PREAMBLE

First, I must apologize for the long silence on this website. It’s actually been a few years since my last post—not because I stopped working, but because I’ve been working too much. Since that last update, I’ve produced and directed several theater productions, written multiple scripts, and poured countless hours into my next novel—an epic fantasy of truly epic proportions. With luck, that book will see the light of day very soon.

In the meantime, I’ve done what I always seem to do: thrown myself into another massive project. My latest play is one I’m especially proud of, and I’m thrilled to share that it has recently sold out. I’m posting here now to let people know about my recent work and the new ground we’re breaking in theater.

So, while the website has been quiet, the work has never stopped. Thank you for your patience. There’s a lot more coming soon.

– Shawn

WELCOME TO DOOMSCROLL THEATER

When I began working on Scenes From a Bad Film: Lived Out in Real Time, I wasn’t interested in crafting another conventional play. I wanted to stage an experience—something that emulates the fractured, divisive condition of our world.

Modern life does not play out in neatly structured arcs. Cathartic resolutions are a rare commodity. Our day-to-day has become a blurred, murky soup of ugly, beautiful, terrifying, stupendous, shameful, inspiring moments.

Storytelling is ever-evolving. From the Greek dramas of Dionysus to the umpteenth reboot of Spider-Man, the needs of the storytellers and the appetites of the audience are constantly shifting. The Hollywood formula is perhaps the most polished, easily digestible story structure we’ve devised, yet even that grows stale. For over a century we’ve gorged ourselves on a hollow diet of relatable heroes, distressed damsels, archetypal villains, and happy endings. This type of narrative fare no longer excites the receptors. But do not fret–something new is on the menu, and it’s a thousand times more addictive than the old formula.

The algorithm can satisfy any craving. It knows you–and what you want. Every minute of every day, on demand and in our hands, it delivers a steady stream of curated randomness tuned to our innermost desires. The stories it offers are bite-sized, protein-packed, and deceptively filling.

Scenes From A Bad Film is built on a “multi-narrative” structure, a form that blends old Hollywood with the new algorithm. Examples include films like Magnolia or Babel, or Caryl Churchill’s play Love and Information. These works interweave multiple, seemingly unrelated storylines until they converge with one another. I wondered whether I could take the form further—adapt it more fully for theater in the digital age.

With the advent of doomscrolling, audiences have trained themselves to engage with multi-narratives. They can follow disparate characters, events, and stories told in rapid bursts with remarkable ease. We no longer need every gap filled in; a century of Hollywood formula has conditioned us to anticipate what came before and what comes next. All we really want are the good bits–the juicy, titillating, dopamine-hitting fragments.

But innovative structure alone does not make a play. I wanted to capture the doom we’re consuming nightly, to give it physical form and bring the inane, mundane, and insane crashing together. The goal was to find the through-line which binds clips of war and famine to cheesecake recipes and cat memes.

In the writing of Scenes From A Bad Film, there were a million different threads to pull, but for practical purposes I limited myself to five: kink, family dysfunction, sexuality and identity, the blue-collar, and drug-use. Weaving these distinct narratives together–each with its own main characters and themes–was more intriguing than challenging. The trick was finding the center. In this tangled web of relationships, lines cross at odd angles yet ultimately converge on a unifying idea. Understanding that core is what makes multi-narratives possible. That same knowledge is what fuels the algorithm, and unleashes its limitless power.

When we accept that nothing happens in isolation, divorce ourselves from the fantasies of Hollywood’s perfect bubbles, and embrace the connectedness of our linked minds, only then can we enter the matrix of this new storytelling era–and evolve with it.

SCENES FROM A BAD FILM: LIVED OUT IN REAL TIME

Scenes From a Bad Film has been in production for the past eight months, and I’m incredibly excited to debut it here in Nagoya, Japan. We have a cast of wonderfully talented veterans and newcomers, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has embraced this experimental format and helped bring this vision to life. I believe audiences are really going to enjoy it.

Theater in the digital age faces tremendous challenges. I’ve said it many times before, especially in regards to amateur theater, but I do fear it is a dying art. Perhaps this play is one attempt to breathe new life into it—adapting it for an era where entertainment is fought over on streaming platforms, the internet, and the algorithm. Attention has become a precious commodity, and theater must learn to adapt to the ways people now consume stories. I hope this play does its part.

The show is currently sold out, and I am profoundly grateful to everyone who secured their tickets. It means a great deal to me and to Nagoya Players. We could not attempt this kind of boundary-pushing theater without your support. Hopefully in the future we can bring this show back—or stage a new version—so more people can experience the Doomscroll.

Shawn Mahler
Creative Director, Nagoya Players
Writer, Director, Producer, Scenes From A Bad Film: Lived Out In Real Time

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