, Lyle, and Briana working it out.
- Social Media Is Bad: Deconstructed. The text shows many positive aspects of social media, but overall, it is shown to be more of a detriment to the characters.
It was hard to form a coherent thought in there without somebody else going into something related cuz of all those damn hashtags.
