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No Dishtowels • S1 E14
Saturday August 8 2020

7:30 P.M. EDT /
6:30 P.M. CT /
5:30 P.M. MT /
4:30 P.M. PDT

Flight attendants, RZO (Maria Forero) and Rardin (Erika R. Moore) work during the chaos of the March 2020 spread of COVID-19 as Unified Air is packed with passengers flying to their respective shelters. One is Quopal (Alexa もえ Downing) who has an unexpected flirtatious encounter. Will either flirter remove their mask to reveal their face?

15 min

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Playing Cards • S1 E15
Saturday August 15 2020

7:30 P.M. EDT /
6:30 P.M. CT /
5:30 P.M. MT /
4:30 P.M. PDT

Husht and RZO open The Faculty concert with a duet about immigration laws. Rectangle and Quopal continue to grow their friendship and themselves in old age.

15 min

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Hot Flashback • S1 E8
[performance recording coming soon]
Husht and Rectangle continue to reminisce, this time to a 1970 student protest when two students come out to the world during a heated speech. Sister Mary Ellen asks students, Rardin and Adine, to plan her funeral.

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In this Frame • S1 E9 
[performance recording coming soon]
In 1994, Husht and Rectangle tie racial capitalism to Independence Day. A secret is revealed at a 1997 faculty and student reunion hosted by Adine. Husht shares music goals for the future with Rectangle.

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I’m Gonna Use That • S1 E10
[performance recording coming soon]
In 2010, flight attendants, RZO and Rardin, collaborate on an album with their former professor, Husht. While consulting for Sister Mary Ellen and founders of power addiction rehab centers across the US, Quopal investigates a sex trafficking ring. Rectangle interviews Sister E and Quo on Rectangle’s Tomorrow to spread awareness about all of it.

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Unbegun • S1 E11
[performance recording coming soon]
In 2012, Paola performs an unfinished portrait for Manuel Diaz on talkshow, Rectangle’s Tomorrow. Rectangle also welcomes RZO, Rardin and Fiktish to promote their tour with former professor, Husht.

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Fictitious • S1 E12
[performance recording coming soon]
Husht brings former students, Rardin, Fick and RZO on a 2015 tour to Beijing. A government ban forces the three flight attendants / musicians to head to the US Embassy.

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Millennial Manifestation • S1 E13
[performance recording coming soon]
Talk show host, Rectangle (Brittney McClendon), insists on social distancing before the official shelter-in-place order. So in February 2020, Rectangle and Quopal share their friendship origins with artist, Paola (Kimi Palacios), for her current project.

C A S T

Rectangle…Brittney McClendon
Quopal……………Alexa もえ Downing
M. Isaacs…………Juliet Morrison
Paola…………………………Kimi Palacios
Sister Mary Ellen…Zoelle Annora Zer0
Husht………………………………Mieko Gavia
Fiktish……………………………Anna Zhang
Rardin……………………Erika R. Moore
RZO…………………………………Maria Forero
Adine…………………Isabelle Garbani
Pat………………………Criss Constantin

C R E W  +  M U S I C

Choreography……Erika R. Moore
Drums…………………Nishta Venkatesh
Piano…………………………Kimi Palacios
Violin………………Criss Constantin
Guitar………Zoelle Annora Zer0
Stage Manager……Gabriel Sacco
Writr+Dir…Miranda J Friedman

As video conferencing grid layouts automatically generate participant window sequences, viewers and performers will exist visually in a layout without hierarchy, reminiscent of live performances using planted participants. In relinquishing various degrees of control to the video conference form, the series aesthetic will take on the mutated realities that emerge from technological difficulties and post-Digital Revolution communication norms.

In the background, the series setting traces the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic as an impending place of penance back to 1968 America. Set to the backdrop of America’s false starts towards progressivity over a 50-year period, viewers follow a group of characters from a 1960s-70s university art department, through various 1980s-2000s lifestyles, including showbiz, and back to today’s couch.

This secondary storyline satirizes its own examination of the possibility that humanity’s been bad and mankind is grounded now. What if the current state of isolation and tragedy is the bedroom we’re sent to to think about what we’ve done wrong to one another and how we can be better. Sure, this isn’t true of every human.

But character dynamics in the narratives will touch upon the idea that increase in surveillance and personal privacy relinquishment that has come with the Digital Revolution has not resulted in an increase in altruism, public apologies or other acts of kindness.

Shot while practicing social distancing by method of each actor filming themselves, the stories examine the resentment and hostility that builds when people induce closeness to eliminate loneliness, and then practice distance to allow healing and regrowth. The series asks, How does social distance affect the golden rule? Does distance make the heart grow fonder? The dysfunction in relationships and general disregard one stranger has for another in public transportation, or in a customer service exchange, for example, may be timelessly cruel. However, might time in solitude result in a temporarily kinder world? Or will a potential post-pandemic excess of love take the form of another baby boom?

The characters explore patriarchy via the assertion and performance of its power dynamics and gender norms as prescribed by and dismissed by society and the media. For this reason, the characters skew androgynous or enact traditionally masculine characteristics. Metaphysically, performers apply their own interpretations of the character as the cast and director work together to unpack their own experiences with power and gender.

Just as laws and social change can leave much to be desired, so can the one-step-forward, three-steps-backward oscillation that so often occurs when people let people in as chosen family members. Just as hosting a guest in one’s private home can benefit from preparation, sharing space with mankind can become more sustainable when those in the space prepare with self work.

In this series, interactions amongst friends, lovers and colleagues include scenarios in which characters take for granted those in their most immediate surroundings, persevere through abuse and address irreparable damage. These exchanges are enacted without obscuring the differences in settings that remind viewers that the actors are not in the same room, or, often, in the same state (neither geographically, nor physically. These differences point to the importance for each character to respect the different emotional, cultural and mental states of those with whom they share physical and virtual space. How does physical proximity and convenience provide false senses of closeness? And how does the elimination of those proximities allow time for growth, for increased appreciation of difference, and for understanding?

By leaving bare the seams that might otherwise thread together a scenario, the series examines how a shrinkage in spatial surroundings can lead to opportunities to think about new ways to develop heterotopias. By allowing the series’ narratives to unfold via audibly and digitally connected characters who exist in physically separate worlds, the series will explore the development that occurs during each character’s contemplation during states of partial cocooning or introversion. This exploration is present in character development of those characters who initially allow resentment and irritation to manifest as abuse or anger and eventually learn to use solitude and distance to reduce selfish behavior and sustain kindness.

Strength in laughing at oneself runs deep in these stories: in its suggestion that friendship looks at the end of the world the same as it did 60 years ago, and in the idea that society has manifested a solution to its own loneliness—a loneliness that occurs when surrounded by people, a loneliness that simultaneously craves and despises isolation, nor can it stand being around people. A sensitivity is applied to the positioning of a public health concern into a comedic framework so as to be careful not to trivialize the lives lost on a daily basis from the pandemic and other public health concerns. The series questions: How does the application of humor to states of crises point to the timeless nature of complicated dynamics in friendships, romantic entanglements and working relationships?