Ideation is a ‘sinister corporate tango’
Aaron Loeb’s play Ideation isa sinister corporate tango choreographed to the discordant rhythms of ambition, office politics and moral issues which are not only blunted but enthusiastically shredded.
It seems appropriate that the American playwright is also a senior executive in a large video game corporation.
In this play, currently on stage at Christchurch’s The Forge at The Court, his characters are outwardly engaged in a scenario which, at first glance, is so totally removed from reality that it might easily be a version of the product Loeb helps produce and market. However, beneath the surface of this compact and tightly constructed play lie the seeds of disturbing reality.
The stage is set in a 21stcentury corporate meeting room where four executives and an intern are formulating strategies for a project by run the company’s CEO, the invisible but omnipotent J.D. The intern (ably played in his Court debut by John Armstrong) is quickly dispatched to the filing room before we are casually informed that the project involves either genocide or a human cull caused by a global epidemic.
Both scenarios involve a plethora of messy detail – how to kill millions discreetly and how to dispose of the bodies secretly. The essential whiteboard soon becomes crowded with boxes, rudimentary flow charts and managerial hieroglyphics as company loyalties in this bunker peel and crack under the weight of growing paranoia, suspicion and conspiracy theories.
Dan Bain’s solid production raises a chilly breeze of reality as it glides between sly satire and tragicomedy. Bain is well served by a strong cast who adroitly shape a densely worded script to avoid any hint of moralising.
Laura Hill plays the team leader, Hannah, with a perfectly pitched mix of chilly efficiency and emotional fragility while Roy Snow and Adam Brookfield portray the corporate hard men, Brock and Ted, as a swaggering pair of management Mafioso.
Shaan Kesha meanwhile injects a quiet strength into his role of Sandeep.
While this isn’t the most intellectually profound examination of collective and individual moral responsibility ever written, Ideation, is a starting point for conversations about those issues which must never become unfashionable.