KUAN-YU STANLEY LIN

Peter is a lonely socially awkward dysfunctional mess, looking for love. Tonight he has a date with Kate in a classy restaurant. Is his luck about to change? Has he found the one, or does the voice in his head have other plans? Looking at all the possibilities (both good and bad) of a first date and first impressions, the show tells a love story that goes awry and reveals the lengths one will go to for company.

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This group-devised play is about urban loneliness, insecurities, and social expectations. By manipulating the moment-to-moment unfolding of the production, it invites the performer and the spectator to navigate the experience through their own imagination and interpretation. A narrator, with a microphone and visible to the audience, does not only comment alongside the performance, but also attempts to interfere. The performers must keep the dating storyline running while fulfilling the tasks given by the narrator. 

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The audience are constantly exposed to various types of presence, and they have the freedom to alternate between looking at each one. For example, the narrator’s instructions could be interpreted as interruption of the date (disruption of the fiction) or the insecurities in the characters’ heads (reinforcement of the fiction). The narrator humiliates and manipulates the performers to slowly return Peter to the desperate loneliness he is used to. In the closing scene, the ruined space reveals itself as no restaurant but Peter’s own room, where he is dancing with a sex doll alone.

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Through developing this piece, we want to investigate the following questions:

• What relationships exist between narrator and performer?

• How does the role of narrator function in the modern society?

• Who or what is narrating our lives?