City Lights Theater Company wants everyone to take a screen break this winter, and come explore modern love, loneliness and gamer angst in a new production of In Love and Warcraft.
Playwright Madhuri Shekar returns to her roots in the South Bay with this raunchy rom-com. Following last year’s successful production of Shekar’s science drama Queen at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Mountain View, this nerdy love story comes to San Jose.
The R-rated comedy features more of Shekar’s signature “badass women characters,” according to director Kimberly Ridgeway. Main character Evie is a gamer, a paid ghostwriter of love letters, and a college senior. A master of online role-playing, she’s got way less “game” in real life. When she becomes closer to one of her clients, she must navigate love and sex in the real world without the benefit of real-world experience. (This play contains adult language.)
When the play opened in Atlanta in 2015,, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described it as a “fresh look at the strange social behaviors spawned by internet culture, where love and loneliness spar like the masters and the monsters of the universe.” Earning Shekar the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award, the play has also been performed in New York, London and Edinburgh.
Colin Noble of downthetubes.net wrote, “this is a very funny, very thought provoking play and Warcraft is the backdrop. Anything could have been used, comic conventions, a night at a pub or even meeting at a gym, but none would have been able to explore the growing sense of living our lives split between digital and real-time selves.”
Shekar’s other works include the plays House of Joy, Queen, a Nice Indian Boy, and Bucket of Blessings. Her television writing credits include the Netflix show The Three Body Problem and The Nevers, on Max.
Ridgeway has directed plays all over the Bay Area and the country, but is making her City Lights directorial debut. Also an actor and playwright, Ridgeway recently played the title role in City Lights’ production of Lynne Nottage’s Clyde’s. She received the Brady Fellowship for her play Soulmates, and was awarded the Theatre Bay Area Art Leadership Residency at Central Works.
In Love and Warcraft runs Jan 16–Feb 9 at City Lights Theater, 529 S 2nd St, San Jose. Tickets: $31–$70. cltc.org
