Play exposes real-life ‘anger porn’
‘Tinfoil Haberdashery’ revisits murder of Las Vegas police officers
Call it “tinfoil haberdashery,” a particularly classy way of hinting at the metaphorical headgear worn by inhabitants of society’s more fringy locales.
Call it, also, the title of Las Vegas playwright Ernest Hemmings’ latest work, which explores the way in which the online world and social media can create the illusion of community to sometimes dangerous and tragic ends.
“Tinfoil Haberdashery” a presentation of Test Market Theater Group, will be presented at the Las Vegas Little Theatre Studio, 3920 Schiff Drive, Friday and Saturday and Sept. 10-12. Curtain time is 8 p.m., and tickets are $15 and can be purchased by visiting the Test Market Theater Group website (www.tstmrkt. com)
Hemmings says the factual foundation of the play is the murder of Las Vegas police officers Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck on June 8, 2014 as they were lunching at a CiCi’s Pizza restaurant near Stewart Avenue and Nellis Boulevard. The killers, who ambushed and shot the men at point-blank range, were anti-government, anti-police zealots who also shot and killed shopper Joseph Wilcox inside an adjacent Wal-Mart.
In “Tinfoil Haberdashery,” the plot spins off of that reallife experience, as well as the real-life experience of a man who later was questioned by police about his possible social media relationship with the killers.
“It’s basically about the blogosphere,” Hemmings says, and the online phenomenon he calls “anger porn, where everyone wants to be angry and everyone wants to fight and argue,” usually about things that “have no