Underemergency

The reason it's not "The Unemergency" anymore is because unemergency hints that it's not an emergency; it is. Just that some characters in the play refuse to recognize it as such, doesn't undermine the facts. Underemergency has a link to the word understatement so it's better for the themes I'm pushing. Many pacing problems in it, but hell:

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Wish I'd changed the title before I submitted it. Top prize of $700 will go into our Europe trip if the competition hasn't hiked up much from last year. It's a sorry-ass, shit-laced, pessimistic playscript about Peak Oil, written in less than 24 hours so don't expect A Midsummer Night's Dream. As promised, the word 'oil' is hardly mentioned. It looks at how the complacent, pampered attitude works in a close-to apocalyptic world.

One fascinating thing about Underemergency is that the night after I finished it, I couldn't sleep. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and I woke up, heart pounding. I felt terrified and desolate. I was thinking about death, and a shitty future, and dying alone, and living alone, and death again. I couldn't stop myself going into a frenzy about it. I had to get up and switch on the light, and read a book (it was nonfiction, mind you) to get rid of that black hole in me that had suddenly opened up and was sucking me in. I managed to calm myself eventually, but my, it was freaky. I didn't feel like that at any point at all during the competition. Maybe it was Underemergency, maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the withdrawal from human contact. Oh well...



Battlestar Galactica for the win!