Home / Chronology / dark play or stories for boys / More About dark play or stories for boys The following articles appeared in Actors Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 2007 Humana Festival dark play or stories for boys There is a classic New Yorker cartoon showing a dog sitting at a computer talking to another dog sitting on the floor about the experience of being online. The caption reads "On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog." While many of you might LOL (laugh out loud) at the image of a dog engaged in an online conversation, the lure of anonymity, and its slow release of inhibition, drive many individuals to internet chat rooms daily. The American Psychological Association reports that in extreme cases people can spend as much as 38 hours a week chatting online. In the virtual world where your screen name can reveal more about your personality than your real name and a glossary of emoticons can express feelings you might not be able to share face to face, the internet can be a portal for your personality and intelligence to shine through making you feel more like your true self than in real life. Once you step inside the World Wide Web and share personal information with others, what story do you tell about yourself? Or to borrow a line from the play, "Do I tell the truth or Do I make shit up?" For Nick, the cocky and articulate teenage showman, the answer is easy …or so it seems. Inspired by his drama teacher’s introduction to "dark play "—a theatre game where certain players are fully aware that they are participating in a game, while others are completely "in the dark "—Nick sets forth on an adventure in cyberspace where danger lurks and deceit and gratification reign with a ;--) (wink) and a :--) (smile). Personifying various online aliases, he befriends Adam, 16, "kinda tall " who wants to "fall in love " with a "girl between 15-18 years of age with green eyes, dirty blond hair and should be 5’4", 5’6" tops, have a good body, smart and likes to chill on the beach." They enter into an ongoing cyber relationship where gradually the real and virtual intersect in complicated ways that lead to unintended consequences for the both of them. Inspired by a true story out of Manchester, England in 2005 about a teenager and his near-fatal internet attraction, and born of a collaborative workshop with college students at Naomi Iizuka’s playwriting lab at the University of California at Santa Barbara, dark play or stories for boys examines the complex duality between the virtual and the real self by surfing the gap between the stories we tell and our current reality. "In this play, as in my last two pieces [A Human Interest Story, or The Gory Details and All; Mimesophobia, or Before and After] , I was interested in looking at how electronic media is changing the way we receive and tell stories. Everybody creates a myth about their lives and we select what’s interesting, and when a life event involves inexplicable pain, you are almost obliged to create a story to navigate it, to survive it," playwright Murillo says. Much like his "favorite play ever," The Bacchae, Murillo’s play digs China-deep into this duality by blurring the boundaries between truth and lies, the real and the imagined, masculine and feminine, love and hate. "Euripides’s idea of masks, revelation and false pretext—man becomes woman, woman becomes man, reality becomes hallucination, hallucination become reality—all had a heavy subconscious influence on the play." Part of the lure, power and danger of chat-room relationships is that they offer individuals the feeling of closeness without the real demands of intimacy. Murillo notes that not only has the internet provided a haven for individuals to share their stories, but it’s increasingly becoming a place where more and more people seek out trust and connection. "I have noticed as individuals we all have a need, a desire, for belonging and there is a fear of expressing that desire in the real world. I see it in my students. They believe you’re not supposed to feel, you’re not supposed to question things, you’re not supposed to commit to anything, you should be skeptical. Yet despite that guise, I think people really crave meaning and understanding but to admit it would mean taking an emotional risk," Murillo says. dark play or stories for boys brilliantly reminds us that to take an emotional risk is ultimately an act of love with all its inherent joys and pains. For Nick and Adam the immediacy of the internet allows each of them to look upon the other like a Rorschach inkblot and project an image of themselves and the other. Like a poet, playwright or artist, they learn to fully express themselves through the force of their imaginations —for better or for worse. —Mervin P. Antonio CARLOS MURILLO Carlos Murillo’s adventurous spirit permeates both his life and his work. During his first year at Syracuse University, Murillo had "a teacher who always said, ‘You gotta take risks, you gotta take risks.’ And i thought, what’s the riskiest thing I could do? So i dropped out of school and went traveling. Just hit the road." With each of his plays, Murillo travels to a strange dimension, speaks a different language and discovers a new way of seeing the world. Murillo, whose father is Colombian, grew up on Long Island until he was eight and moved to Venezuela and then Colombia. He returned to Long island for high school and went to college to study acting. However, "The acting thing didn’t really work out. I always had one eye looking out. And I thought, maybe I’m a playwright or a director." After leaving Syracuse to travel, he sustained himself on "a major shoestring " during his five-month journey through Europe, Israel and Egypt. He went place to place on recommendations from fellow travelers and wrote intensely, synthesizing the sights and sounds around him. His most significant piece of writing was a forty-page letter to his best friend. When Murillo returned to the states, he studied at the O’Neill national Theatre Institute, where he completed his first full-length play. After his time at the O’Neill, Murillo immersed himself in New York’s theatre scene, interning at Circle Repertory Company and New York Theatre Workshop as well as working at New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre. All the while, Murillo continued to write, and after completing two full-length plays, Subterraneans and Never Whistle While You’re Pissing, he watched his career take off. In 1995, he received the prestigious Jerome Fellowship, a yearlong residency at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, during which he workshopped Schadenfreude and produced Near Death Experiences with Leni Riefenstahl. When Murillo returned to New York, between freelancing, temping and "the-trying-to-write-plays-thing" he met his now-wife, director Lisa Portes. The two collaborated on En Garde Arts’ production of The Secret History , which he co-wrote with Peter Ulian and fellow Humana Festival playwright Alice Tuan. Today Murillo and Portes both teach at dePaul University and live in Chicago with their two young children. Having children has affected Murillo’s writing in a practical sense—sleep and writing time are increasingly precious —as well as a philosophical one: "From an observational standpoint, you learn so much about human nature. Seeing a child grow is kind of awe-inspiring. Things are programmed more than we’d like to imagine." Indeed, this fascination with human nature constantly fuels Murillo’s work —so much so that in 2001, he significantly modified his writing process. Inspired by Caryl Churchill and Joint Stock Theatre Company, Murillo now prefers to write with a group of actors. He enters the rehearsal room with an idea, observes his collaborators, listens to their stories, studies their movements and leaves with a first draft. This efficient method, which he used during dark play or stories for boys’ two-week development process, has been "a springboard for writing" and the perfect environment for fusing observation, experience and art. These recent works, including Unfinished Highwayscape and Mimesophobia (or before and after), exhibit acute attention to detail and heightened theatricality. They investigate social phenomena by exploiting the complex discourse between actor and viewer. Through his keen and frequent use of direct address and the second person, Murillo invites audiences to reexamine their role in theatrical space and time. Despite the playwright’s own admitted mimesophobia (mee-mes-o-FO-bea: the morbid fear of slavish imitation), his work represents a smart, challenging and inimitable voice in contemporary American theatre. —Diana Grisanti