In the past year, I’ve been twice-blessed by Underground Railway Theatre to engage in theatrical experiments which explore the human brain.  Last year I was commissioned by URT to write and direct a new play about Henry Molaison, (Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M.) a man who underwent an experimental brain operation in 1953 and who, as a result of that procedure, could never again form new memories.  The theatrical world I imagined for H.M. was spare, forlorn and mysterious as dark matter.

Lisa Loomer’s Distracted takes place in an entirely different universe.  I think of this play as an expressionist comedy of manners…an entirely biased and exaggerated snapshot of who we are right now with no pretense of objectivity.  The script appealed to me because it has the uncommon combination of a warm heart and very sharp teeth.  It implicates itself in its critique of us.

In some ways, I think Distracted transposes Oedipus into another time and key signature.  Both plays track a protagonist who starts out on a mission to eradicate a “plague” and who ends up with an unwelcome revelation of self-discovery. But if the primary difference between tragic and comic characters is that the former break and the latter bend, then it is the extravagant behavioral contortions of Loomer’s play which provide the kindness, carbonation and compromise its ancient Greek counterpart lacks. iPads may have replaced Delphi, but at least our doom is mitigated by the possibility of a second chance.  And meds.