Secret Bands and Crossed Roads

By Olivia Mozée

             

          For as long as I can remember, I’ve closed myself off from others in the same way a crime scene gets wrapped in caution tape. I think it all started when I was little and my friends and I started a band called– and this is the real title– “The Pokémon Sailor Moon Band.” Remember, we were young enough to believe that we lived in a world free of copyright infringement laws.

            In our minds, this band was the hottest thing since the

Spice Girls, but we made sure not to tell anyone else about it, especially not our parents. We played hits such as “Heart and Soul” on the piano and lip synced to our favorite Backstreet Boys hits; Plus, I recall at least one jaunty rendition of the Fairly Odd Parents theme song. 

            Anyway, my parents eventually asked why they often heard my friends and I singing along to the boombox and stomping around my room. I confessed that I was in a super-cool-but-totally-secret band. Being professional musicians, they offered to record us in their studio, burn CDs of our work, and of course, they told all of their friends that we had a super-cool-but-totally-secret band. The spark of having a band was quickly doused, and I lost the ability to tell anyone anything ever again.

            I suppose I can blame the band incident for many times when I bit my tongue instead of spilling my guts about all the stresses making my stomach feel like a bunch of butterflies at mating time. However, after keeping stuff bottled up for too long, the breakdown always occurs. Nowadays I usually rant to my boyfriend (who then proceeds to offer me a cup of tea, if only to shut me up), but back when I was reveling in The Realm of Single People, I was often tempted to just pull a stranger off the street and start complaining about my problems. I never had the cajones to do it– I mean, biologically, I don’t even have cajones– but it was tempting.

            Thirty-year-old Andrea, the protagonist of Julia Genoveva's THE CROSSROAD, does have the gall to pull

Julia Genoveva

this move, though. For Andrea, advice and solace come from strangers that she meets in a random, roadside diner. This decision to open up to people she doesn’t know is an unexpectedly effective method of getting her life out of its current standstill state, partly due to one especially intriguing patron that catches her attention.

            Does Andrea have a certain incident that made her closed off from the rest of the world? Maybe she too had a terribly named band and enthusiastic parents? Who knows– we might be more alike than I know.

            Are you an open person? Or do you prefer to keep to yourself? Who’s the one person or the group of people that you confide in, and why? Comment below and let us know about your secret-sharing habits.         

            THE CROSSROAD will be performed at Series B of the Strawberry One-Act Festival on August 5th (Weds) at 9 PM and August 9th (Sun) at 7 PM at Tato Laviera Theatre, 240 East 123rd street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. Tickets are available at www.therianttheatre.com.

To Swipe Left or To Swipe Right, That is the Question: DEADLINE DATERS, A Comedy by Nikki Pope & Nicole Raviv about the Wild World of Modern Dating

By Jenna Doherty

Deadline Daters follows two journalists in their misadventures during an assignment “to find different types of guys, go on first dates with them, and write the most revealing article about the sad life of dating in New York City”. You can replace “New York City” with almost any other place in the country and the masses of romantically-frustrated, young singles with accounts on Tinder, okcupid, Friendsy, and more would

probably relate. Some people are on these sites to actually meet other people, of course, but there are some who are there just as a joke, and there is an overwhelming number of young people who are somewhere in between, committing to these accounts in only an ironic sense and afraid of the vulnerability that comes with taking romantic risks.   

Nikki Pope

Most people have to suffer through numerous prospective lovers that are most definitely wrong before they find someone even remotely right. Nikki Pope and Nicole Raviv perfectly capture this generation’s disillusionment toward finding love in this new one act comedy. 

        After all, navigating relationships is more confusing now than ever. More types of romantic encounters and more casual relationships are becoming accepted by the mainstream- and that’s wonderful. People should be allowed to have more casual sexual/romantic interactions without being shamed.

What is important is that people feel able to pursue a love life that is fulfilling for them. However, those people who desire a more traditional monogamous relationship often place a lot of blame for the difficulty of finding an old-fashioned date on the casual nature of hook-up culture. One of my friends once told another friend that she and her then hook-up were basically the current definition of a relationship because modern people, “Say they’re ‘hanging out’ until one day they realize things have gotten really serious and then like, get married.” She declared dating to be dead, as if

Nicole Raviv

she were the reincarnation of Nietzshe. 

        We all know that dating isn’t actually dead and that my aforementioned friend (not surprisingly, an aspiring actress) was being a little dramatic in her assessment. But then again, dating has always been hard, and a source of serious stress for almost everyone who’s ever tried it. Even finding someone that you would want to “hang out” with can seem to be an impossible task sometimes. Countless people I know who are looking for something more formal or committed have given up on

meeting people on their own and have turned to websites and apps like Tinder and okcupid for help. The atmosphere on dating apps can feel cruel, as people are assessed and summarily rejected or approved of with merely a glance at their profile picture. The knowledge that the person that you swiped right on did not reciprocate can sting, and awkwardness of having to make a decision about the profile of the person who sits next to you in your econ class is deathly. Virtually connecting to someone that you could actually see yourself being with, and who is also interested can feel almost like a miracle. And at that point you still have to survive the first date.

        The protagonists of Deadline Daters embody the tension we feel when we simultaneously desire a real emotional connection to someone and doubt that we’ll ever

find the right person to connect to, whether we have social media to help us or not. Comment below or tweet us @RiantTheatre to tell us about your online dating horror stories and/or fairytale endings. And be sure to swipe right on Deadline Daters and the other plays in Series C of the Strawberry One Act Festival on Thursday, August 6th at 7pm and Monday, August 10th at 9pm at the TATO LAVIERA THEATRE, 240 East 123rd St, NYC. Visit www.therianttheatre.com to purchase tickets. It could be true love.