THIS WEEK’S TWEAKS at The Infinite Wrench ~ July 28–30: “For those of you paying attention…”


“This Week’s Tweaks” is The Neo-Futurist’s weekly update on the ongoing & ever-changing THE INFINITE WRENCH, a live mechanism to unleash a barrage of two-minute plays for the present audience. Check in every week for updates on the new plays and rotating Neo-Futurist ensemble members.

The Neo-Futurists
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

All work and no play makes Becca an observant person.

Pictured above is Becca. Becca is one of the Neo-Futurist office interns. She’s been working on all kinds of fascinating stuff. One such thing is combing through past archives of plays, digitizing the titles to make those archives easily searchable, and assigning the “serial” numbers to them (ie — the linear number of each play as it is premiered, as in, the play “Invasive Asian Carp Found Near Lake Michigan Put Great Lakes At Risk” has serial number 9953, because it is literally the 9,953rd play written by a Neo-Futurist since 1988). As of this week, our count is 9,987, a mere 13 plays from a milestone of 10,000.

Well, we were 13 away. But Becca is smarter than that. Here’s Artistic Director Kurt Chiang explaining what happened.

“Well, I was at my desk, and over my shoulder I heard ‘Kurt, we have a major problem.’ And it was Becca, and I was like ‘Oh gosh.’ So I asked her to tell me the problem, and she pointed at two menus from the year 2014. They were from the shows April 25–27 and May 2–4. On that weekend in April, we had premiered 8,722 plays. The next week, we had rolled an 8. Which means on May 2, we should have premiered 8,730. But, as Becca pointed out, with stellar accuracy, the kind of accuracy that was not being practiced in the making of these menus 3 years ago, the menu said 8,780. Do the math, and that’s 50 plays out of thin air. I said to Becca ‘Thanks, Becca,’ and went back to my office and screamed into the seat of my chair.”

Hey, we couldn’t lie to you. We just couldn’t.

But listen, it’s not the end of the world. We’re setting back the count to 63 — we’re still more than likely to hit 10,000 by the end of the year. We hope you statisticians out there will forgive us.

<<This Week’s Cast, Plays and Tweaks>>

Cast: Lisa Buscani, Trevor Dawkins, Nick Hart, Kirsten Riiber, Kyra Sims, Malic White. (with Taylor Fenderbosch on tech)

Play Count: 8 NEW (TOTAL: 9937 since 1988). ~ In the desert (NH) ~ Automata (TD) ~ for grandma (KR) ~ What If We Had Hooves Instead of Hands (MW) ~ Claddagh (LB) ~ Late Night Conversation with a Stranger ft. the Neo Family Band Jamboree (KR) ~ The Nick Hart Story (NH) ~ Friendship is magic. Ensembles are terrible. (MW) ~

Tweaks: 30 PLAYS and 4 WRENCHES (hints: offerings to the gods, that one episode of Community, Thornton Wilder). Plays labelled according to their place in the Total Play Count, written and accumulated since 1988, timed with a cumbersome device.


Visit neofuturists.org for tickets to “TIW.” Double check your homework.

The Neo-Futurists

Written by

An experimental theater company, home of Neo-Futurism, & creators of THE INFINITE WRENCH, every Friday/Saturday @ 11:30pm, Sunday @ 7:00.

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