Meet The Fractals: A Comedy of Bad Manners

By Derek Strahan

“MEET THE FRACTALS” A play that follows the trials and confusions of a racially mixed group that chance throws together, in circumstances that prompt them to start exploring the benefits and hazards of polyamory. As statics reveal, fifty per cent of all marriages fail! The union lasts only “until divorce do us part”.

Each individual in this group has decided, each for different reasons, that monogamy is an outmoded custom because it is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. In “Meet The Fractals” you will meet ten people, five of each gender, who decide to apply the theories of quantum physics to living. They commit to a group marriage: an extreme form of polyamory. In doing so they accept that human sexuality is in essence, chaotic, and this chaos is better managed by accepting it than resisting it. There have been many utopian attempts to create alternative societies, but our group plans to avoid conflict by minimising the rules that cause it. How they will achieve this is unknown, since the play covers only the first 48 hours of their first meeting and their deliberations. During this period they have to ward off the wrath of society as represented by an ambitious politician and a puritanical minister of the church.

“Meet The Fractals” is an ensemble piece. It is dialogue-based. Its characters are represented as having several traits in common that together enable them to navigate disagreement and engage in debate with words rather than with savage acts and emotional hysteria. They are outsiders. They have a keen sense of irony about the absurdity of human existence. They have a sense of humor. This Preface explores the topics, issues and paradoxes that engage them during their 48-hour odyssey. You could say that, because total honesty is achieved, the naked truth is achieved as regards what each thinks on these topics. There is also some incidental nakedness on stage, not in the declamatory manner of “Hair”, but rather in the cause of honesty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626750845

Derek Strahan

Derek Strahan is a Springfield resident and the author of the blog "Lost New England." He is a graduate of Westfield State University with degrees in English and regional planning, and he teaches English at the Master's School in Simsbury, Connecticut.

Book preview

ACT ONE

ACT ONE, SCENE 1, HOUSE OF BETTY & FRED, LIVING ROOM – DAY

The décor is somewhat subdued and conventional, but with some challengingly unusual paintings adorning the walls that seem to be in conflict with the more demure character of the furnishings. They are both dressed in smart, casual day clothes.

Fred is seated, looking miserable and cowed, as Betty paces around berating him.

Fred now improvises, drawing on an amateur’s interest in and a somewhat incomplete command of the concepts he cites.

Betty stops prowling and stands still, staring at him.

Fred tails off. Betty sits down opposite him, staring at him.

Betty leaps to her feet and starts prowling around again.

Betty stands there fuming. Abruptly she sits down, still fuming. Now Fred gets up, and starts prowling. Stops and turns to her.

Beat. Betty stares straight at Fred.

Betty now gets up. They are standing facing each other. Betty makes several Fred! attempts to stem the following flow of words but Fred talks continuously over them. Betty’s delivery moves from calmly insistent, through annoyed, to aggravated, to infuriated and finally to enraged yelling.

Betty storms out slamming the door behind her. Fred stays standing, bemused. He looks down, then looks up at the door by which Betty exited. He looks around the room.

He walks over to the desk where his laptop is set up. He stands looking at it.

He talks to himself as he disconnects the computer and