 We are getting ready for Respect by Oscar Cabrera and I'll ask the cast to join me. We're going to have a lovely chat about it afterwards. As soon as I get everybody in places, we will start. Make sure everybody's mic is unmuted if it needs to be. I need one more actor, I think. I'm only seeing three actors. Are you? How many actors do you see? Yeah, we don't have Sam here. Okay. James, we need you to join. All right. Stand by, everyone. Places. Hi, Oscar Cabrera. The reason alone of creating a game engine from scratch? Why would I dump money into a game that isn't even built yet? Michael! Sal! Because it will be run by the people who invest in the game instead of the company. What? Isn't it a company that's building it? Yeah, for those that have paid. Michael! Sal! So, how much do we have been most, Sam? We need 2370 from Mu Gray for the pizza and toilet paper. And we need 1598 from you, Sean, for the pizza. And we need 72370 for pizza, toilet paper, and rent from Michael. If he hasn't paid, it's the ninth. Looking. No, not yet. I don't see a confirmation email. Me neither. Dude, I don't care if his dad is a guarantor or not. He can't be late again. He has it. He just forgets. No, he just plays. We should talk to him. Michael! What? We gotta talk. Yeah, I'm busy. Let's do it. Let's just do it. There's no other way he is going to listen. I mean, we're late if he doesn't pay by tomorrow. I don't know. That's a lot. We were just snowballing ideas. It's crazy, right? I'm in. We have to fight fire with fire. It feels more like we're playing with fire. No pressure, but this doesn't work without you, Sam. We're all doing so good. Why tempted with this? It may be the only way to get through to our friend. I don't think he's going to listen any way. Are you in? Yeah. All right. Three, two, one. Are you kidding me? How far we were into that rage? You couldn't wait 30 minutes. You think each of the opportunities grow on trees? You think you can get to your 12 items drop at normal drop rates? You don't want to listen to us. You just want to play that game all day, every day. We are tired of it. We want our friend back. And if this is the only way that you'll listen to us, then so be it. Dressing up in winter clothes? Cardboard? Enchanted armor by me. A torn resto shaman. Reinforced by my leather working in tailoring. Weapon smithing by these pork hands. I'm sorry. This is really weird. Guys, this feels weird. I'm heading to the game, Sam, just like all the times. Sam, what is this? The most important raid boss we've ever fought. You don't want to return our texts. You ignore our conversations. You're dismissive. I have to get back to my game. Great. Quick, sap him before he gets to his room. What has sap ever worked in a raid? Like ever? It's so pathetic. You know the mechanics. Why would you even think that would work? Stop it. I'm pulling too much aggro. Sam, save your ass. You're doing great, though. Hey, dummy, I need you to pay rent on time. I'm sick of this. You wait till the last moment and it looks bad on all of us. The rent is already high. Most of us can't afford another huge hike when we resign. Touch me again. And it's on like Donkey Kong. Before the unending flame. Michael? Dominate mind. What did I just get hit with? You are me. This was a gamer's house. It's time. Guilt is a hard hitter, but if you stay close, I can heal. It's not our fault we're playing a game you aren't. I thought you would understand. I thought you were my friends. Clear the first stage of battle. How many more do you think there are? No idea. This is our first run. We were getting through them. Not on the ball you're playing. Do you know what it was like? You all stopped. No more Thursday night raids. You can't just shift games on me like that. You know how hard it is for me to be so tough. Do you know how hard it is to run a guild by yourself because your friends don't want to play? We built a guild from the ground up. Over a hundred guildies recruited. Counting on us, creating a raid schedule, amending guild rules as new patches come out monthly. It's more than just playing. And you all just left. It was just too much. I had to let go. It's not a burden. It wasn't me. I'm not this orc warrior. Even now I feel so stupid. I'm the farthest thing from this in every possible way. So yes, I had to let it go. There are more important things. To you. Sam, don't get too far. This isn't your first rodeo. We don't even know how long this stage is. I'm sorry, Michael. We didn't mean to leave you. Remember when we were doing a mythic raid on the Lich King? And we cleared the final stage and all of us got lifted in the air. Yeah, Sean screamed. Hey, I thought it was a new mechanic. We never got in that far. I thought we had white. It was a gut scene. Yeah, good time. But we have real world responsibilities now. It couldn't last forever. I guess. Maybe just not playing all the time. Blanco 2580 misses you. I miss him. Well, so does Josh and Marsha. You were our leader. We want to see Blanco again. I'm trying. Trying really trying. I don't think I can do this. It's not, I'm not you. I've had to try to be over these past two months, but it's been so hard to keep everyone together. We lost half the guild. I'm trying to recruit to recoup our losses. It's so hard to be living in the shadow of how great you were. Everyone wants Blanco 2580 back. Nobody wants me. How do you think that makes me feel? I can't. If you come back together, we can pull everyone back. We can do mythics again without having to spam looking for a group in general chat. Just pop in every once in a while. I'll do everything. Just be there for us. I can't. It's too much. There's just this, this idea everyone had of me that is just not true. And for the first time in a long time, I feel, I feel like I have time on my own, my own time. I just don't think it's a healthy hobby anymore. For me. I don't need it. You don't need it for us. Stay close to pushing it. Wait. I'm sorry. We did have a lot of fun, right? Yeah. Yeah, the best. But the hardest step is the one that starts a new journey. Yeah. You have to just blindly trust if anything, that it will all be fine. And that will all work out. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Sam. You always knew just the right words to say. Oh, Oh, I'm Michael. I will blindly trust Sam. I will take this step to become the greatest guild on the server. I will pull everyone back. And I will take the very thought of you out of the minds of your ignorant followers. I will burn your name from their lips. Bow before the unending flame. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, It wasn't your fault. The rusty. I'm not beard. Account notification. You paid rent. I guess it did. Sam, Sam, you're awfully quiet. This means war. End of play. Fun, fun, fun. I'm going to ask our playwright, Oscar Cabrera, to join us as well. Hey, Oscar. That was super fun. I'm Dewey Scott Wilde. I'm the director of the show. And Oscar is the playwright. And we have been workshopping this for a little while. We worked on this a little bit in April, and Oscar did some rewrites. And then we came back to revisit it here in July. So what has this process been like for you, Oscar, to refine this show with these actors? Well, I mean, the really great thing is that in terms of a draft coming in, there was already a pretty clear idea of what the A plot would be. But having this talented cast of actors come in and really give valuable input, we were able to really clarify each one of the character's perspectives, which, as you saw with the play, gave these chances for these really great physical characters in a digital space. Absolutely, absolutely. And how many of you are STE company members? Yeah? Adam, too? Yeah? Adam, too, yeah. And how many of you are on the spectrum show of hands? Nice. So what do you think those voices added to the script, Oscar? What do you mean? Oh, yes. Yeah, like having these actors play these roles, what did that bring to the script that maybe was different from what you originally intended? Or how did it help shape it? Because I think it definitely helped shape it, right? As we all adjust to this post-COVID life, there are a lot of ways where a lot of us feel that we are living in these little boxes, both metaphysically and physically with Zoom. So having very specific voices when we're confronting a lot of aspects of this play when it deals with addiction to video games or just the feeling of anxiety was able to just reinforce a lot of the themes that I wanted to explore with the piece anyways. So just to have so many voices in the room that could really help add to that conversation obviously just made the piece stronger and better. Yeah, and what I loved is all the conversations about gaming that ensued as a result of the rehearsals, right? Do any of the actors want to talk about that a little bit of how you were able to identify with this show? Well, I was a longtime World of Warcraft player for about 10 years. I had to unsubscribe right before Battle for Azeroth due to financial situations that have not improved. Eventually, I'll go back. But I've also played many other kinds of games, not just other MMOs, but also many other kinds of different kinds of games. And I've always been upper-porned that game. I hope I'm using that word correctly. That games are art or they can be art just as much as cinema or television or theater. Theater. I mean, there's role-playing involved, certainly, right? So there's some similarities there. It was nice to be able to combine multiple. Like we just kind of nerded out and talked about video games. But also talking about the balance of like these are all young men who just got out of college kind of finding themselves and finding that balance in adulthood, which I think whether you're neurotypical or not can be challenging. And talking about the nature of addiction, if someone's playing a lot of video games, but that's where they have their social life and that's where they like really diffuse and are able to deal with anxiety, there's nothing wrong with that. But there is that working on having a balance that you have to pay your rent on time, obviously, and have manager responsibilities. And I think that's something that everyone can in some way relate to whether they have video games they like to do or ranging from just intense interest to like drugs and alcohol. Like we all try to find a balance in adulthood. And I think that is also like a deeper story in this play and the part we got to work on is, to me also it's like, it's a story about friendship and how you shouldn't try to manage this all alone and the lengths that we'll go to with our friends. Even when it's like at odds, I love that it ends with Sam saying like, I'll save you, Michael, even though it means war. And so I think that I would equate to a lot of my friendships is that this means war because I love you. So my thinking to be back off Teddy is that, I mean, obviously we have this version that we've had and as Julie said and Oscar Rose said, we hadn't had an earlier script and we kind of edited it a little bit. Now our first script, several of us thought that it was a little more negative towards Michael. And I mean, really this modern, the version we just presented is going a little more for a middle ground that both sides have right parts and both sides have wrong parts. And as Teddy said, I mean, the balance is what is the proper way to look at. We don't want to just divorce ourselves from the game, but we don't want to totally immerse ourselves in it to the exclusion of reality either. We want to find a balance. I still think I'm in the edge. Well, I think that's what's great about this process is that I think at the first read you could easily vilify Michael's character. But I think that there's a lot of compassion for Michael in this play and a lot of compassion for friends who maybe are doing something a little too much and aren't really good at balancing their lives. And I think Teddy's right. It's definitely a universal message, right? Awesome. And Oscar, you're developing this into a longer piece? Yeah, yeah. The thing that I always wanted to explore with it, like what people were talking about is that there is a really easy way of vilifying Michael. But for a lot of people, when you were listening to the conversation earlier and they were talking about performing an expressive art, a lot of that, that a new emerging technology is going to be in video games, VR, even now with semi-augmented reality using iPads and apps like tippy talk to help people that are maybe non-verbal on the spectrum communicate more effectively. People like my brother. And so that kind of exploration of technology, as we rush into augmented reality is something that fascinates me. And right now, I think that there are a lot of very valid, very valid properties to video games and the fantastical worlds that they create because it helps with rules. It helps with understanding your world. And how can you fault someone if that's a little bit more comfortable than some of the worlds that we live in? So I think it's a fascinating topic and definitely something that's worth exploring as a full-length. Great. We look forward to that for sure. This has been a lot of fun to work on. We've got another panel coming up at 6.15, so we're all gonna take off. But if you are enjoying the programming so far, we've got lots more coming up tonight, as well as- We've got two more days to come too. Exactly right. Please go to the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble Facebook page and chip in with a donation if you can. We really appreciate it and we're so glad to be having a virtual festival. Thanks everybody. Thanks for watching everyone. We'll see you soon. Thank you. Stay healthy and stay tuned.