Episode 76 - At What Cost?

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. This episode: Anooj tries to find a place to relax, computers lie, and Ronald Reagan makes it out alive. Some of the plays may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content warnings, check out the timecodes below.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, subscribe to the show, tell a friend, and leave a review on your listening app of choice. We’d love to hear from you! @nyneofuturists on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. If you want to support in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon. 

2:05 - Independence Gay by Christopher Borg 

9:01 [CW: gun violence, AIDS] - It’ll Trickle by Jake Banasiewicz

13:04 - trust the data: a simplisafe ad by Connor Sampson

14:30 - To save time, I didn’t write a script for this play. An AI wrote it. by Anthony Sertel Dean

19:50 [CW: drugs (light reference)]- A Presidential Character Arc with Absolutely Nothing Important Redacted by Connor Sampson

23:23 [CW: cursing] - A Spot in the Park by Anooj Bhandari

Our logo was designed by Gabriel Drozdov

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Winn Foreman, and Hilary Asare.

Take care!

Transcript 

Show Intro
	Bouncy electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Hilary: 76. At What Cost?

Hi, I’m Hilary-- a New York Neo-Futurist. 

Our live show is back, but we just can’t stop making art for your ears so Hit Play continues!

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello! 

We can’t wait to split a big ol’ plate of nachos with you. 

If this is totally new to you— welcome to it!

We make art by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. 

Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything you hear is actually happening. 

So if we tell you that we’re playing around with the sounds empty bowls and mugs make, we’re really playing around with the sounds empty bowls and mugs make, like I am right now. 
 
Some of the work in this episode may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content 
warnings, check the timecodes in the show notes. 

This episode’s theme is: At What Cost? What are you willing to pay for what you want? What prices have you unknowingly agreed to? All questions we may or may not answer in this episode. 

And now, BORG will run the numbers!


BORG: Hello! I’m Borg-- a NY Neo-Futurist alum. In this episode we’re bringing you 6 brand-new plays. 

This week’s cast is Jake Banasiewicz, ​​Connor Sampson, Anthony Sertel Dean, Hilary Asare, Anooj Bhandari, and me, Christopher Borg.

That brings us to 347 audio experiments on Hit Play. Enjoy!

	Music winds down.

Play 1: Independence Gay (2:05)
Borg: Independence Gay. GO!

[[transcript pending! sorry it’s late—I’m having to go through it by hand. please hold!]]


Play 2: It’ll Trickle (9:01)
Jake: It’ll Trickle. GO!

This play is underscored by a loop of rhythmic, echoey percussion, almost like footsteps or dripping water.

Jake: January 20, 1981: Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States.

March 30, 1981: To impress actress Jodie Foster, John Hinckley Jr. uses a revolver in an attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Reagan makes it out alive with a broken rib, a pierced lung, and severe internal bleeding.

June 5th, 1981: The CDC publishes its first article about a rare lung infection found in 5 previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. 

June 21, 1982: John Hinckley Jr. is found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is instead placed under institutional psychiatric care. He calls his act “The greatest love offering in the history of the world.”

September 24, 1982: The CDC uses the term AIDs for the first time.

January 20, 1985: Reagan is sworn into his second term as President of the United States. Over 15,000 AIDs cases are reported.

September 17, 1985: President Reagan mentions AIDs for the very first time. He declares it a “top priority”.

May 31, 1987: Reagan delivers his first public speech on AIDs. Around the same time, John Hinckley Jr. applies for periodic home visits. He is denied additional privileges.

January 20, 1989: Over 89,000 people are reported to have died from AIDs. Reagan completes his second term in office, though it really has only just begun.

The percussion fades out. 

Sometime in 2020: I bring up Ronald Reagan at the dinner table. I make it out alive with a metaphorical broken rib, pierced lung, and severe internal bleeding. I am reminded, again, that, for some, history trickles like a tear down the cheek of an actor. While, for others, it floods, not with water, but with thick, hot blood that has never and will never stain the hands that deserve it; that breaks open your door and fills your room to the ceiling; that forces you to hold your breath until you think “I can’t do this anymore” or “Maybe I can do this forever”. And just before you make that decision, the blood dries up and you find the floor and you see that the blood has left a message on your wall that reads, “See you again soon” and somewhere nearby or faraway you hear a gunshot.

	The echoing percussion returns. A sound of rain intensifies.

June 15, 2022: John Hinckley Jr. is set free from all court restrictions 41 years after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.


Play 3: trust the data: a simplisafe ad (13:04)
Connor: trust the data: a simplisafe ad. GO!

[[i’m very sorry but this one also is going to have to be transcribed by hand, i simply cannot do it right now but i will as soon as i can]]

Play 4: To save time, I didn’t write a script for this play. An AI wrote it. (14:30)
Anthony: To save time, I didn’t write a script for this play. An AI wrote it. 

I gave the program the title of the show, the names of the people in it, and then a couple of inserts along the way; they’ll sound like this. That’s it. The computer generated the rest: who said what, what we’d talk about. All of it. Edward Albee will sound like this. Christopher L. McElroy will sound like this. I think Christopher L. McElroy is a made-up person concocted by the computer. 

Caution: not all information in this play will be true. 

GO!

JB: On New York Neo-Futurists' podcast Hit Play, Anthony, Hilary, Anooj, Jake, Borg, and Connor discuss the playwright's life, his influences, and his work.
***
ASD: The following is a transcript of an interview with Edward Albee conducted by Christopher L. McElroy for the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute on May 19, 1998. The interview was conducted in Albee's home office, built in 1875 as the summer residence of a wealthy merchant named John C.

McElroy: Mr. Albee, I'm Chris McElroy. 
Anthony: and I'm Anthony Sertel Dean.
Connor: and I'm Connor O'Leary.
Borg: and I'm Borg Vittachi.
Jake: and I'm Jake Sullivan.
Hilary: and I'm Hilary Lynn.
ASD: These are not their real last names. One of them isn't even their real first name. We're going to use pseudonyms for all of them.
Albee: Good morning. How are you doing today?
McElroy: Very well. Thank you very much. This is my second visit to your home. So, why do you call yourselves the Neo-Futurists?
HA: We started out as a group of actors who wanted to do something different. We'd been in plays before, but they were usually things like King Lear or The Merchant of Venice. You know, standard Shakespearean fare.
We decided we wanted to do something more modern and more experimental. So we formed this little troupe. It's called the Neo-Futurists because we're interested in the future, and we think that the present is too stodgy. 
McElroy: What does it mean? What does "Neo" mean?

Connor: It's like the future is always moving forward, but you can't predict exactly where it's going to go. That's sort of the idea behind it.
I think there's another reason why the word "neo" was chosen. What's the other reason?
Albee: Well, the other reason is that we didn't want to call ourselves the "New Futurists." Because then people would assume that we were a revival of the old Futurists.
All: Thanks, Edward Albee!
ASD: That's true. It was kind of a dead end for them.
Hilary: Yeah, they were still around for a while, but it was never quite the same.
Connor: I think the term Neo-Futurist is actually pretty appropriate.
Anthony: Yeah, it's not really a revival of anything.
Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen the original Futurists.
Connor: No, I haven't.
Anthony: I saw a few shows in the '70s, but they weren't as good as they used to be.
Connor: It was like the '70s were a bad decade for them.
Hilary: I was born in the '70s.
Connor: Yeah, I guess so.
Hilary: My parents told me that the Futurists were the best thing ever.
except for the sexism, racism, and fascism…
Anthony: Well, they did have those things, but I think they were a lot more open about it.
McElroy: Were they?
Connor: Yeah. They were really upfront about the fact that they were a bunch of white guys who were trying to do plays that were written by white guys.
Hilary: It was a little bit weird.
Anthony: And they had this one guy who played the part of a Japanese man.
Connor: Yeah, that was weird.
Hilary: Yeah.
Connor: I don't remember what his name was.
Hilary: His name was Chiyo.
Anthony: Yeah, that's right.
Connor: It was like he was playing two parts at once.
ASD: Hey, Borg, Anooj, and Jake, the AI hasn't given you any lines yet. Do you want to say something?
Borg: Sure.
McElroy: Okay. Go ahead.
Jake: Hello.
Anooj: Hi.
Hilary: Hi, everybody.
Anthony: Hi, Hilary.
Connor: Hey, Connor.
Albee: Good morning.
Jake: Hi.
McElroy: Hello, everyone.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
McElroy: Good morning, everybody.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
McElroy: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
*pause*
Albee: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
McElroy: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
McElroy: Jake and Anooj, are you having good mornings?
Jake: Yeah, I am.
Anooj: Yeah, I'm having a great morning.
McElroy: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning. 
Connor: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
McElroy: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Hilary: Good morning.
Anthony: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
Connor: Good morning.
Albee: Good morning.
Borg: Good morning.
McElroy: Good morning.
ASD: The time is now. Thank you.

ASD: The Neo-Futurists' current show is a revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's an adaptation of the famous 1962 stage play, which was originally written by Edward Albee. Thank you for listening to it. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends about it. If you didn't enjoy it, tell us anyway. Please give us feedback. We love getting emails. We're also available on Facebook at facebook and nofuturists.com, and Google Plus. Thank you for listening.
Goodbye.


Play 5: A Presidential Character Arc with Absolutely Nothing Important Redacted (19:50)
Connor: A Presidential Character Arc with Absolutely Nothing Important Redacted. GO!

	Dreamy synths underscore this play.

Connor: I spent a lot of time researching Richard Nixon for work. I want to just take the time to paint you a picture of his upbringing, because I found myself… empathizing with him. Okay here it goes: 

An 8 year-old Richard Nixon is fussy, neat, and hates hugs. He’s literally the kid who takes the football and doesn’t give it back until everyone promises to follow the rules. And his adolescence is defined by two things: personal loss and public embarrassment. 

When he makes the high school football team — the other boys use him as a human “punching bag.” Those aren’t my words. They’re his coach’s. When he lands the lead in a school play, he’s so uncomfortable about kissing his scene partner on opening night that the audience erupts into laughter. The production has to screech to a grinding halt until the ridicule dies down.

Girls start referring to him as ‘Gloomy Gus’ in the hallways.

He wants nothing more than to be liked, but he doesn’t know how to make that happen. So, one day, he brings home a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People and he asks his family to read it together. His father runs a small grocery store. His mother scrubs bedpans for extra cash. Nixon spends many nights drowning out his parents' tense — borderline abusive — relationship, listening to train whistles and staring at a poster of Abraham Lincoln above his bed along with a Longfellow poem his grandmother gave him:

Lives of great men all remind us / We can make our lives sublime / And departing leave behind us / Footprints on the sands of time.

By 15, Nixon’s working to help support his family. By 20, he loses two of his brothers: Arthur and Harold. Harold’s death is particularly hard on the Nixon family because he was the ‘golden’ child: athletic, charming, fun-loving. Everything a young Richard wasn’t.

After Harold’s death, Nixon’s father reportedly wondered, “Why is it that the best and the finest of the flock [have] to be taken?” So, Nixon pretty much spends the rest of his life trying to prove himself worthy of being the son that survived. So, he becomes president. He loses two elections to get there: one in high school, to a popular jock named Robert Logue  — another in 1960, to a popular rich-kid named John F. Kennedy. But he does it, and…

— yada yada yada —

…Before he leaves office, he tries to assassinate an American journalist by lacing the steering wheel of their car with an explosive amount of LSD.

So, yeah.

Play 6: A Spot in the Park (23:23)
Anooj: A Spot in the Park. GO!

Anooj: I looked at a friend and said, “Why can’t I make a home in the park,” and she called me a poet as her eyes got softer but I didn’t feel like a poet, nope, I just literally wanted a home in the park and I need you to stop trusting me when I tell you that I’m going to go lay down in the grass for the afternoon because a more accurate description of what I’m doing is that I’m probably just looking for a place to land. 

The politics of where to lay down are boring my trying-to-be-joyful ass, and quite frankly I’m sick of them fucking with my plans to have a good day. It’s a Saturday afternoon and the breeze is hitting just right. I’m wearing these maroon jean shorts with all the threads hanging out and this gray tank that’s more like a frock so the air outside can run its fingers down my body, and I see a spot open and I walk towards it. Shit. I forgot my blanket at home, and I’m fine with laying in the grass, but am I fine with laying in the grass when everybody around me has a blanket, also yes, but another but… a blanket sounds oh, so nice, so I guess I’ll just take my shirt off, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll take this frock off my back and lay it across the ground and then lay on top of it, this little square of fabric and it will be just like a blanket and the second I find a patch that I think may be the right one that’s not too in the sun or too out in the open what I notice is families, yes, families, everywhere with there little icky strollers and their little icky toddlers with their buggy little eyes staring at me making me feel like some kind of a sick weirdo for disrobing and I suddenly remember working as Clifford the Big Red Dog at a children’s fair when I was 18, how all the parents stared at me through the mesh eye ball hugging their children as if they were gonna fuck me up for just doing what I was told but here’s the thing I don’t want your weirdo kids around me anyhow I just want a day in the park where I don’t have to think about you seeing my unclothed body, but we haven’t even really talked about the unclothed part yet, there’s the hair, and there’s the melanin and I know it’s 2022 and we LOVE those things, hell, THEY love those things and even though I’m so in right now the optics just make me feel all so wrong and so I find a bench that’s hidden away and curl my legs up on it wishing I was with a friend or friends so we could carve out some space together and I breathe in before my only halfway finished SZA album is cut off by the sound of the kid’s carousel playing some kind of ABBA remix, and here I am, brain rotting away on a summer’s day after being called a poet and I thank god that at least I have poetry because if a dream of laying down on the grass is so far away from this than I am holy as hell for having at least a craft through which I name the space between and a ball rolls under me, kicked by a Kindergartener and my impulse is to sit up and get it but I can’t. But I won’t. I’m just not going to, because this was supposed to be a day for me to lay down in the park and now that I have laid down I swear to god I do not want to be the person who asks me to get up. 

And here’s the thing about finding the perfect spot in the park. Is that once I find the perfect spot I wouldn’t really want to leave, and here’s the thing about that, is that I know it would only be time, even if that time is over a day or days that some man in some uniform with some kinda size pockets would come up to me with his little ol’ smirk and palm out and be like, “Oh, okay, you don’t want to leave? Then you have to pay up.” That’s the thing, is that having a home in a park still wouldn’t stop me from having to pay rent for just existing and that’s the tiring kinda shit that brought me here in the first place, in fact, probably brought all of these people here, building the exact reason my body can’t find a spot to chill. 

And here’s the thing about finding the perfect spot in the park. It could be so easy. It could just be so so easy. 

Hey Jake, wanna go to the park with me? 

Jake: Um, yes, absolutely.


Show Outro
	Comforting electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Hilary: Thanks for hitting play and then listening to Hit Play. 

If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show, tell a friend, and leave a review on your listening app of choice! If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or by joining our Patreon: Patreon.com/NYNF. 

For the rest of season 3 we’ll be selecting themes randomly and our Patrons can suggest one for upcoming episodes!

This episode featured work by: 

Anooj Bhandari, Jake Banasiewicz, Christopher Borg, ​​Connor Sampson, Anthony Sertel Dean, and me, Hilary Asare. 

Our logo was designed by Gabriel Drozdov and our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean.

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Winn Foreman, and me—Hilary Asare. Take care! 

…You know I wave every time I say that? And I just told myself “Don’t do that, they can’t see you,” and I did it anyway. It’s worth it.

	Music fades out!