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Jennifer Pratt. Photos by Ian Johnston, composite by Miquela Suazo.

When I Come To My Senses, I'm Alive!

Annex Theatre produced my second full length play as part of its 2010 season:

When I Come To My Senses, I'm Alive!
World Premiere
Written by Scotto Moore
Directed by Kristina Sutherland
Apr 23 - May 22, 2010

The play is a near-future sci-fi story about a technological provocateur who invents a method for capturing emotions as digital information, as part of a project to "chart the emotional genome." She develops a cult following of fans who download her very addictive "emoticlips" - each delivered with cryptic, poetic file names like "the surprise of an unfamiliar memory" - and play them back in hobby-built receiver helmets. The experience is not full blown virtual reality; instead, emotional responses & sensations are triggered, and each fan experiences something unique. A seedy television executive tries to coopt her technology to syndicate the emotions of TV stars, hiring an elite P.I. to figure out what her weaknesses are when she refuses to sell out... but in the meantime, publishing digital versions of her emotions to the internet has unexpected consequences amongst the botnets of the world.

If you couldn't make it, perhaps I might entice you to read the script:

When I Come To My Senses, I'm Alive! (312 KB PDF)

SeattleActor.com review:

Scotto Moore's new play, "When I Come to My Senses, I'm Alive!" is the best kind of science fiction, the kind where speculation about the future feels like something you could wake up to tomorrow morning. In this World Premiere production, director Kristina Sutherland has kept the ideas fresh and intriguing and the performances finely finished and compelling. The acting is brisk and, at least for the enthusiastic opening night audience, it's premise and articulation is easily embraced by a generation for whom the globalization of information, media and personal experience meld into our shared online identities... [The play] is a lot of fun, at least in part because it is so confident and thoroughly considered in its ideas and equally finished in its theatrical savvy for putting them on stage.

Seattle Times review:

It's not hard to be captivated by Moore's provocative premise about a leap in information technology that makes human emotions a downloadable, vicarious experience. The story's late turn toward suspense -- with the spectral rise of freethinking, artificial intelligence on the Internet -- certainly ups the ante in unexpected, spooky ways.... Director Kristina Sutherland keeps the action brisk and crisp, and knows how to nudge the audience's imagination.

The Stranger review:

One wants to see more plays like this in Seattle--smart science fiction about the amazing world we have found ourselves heading toward.

Seattle Gay News review:

Fun, fascinating, thoughtful and delightful.

"Have you tried Googling omnipotent self-aware botnets?""



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