Friday, August 09, 2002


One of the shows in this year's New York Fringe Festival is "In the Wire", an exploration of what happens to information in the net. Kind of like "Schoolhouse Rock" meets "3-2-1 Contact" meets "Wired". Here's an excerpt from the NYT story:

"In the Wire" opens with a projection of a computer screen on which an office worker named Mary is writing � and rewriting � a message to a colleague. But the play does not begin in earnest until she hits Send and her e-mail is tracked through the Internet as it journeys to her co-worker, Bob. Along the way, the audience learns about things like packets (units of data), routers (data transfer devices) and hops (the trips the packets take). "Matthew and I wanted to keep it factually accurate," his brother said. "And Jessica said it needed to be dramatically interesting. Making sure both those things were true was a really big struggle."

It sounds dorky as all get out, but strangely endearing--just the kind of quirkiness that makes me glad the fringe scene keeps pumping out work. Don't know if I will get to see it, but I have invited the creators to 21 DOG YEARS, so maybe I'll get to meet them.