By Jarek Pastor, Playwright

This presentation of A Plant is based off a draft I wrote in early 2020 — y’know, that other world where we shared space with each other more often. Then there came the ides of March, dragging the horrors of a global pandemic we had been able to more-or-less ignore ‘til then onto our shores. What then for a script that dealt in part with isolation and the lingering effects of widespread disease? I pulled back on how directly those aspects were communicated; partly because some expressions felt tone-deaf under these new circumstances, but mostly because that cruel twist of fate instilled those concerns into our collective bones — why over-explain these feelings we were all dealing with at a greater capacity than words could express?

What am I driving at?
1) “Is this theatre?” I have my own answer, but at this stage, I don’t believe that matters. There is something I find more important than categorizing the acts of today by yesterday’s standards, more important than theatre itself, and that’s community.
2) Sometimes, our bones, or gut as it were, say things our tongue and teeth can’t yet give shape to. We ought to listen to them as well.

We are in the situation we are in. In this situation, the small community of our team presents this digital version of A Plant, with some adjustments made for the streaming form, some others made for the health concerns of our time.

Whether it’s theatre or not, I can assure you it is absolutely the presentation of a performance. It isn’t exactly what we would have made had we the opportunity to present this in person — and we hope A Plant can be enjoyed in that way it was originally intended someday — but we have put our efforts into making something we hope provides a bit of respite for our audience through these troubling times. If we can achieve providing that for you, I don’t really mind what form this presentation is considered.