The Footage

Photo/Joan Marcus

There are a lot of nice surprises in Joshua Scher's dark drama, The Footage. By using existing media and making it dark (LonelyGirl15, porn, machinima), Scher gives his plot credibility, which is the whole point in a play that focuses on the narrow line between what's real and not. That he manages to work in comic romances (like the flirting of two online avatars in World of WarCraft) is downright astonishing, especially given the way they enhance other aspects of the theme. Semiotics is often boring: here, it's fascinating, or perhaps that's just Scher's ear for the way people talk. The one unfortunate thing is that the ending compromises the theme: a play like this is ruined by a tidy ending, no matter how stylistically done (director Claudia Zelevansky does nice work).

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