Absolutely Science Fiction!
Stories by Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut
Word for Word and Z Space
Imagine living in a home “which clothed and fed and rocked [you] to sleep” but also a home where the thoughts of your ten-year-old children could turn their nursery into Alice’s wonderland, Aladdin’s carpet ride, or maybe an hot African plain full of hungry lions. Now imagine a time when the volcanos in Hawaii are spitting out trash, Lake Erie is no more, and everything has “turned to shit and beer cans and old automobiles” — a time when the only answer for continued human survival is to send 800 pounds of freeze-dried sperm (now called “jizzum”) up in a rocket to a planet two million light years away.
For their latest premiere of short stories brought directly from the page to the stage with no written word omitted, Word for Word and Z Space present Absolutely Science Fiction! … Stories by Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Two lesser-known works by these giants of twentieth century science fiction come to life on the intimate stage of Z Below in an evening of imaginatively conceived combinations of nostalgia and futurism, satire and horror in works of wild fiction that have many hints of today’s looming realities.
The evening opens with Ray Bradbury’s 1950-written “The Veldt.” George and Lydia Hadley wander into their children’s so-called nursery that has been transformed into an African setting where they feel the sun’s heat on the hot plain; see the shadows of vultures as they fly overhead; and smell, hear, and see a pride of lions only fifteen feet away chomping down on some bloody, unidentifiable remains. That all is actually the result of “odorophonics and sonics” and “superreactionary, supersensitive color film … behind glass screens” is little comfort to the Hadleys as they now see what appear as very real lions charging toward them.
With heart-pounding panic and a combo of nervous laughter and sudden tears, they rush back to their own living space where a chair appears from the wall to rock away their tension, a bar slides itself out to produce a ready-made meal from its counter, and a metallic voice says “sorry” after forgetting the ketchup (which then pops up out of the same counter).
Children whose imaginations once conjured up in their magical nursery scenes like a life-like cow jumping over the moon now had evidently been reading — in their parents’ voiced opinions — way too much about Africa … and maybe also about death. The still-frightened Lydia suggests that they take a vacation from this house that is “wife and mother and nursemaid.” She tells her husband that she could actually once again fry eggs, darn socks, and sweep the floor and maybe even let the children tie their own shoes.
George is not so sure, knowing what happened the last time they locked out of the nursery their ten-year-olds, Peter and Wendy (names Bradbury must have given them with tongue-in-cheek). Upon returning to the nursery alone, George hears a far-off scream, finds his wallet covered in blood, and once again sees lions in the screen coming ever closer to him. Maybe, he surmises, it is time they follow the advice of the kids’ psychologist, David (Joe Mullennix) who warns them, “You have let this room replace you as parents … This doesn’t feel good … This is very bad.”
Ryan Tasker’s eyes are barely opened slits as his George in three-piece suit squints and sweats under the African sky of the nursery. His right hand seems perpetually glued to his left hand as he rarely stops nervously twirling his wedding ring. As they lie in the bed that is luring them to sleep with its automatic sways, George tries to comfort Lydia (Nicole Odell) whose wracked nerves are somewhat difficult to perceive at first glance behind the puffed hair of her perfectly permed head, her Barbie-doll-like cheeks, and lips red as a rose.
When pig-tailed Wendy (Hannah Mae Sturges) and baseball-capped, in-shorts Peter (Christian Jimenez) find out their parents plan a vacation in Iowa away from the house that brushes their hair and their teeth, the tantrum of screams, rolling bodies, and stomping feet is something even the magical nursery itself probably could not reproduce. As the story proceeds and the plot thickens into one of full suspense and some truly spine-chilling terror, it is difficult not to let our minds wander a bit to the current debates and mounting fears about AI, children and their on-line habits, and what our/their future may soon become.
Delia MacDougall directs this first act and first story of the evening — one that is probably about 70% of the entire evening’s seventy-five or so minutes (plus intermission) — with an eye for maximizing the look and feel of both a 50’s family sitcom like “The Donna Reed Show” and a future as depicted in “The Jetsons.” She also ensures we experience an increasing dread of an the ending that feels more and more like something out of “The Twilight Zone.”
The set created by Kate Boyd and props by Sydney Parcell along with the lighting magic of Jim Cave do much to bring the animation remembered from the Jetson’s cartoon household to actuality on the live stage. Panels in the walls spring forth furniture; hot food appears from nowhere; and colors automatically emanate atmospheres both soothing and frightening, according to the mood of the moment. Once in the nursery, we like the parents too experience Africa, thanks to the aid of Ray Oppenheimer’s projections and Cliff Caruther’s sound designs. Finally, capstoning the evening’s eye-popping special effects are the 1950’s fashions by Nolan Miranda with their colors and styles reminding us of pictures from the era’s glossy magazine covers. All together, the Production Team’s fantastical achievements for just this first act are well worth the price of the entire evening’s ticket.
As cast members change characters, decades and total personas and as the set’s and costumes’ hues become the browns, mustards, and oranges of the early ’70s, Kurt Vonnegut’s very short “The Big Space Fuck” takes the stage, with the strange combo of biting sarcasm and slapstick silliness erupting in its every enacted line.
Opening videos show a dystopian world of pollution in skies and shorelines, of a lake on fire, and of landfills full of rusting cars and waste. They are in fact glimpses of a 1970 USA before the decade’s later EPA, Clean Air and Water Acts, and the prohibition of DDT that was killing bald eagles.
It is amidst such environmentally horrendous conditions around him that Vonnegut pens his vision of a time when the world is nearly uninhabitable. In such a future, he imagines a government that decides to celebrate the 4th of July by sending off into space a rocket full of the “jizzum” of any ‘man’ with an IQ greater than 115 (along with that of great athletes, musicians, and artists who did not happen to score so high).
Retired prison guard and now maker of birdhouses out of Clorox bottles, Dwayne Hoobler (a PBR-slugging, good ol’ boy Christian Jimenez) and his constantly giggling, wide-eyed wife, Grace (Hannah Mae Sturges) are glued with awe in front of the TV to watch the rocket’s launch. They live on the shore of the former Lake Erie (now all sewage), home to thirty-eight-foot-long, man-eating lampreys.
As they watch news clips of an aging, lisping astronaut and a Southern drawling Senator (who looks a lot like Colonel Sanders) espousing grandly about the evening’s big event — both played with great exaggeration by Joel Mullennix — they are visited by a good friend, the County Sheriff (another good ol’ boy who likes to swear a lot, played by Ryan Tasker). The Sheriff is bringing some surprise news from the Hoobler’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Wanda June (Nicole Odell, also playing a TV news announcer).
Along with the joys of jizzum projecting into outer space, Vonnegut’s future is a time of permissiveness gone amok as women are now awarded their choice of bathroom scales or a lamp in exchange for an abortion (after all, there is not much left to eat on earth), and children are now allowed to sue parents for the conditions and outcomes of their upbringing.
Vonnegut’s grimly mocking vision of a world where the environment has decayed to oblivion is given such farcical treatment by Director MacDougall that the twenty or so minute episode of scenes alternating between the Hoobler’s den and the TV’s screen (as enacted live for us) becomes frankly so silly and over-the-top to lose the impact and power of the Bradbury first act (at least in my personal experience). Still, the fact that the second act is quite short means the longer first is the real memory that I carried with me upon exiting. Thus for me, this evening of Absolutely Science Fiction! by Word for Word and Z Space was a well-worth journey into a couple of past works by two great sci-fi geniuses where their views of the future have many intriguing implications for our present day.
Rating: 4 E
Absolutely Science Fiction! continues through July 19, 2026, in a one-hour, fifteen minute (plus intermission) in a production by Word for Word and Z Space, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available at https://www.zspace.org/.
Photo Credits: Jessica Palopoli
