By B. Dwayne Craft.
Product Code: RD4000
One-act Play
Comedy
Cast size: 6 to 15m., 12 to 19w., 4 to 12 either gender. Doubling encouraged.
This title can be licensed and sold throughout the World.
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Ridiculosis by Proxy takes on society's innate fear of the unknown through vignettes that illustrate the lengths to which people will go in order to avoid the latest threat to their health, whether it is real or imagined. Led by the politician, the characters attempt to find solutions to their problems through increasingly ridiculous measures. Each vignette ratchets up the comedic tempo with novel and absurd ways of avoiding "the disease of the day." Audiences will laugh recognizing a little of themselves in the citizens of our imagined state as they grow ever more desperate to avoid a disease with no name, no symptoms and no known treatment. The media reports every detail of the plague lurking around the corner even while they have to guess at the identity, the effects and the real importance of this new infection. Meanwhile, the politician continues with assurances that every precaution has been taken and a cure is on its way-as soon as they figure out what to call the new virus. The concept of a manufactured health crisis is the perfect vehicle to illustrate our cultural gullibility when it comes to medicine, disease and our predisposition for panic and irrational reaction when it comes to our well-being. The audience will ultimately decide whether the cure we find is for the disease or for the ridiculous responses by the citizens.
Mary Beth Barder, Maple Lake High School, Maple Lake, Minn.