Second Life, The Play, Debuts in Ontario Next Week

If you're in Ontario next week (and don't you wish you were), you can catch the debut of Second Life, the play. Or more precisely, THE SECOND LIFE:

The online virtual world of ‘Second Life’ stretches thousands of kilometres and millions of visitors. While searching for her lost sister, Jessica struggles to find out what – and who – are real. Life and it’s double are at stake in this multi-media exploration of loss in the digital age.

If that sounds somewhat acerbic, you are probably right. Here's what Julia Krauss, THE SECOND LIFE's lead actress, says about Second Life:

"In Trevor's play, my character Jessica must make peace with her past. She's dealing with depression and she turns to The Second Life, an online world where you can become an avatar. You can create a whole life. You can create your own world. You can imagine your companions, friends and lovers. It's an escape from reality. That's a danger, I think."

Krauss believes people are drawn to this fantasy life because they are unable to deal with the world as it is.

"It draws the shy and lonely. It validates people. It makes you untouchable. I don't want to make too many judgments because in researching this I have discovered it can sometimes be healing. For me, though, face-to-face is better, but then I didn't grow up with all this digital stuff."

Read the rest here, and if you do catch the play, share your reactions in Comments.

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Comments

[melponeme_k]

The only caveat I have with their "premise" is that they attached it Second Life. A "game" which is so arcane it confuses the general public.

Now if they were really using their heads, and doing some hard thinking....they would have used Twitter or Facebook or phone texting as their target.

All those people lying or embellishing about their "real lives". That is the story but these people are too up their own backsides to see it. And I bet they are avid, rude phone texters while in company and fail to make eye contact with them. But of course they are WITH people and healthy. Not like those nasty SL people. LOL

[Iggy]

Say, a play about ennui! Heavens, what a new concept.

As if intellectuals, artists, and writers in 1919 didn't know what it was, as they all went to Paris to mope over the death of an entire generation.

Sam Beckett: get to work, lad! The concept: Two bums wander around a wasteland, waiting for a guy to arrive with some news, maybe an answer.

SL (like so many Internet 'meeting places') just feeds an old hunger for connection in a crazy, often actively evil, world that seems to reward the wicked and venal while crushing the unlucky or marginalized.

[Orca Flotta]

@Iggy: SL world is actively stupid and mismanaged but not wilfully evil. It's made evil by certain residents. Yes, one can be as assholish as one wants in SL without having to face any consequences, but is that a reward?

Julia Krauss misinterpretes the "world" she's acting in, as much as the playwrite did. A bit more of thorough research would've done them good. Now it's just a fukn mess, playing to the peanut gallery, satisfying and fueling their prejudices. Stupid premise, stupidly misinformed, bad drama.

[Iggy]

@Orca, I meant the real world is crazy and often "actively evil." If anything, SL's virtual world is kinder, more inclusive, and full of smarter folks.

SL feeds the hunger for just such a world, one that does not seem to exist as we sit around IRL, waiting for Godot.

That's why SL is so appealing! Apologies if my snark got in the way of my larger point.

[Amanda Dallin]

I'm trying to figure out how I ". . . can imagine [my] companions, friends and lovers."

Everyone I know in SL is a real person not imaginary. However they appear in SL, there is a real person behind the avatar.

[Orca Flotta]

Amanda Dallin writes: »there is a real person behind the avatar.«

Nhn, not here, not with my avatar. All my friends can verify that the avatar Orca Flotta is too cute, angry, stupid, nerve wrecking, psychotic, upright, uptight, socially awkward, completely stuck up, unfunny, blue-eyed and confuzzled to have a real existing person behind her. According to the experts it's just not possible. Even my husband doesn't always believe that I truly exist.

Well, I aim to please =^.^=

[Amanda Dallin]

You sound pretty human to me Orca. I could give a list similar to yours but mine is headed up by denial so I pretend the rest doesn't exist. Except maybe the cute one.