Comic Potential
by Alan Ayckbourn

June 20 - July 12, 2003
Directed by Ron Martin

COMIC POTENTIAL opens in a television studio in the not-too-distant-future where a soap opera is being filmed. Actors have been replaced by life-like "actoids" who are programmed by computer techies to deliver cheap comedy and melodrama for idiot consumption.

Overseeing the proceedings is Chandler Tate, a once-famous director of sparkling film comedies who is reduced to "low IQ TV" now that his original art form is deemed too expensive.

The staff tyrant Carla Pepperbloom arrives with the boss' nephew, an aspiring screenwriter, Adam Trainsmith, who hopes to meet his idol Chandler, and learn how to break into TV comedy writing.

During the filming session, one of the actoids malfunctions by mispronouncing several words, which causes actoid Jacie Triplethree (from her serial number JCF31333) to laugh repeatedly. The mispronunciations are explained by the technicians as a common robotic defect, but an actoid with a sense of humor? That is something else - a machine beginning to become human.

When Adam is left alone with Jacie, the story takes a Pygmalion twist. He finds that she is capable of original thought, and that she understands the humor in "ancient" comedy techniques, such as double-takes, pratfalls and a pie in the face.

Not only is Adam interested in writing a comedy script for Jacie, but soon he's falling in love with her. When the two run away together, the scandal erupts to tabloid proportions. What evolves is by turns hilarious and touching, as Jacie experiences the joy and pain of being human, all the while emitting bits of dialogue from her past characters and snippets of film soundtracks.

Playwright Alan Ayckbourn has been called the British equivalent of America's Neil Simon, in that he is a prolific writer of stage comedies that have been hugely successful. Several times during his career, he has had as many as four of his comedies running simultaneously in London. COMIC POTENTIAL is his fifty-third play, and he has penned two more since it opened in New York in 2000.

CST's production is the Oklahoma premiere of this play and featured music composed by John Pattison for the original London and New York productions.