The computer generated play

Brainstorming. Please, not Russian dancing!

The following is a play written by myself and performed by members of the Vasudeva Service web team. It makes absolutely no pretensions to being high art, or even art for that matter, but is hopefully just a little bit funny, despite all of the in-jokes.

The computer generated play is the very first play I have ever written, and was scripted rather hurriedly during spare moments grabbed over the course of two days, following Sri Chinmoy asking Priyadarshan and members of the Vasudeva Service web team to perform in front of him and his students.

Without a single pretension to being high art, or even particularly good (that would be here), it was instead meant to be a humourous, self-referential and highly self-deprecating attempt by a group of self-proclaimed computer nerds —almost to a man vehement non-actors—to give others a little joy at their own expense—and maybe even enjoy themselves?

Lines are kept as simple as possible, and were often delivered in fashion even simpler, and there was no blocking out or movement during the play to speak of, to compensate for which I intended the dialogue to be delivered seated, even in front of laptops, a point on which I was overruled. Also in aid of simplicity, all actors "played" themselves, and much of the (intended) humour is based on self-referential situational observations (Dhayni sells coconuts in real life, Dhyani and Atmasamarpan are both skilled programmers, and we all really were in something of a panic about performing—especially when one member initially proposed we either do Russian dancing or sing Beethoven's Silent Night in German).

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