[Air-L] Jennifer Haley's The Nether / VR vs RLd

[Jill Walker Rettberg]

Have any of you watched or read Jennifer Haley’s play The Nether?

It’s being played all over the world (Washington, Philadelphia, Munich and Bergen right now, LA, NYC and London a few months ago, no doubt elsewhere too) and is about the relationship between virtual worlds and RL, set in a near future where the world is horrible (no trees etc) and a lot of people spend most of their time in a VR world.

I found a PDF of the manuscript here. It’s a fast read.
http://www.playsandplayers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/THE-NETHER-8.9.11.pdf

Reading reviews and the blurb I first thought it was going to be just another “virtual worlds are sick pornographic dens of pedophilia and nothing else) but that as I read the manuscript I found really quite fascinating. The NY Times review emphasises “the dark side of the web” and certainly the pedophilia thing is strongly emphasised in the marketing of the play. Reading the manuscript through to the end I don’t have that takeaway. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/theater/review-jennifer-haleys-the-nether-explores-the-dark-side-of-the-web.html?_r=0)

I’d love to hear what others think about it - it gets SO much more interesting towards the end but I’m a bit loathe to give spoilers.

The reviews I’ve read all seem to fall into the “virtual is bad” trap, which is odd given the last third of the play. Of course, I haven’t yet seen it on stage. It’s premiering here in Bergen tomorrow and I’ve been invited to give a talk about VR at the theatre at noon tomorrow, and they gave me tickets to the dress rehearsal tonight - will be interesting to see how they slant it.

Jill