jenny&john

a play by mac wellman

developed by jenny kessler and john bezark

"Cellophane" is, in the words of its madcap creator, "a spectral portrait and chronicle of America through the medium of bad language." You could call it a word experiment, or a poetic deconstruction of history, or perhaps a disturbing linguistic collage of our boundary-defying country. It is, at its very core, a story about you.

This production, which will open as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September, will include a dizzying display of data-driven visualizations and animations, catapulting the text into the present. Nestled in the high-ceilinged chapel of Shiloh Baptist Church, this 85-minute performance will be confusing, alarming, exciting, infuriating, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit enlightening.

In a world where information moves through us and around us as easily as light and sound, we are in grave danger of losing sense and meaning in all the gigabytes of daily consumption. What are we left with, when our words mean nothing, especially when those words define our origins, beliefs, and futures?

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