The new Oregon Children’s Theatre play “SPIDER” centers around teens struggling with the numbing effects of social media, normalized gun violence and the interplay of online reality and real life.
Courtesy Oregon Children's Theatre
The new Oregon Children’s Theatre play “SPIDER” centers around teens struggling with the numbing effects of social media, normalized gun violence and the interplay of online reality and real life. Playwright Madeleine Adriance graduated from St. Mary’s Academy in Portland in 2019 and is currently a senior at Brown University. She took a semester off to assist with the production of the play the theater group, known as OCT, commissioned her to write. Adriance got involved in the organization when she was just 8 years old and took her first playwriting class when she was a freshman in high school. “SPIDER” opens Friday and runs through Nov. 5. Adriance joins us to discuss the play and the importance of talking about what she calls the “ever-present specter of gun violence” young people live with.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The New Oregon Children’s Theatre play “SPIDER” centers on teens struggling with the numbing effects of social media, pervasive gun violence and the confusing interplay of online and offline life. OCT commissioned Madeleine Adriance to write the play. Adriance got involved with the theater when she was just 8 years old. She took her first playwriting class when she was a high school freshman at St. Mary’s Academy. She is now a senior at Brown University. “SPIDER” opens tomorrow and runs through November 5th. Madeleine Adriance joins us now to talk about it. Welcome to the show.
Madeleine Adriance: Hi, thanks for having me.
Miller: So when Oregon Children’s Theatre commissioned the play, my understanding is they didn’t tell you what to write about. What were the parameters?
Adriance: The parameters were for me to write a play with about six or more characters that could be performed by the YPs and that would be drawn from conversations had with the YPs about what they were interested in exploring.
Miller: Who are the YPs?
Adriance: So, yeah, the YPs are the members of the Young Professionals Company, which is a professional training company for teens who are of high school age.
Miller: OK. So you had to meet with them ‒ or maybe I can say you got to meet with them ‒ to talk about what issues they wanted covered. What was that first meeting like?
Adriance: I came into the meeting with some things that I was curious about exploring in this piece. So, at the time I was myself dealing with a lot of frustration and kind of despair, honestly, about my own addiction to social media. And so I asked them a lot about their experiences with that. And so we ended up talking a lot about that, but then that meeting also happened to fall two days after the Uvalde shooting in May 2022. And so I remember one of the YPs talking about how after the Parkland shooting in 2018, they felt very galvanized and hopeful that young people were going to change gun laws, but that after Uvalde, they just felt numb because it’s happened so many more times and nothing’s happened about it.
Miller: And so it was that conversation that injected gun violence into the play that you ended up writing?
Adriance: Yeah. I mean, I would say we mostly talked about the social media thing, but actually when I went to write it, because it was so close to my own experience, I kind of found it difficult to tackle it in a creative way. So I ended up writing about those issues through looking at younger kids who are addicted to YouTube and the kind of weird world of the people on YouTube Kids, trying to please the YouTube algorithm and get kids to click on it. And then yeah, that comment I think really stuck with me, of the comment about gun violence and then on a personal level, I was just also haunted by it. So that’s how it ended up in the play.
Miller: You graduated from high school, from St. Mary’s in Portland, in 2019. How much separation do you feel generation-wise from the young people that you were working with? The young people who are now in your play? I mean, it’s not that many years. I say this as a perspective of somebody who’s zeroing in on 50, but I’m wondering if you actually, if you feel those years in a more forceful way, the age difference?
Adriance: Yeah, you’re right that I’m really not that much older than them. We actually sometimes understand the same fine references in rehearsal. But actually I do remember in that first meeting feeling this really weird disconnect where they were talking about their own experiences like on Instagram in middle school and the things that they would post, the amount of scrutiny they got. I was like, oh wow, Instagram was a much different place when I was in middle school. And that was really weird to think that I’m not that much older than them and already the online world has already changed so much.
Miller: In four years or five years.
Adriance: Yeah.
Miller: You mentioned just in passing, just now, a video. And there’s a video that two of the main characters in your play make at the very beginning that then gets sort of threaded through and thematically, it comes and goes. It’s pretty important. My understanding is it’s based on a real video or real kind of video that was wildly popular on YouTube not too long ago that I’d never heard of, and my guess is a lot of listeners won’t be familiar with. Can you describe the real video that was one of the reasons you wanted to make this play to begin with?
Adriance: I was watching this TED Talk and I read this article about these strange videos on YouTube Kids, and I remember one of the videos that was using this TED Talk, I think by James Bridle, I believe is his name. And one of the videos that he used was these two grown men and one of them is dressed as Spiderman and one of them is dressed as a baby. So he’s wearing a diaper and this weird baby mask. And they’re on the beach, and like the baby is just burying Spiderman in sand. And the title is like, ‘Angry Baby Buried Alive Spiderman with Elsa Catwoman Fun’. So it’s full of all these clickbait keywords to kind of get the algorithm. And so, for some reason, I was just haunted by this video because it was so bizarre and some of the videos that are of that ilk are actually really disturbing, like cartoon characters being killed or graphic things happening. But this one was just weird and it just really got me thinking, why are these people making this? What are the circumstances under which this feels like a logical use of your time? And I wanted to write the scene of them making that video just to figure that out for myself. And then that became the first scene of the play and kind of inspired that storyline.
Miller: One of the turning points in the play, at least that’s how I read it, is a kind of vision that this 8 year old character named Layla has. It’s a kind of mystical monologue about social media. Can you describe the message that she receives and then gives to the audience?
Adriance: Oh God, I don’t want to spoil it.
Miller: If you could do it in a way that doesn’t spoil it. I mean, I’m trying to be careful because obviously there is plot that happens, and in some ways the monologue is contingent on that. But it also, it feels like it’s a broader message that you ‒ maybe I’m wrong about this ‒ but that you wanted to give to the audience.
Adriance: I think yeah, I’ve sometimes thought that that monologue is the reason the play exists. Like I just wanted to let this 8 year old tell us all. She kind of sees her future and she sees a lot of stuff, but I think she really sees the consequences of how her brain has been shaped by kind of being addicted to just watching her screen. And she tells us you did this, and these are the consequences of that. And I hope people listen to that monologue. Yeah. I hope people like reckon with it.
Miller: How would you describe your own relationship with social media now?
Adriance: Ah, it’s hard. I still use it. I come back to it, I think because it is a way to connect with people, and that’s something I heard from the YPs too, that it’s like ‒ especially over the pandemic ‒ it was like the only way to connect with people. But it’s really bad for me. Every time I post anything, I get so stressed. I find myself scrolling. And it’s hard because, on a personal level, I keep trying to kind of have a better relationship to it, but then I’m also just so cognizant that these super powerful companies have put all the resources toward programming their apps to make sure people spend as much time on it as possible. It’s really hard to fight against that.
Miller: Did working on this play change your relationship with social media or crystallize something for you?
Adriance: I think it definitely expressed how I was feeling. I don’t know, it’s… I don’t think it necessarily, writing the play itself meaningfully changes that relationship, because like I’ve said, I feel like I’ve tried to change that relationship to social media for so long and I just keep going back to it. But it definitely gave me an outlet to think about it and I think it was cool to see the parallels between my own experience and then this 8 year old character and to kind of feel less alone in that.
Miller: So I want to go back to the process. You had some meetings with these YPs, the actors in this young professionals company. And then what followed? I mean, did those conversations continue or was it you alone crafting a play?
Adriance: So after that first conversation, I wrote the first draft and then I sent that to Matt Zrebski, who’s the director and dramaturge of the show and who helps me develop it. And I sent that to him in about June after the meeting in May. And then I sent another draft to him in August. And then I sent the YPs a draft in October and then they all read that and then we had a meeting to discuss it in November so they could give me their feedback. And then based on that feedback, I wrote another draft and we had another similar meeting. And then after that, I wrote a couple more drafts and now we’re here.
Miller: What was it like to get feedback from the both participants, slash, maybe intended audience?
Adriance: It was really helpful. I think it was reassuring in a lot of ways. For example, one of the characters is nonbinary. And that’s not my experience. And so I was really worried, or I was really wanting to get that right. And so it was really nice in that first meeting to have a student say, “Oh, I’m nonbinary. I love this character and they feel so real and rich.” So that was really helpful and reassuring in that way. And then it was good to know that it was resonating. That was good, because that was kind of the poin,t is to have something that they would resonate with. So that was good, to get that feedback along the way. I also had meetings just with Matt and then Oliver, our student assistant director and dramaturge. And then those meetings were much more focused, just on the craft of the story. And those were also super helpful and Oliver is an amazing collaborator, and Matt, yeah.
Miller: You mentioned Matt, who my understanding is, he was a former mentor and teacher for you. And now it seems like you’re more like collaborators. What has that been like?
Adriance: Yeah, it’s been really cool. I think the mentor relationship that we have has been really helpful in this process because he knows my work so well and we have this really strong foundation of trust. So that gives us the shorthand where he kind of knows what I’m trying to do. But then also he’s just an incredible director on his own and he can really… I feel like I’ve just continued to learn so much from him on how to structure a story and how to clarify and refine it. And so it’s been really cool to shift into this more a relationship of creative equals.
Miller: After all of the writing and editing that you described, at some point, all the actors actually got at a table or eventually on stage and read this for the first time. What was it like for you to hear your words coming out of the actor’s mouths?
Adriance: It was really cool. So I actually had never heard the play out loud in full until that first rehearsal, which is actually pretty unusual for a new play process. Usually, there’s a bit more development but people, and Matt especially, were reassuring me that the script was in really good shape. And so hearing it out loud in the rehearsal room that first time was really cool, and it was also just a lot emotionally because I had to really reckon with the darkness of the piece. Which, it’s funny, because afterward I was like, oh my God, this is so dark and people [are] like you wrote it, how did you not know? But I think hearing it read out loud to you by some really, really talented actors who can really bring the characters to life just showed it to me in a new way.
Miller: I mean, I mentioned in my intro, the themes: school shooting, the pervasive ‒ in some ways destructive ‒ social media, just the extremely online life. Without going to the details of the plot, this is not a light piece.
Adriance: No.
Miller: How how do you now think about the toll that this could take on the actors?
Adriance: I think that was something that I definitely thought about. But I also, when I wrote this, I really wanted to give them the chance to learn how to tackle really challenging roles and really intense materials in this environment where they’re so supported. And Dani Baldwin, who’s the artistic director of the Young Professionals Company, and everyone at OCT, they’re just the kindest people and they really want the best for these kids and really want them to grow in their craft. And so I knew that it would be a really powerful opportunity for them to learn how to commit to telling a story on stage and then leave it behind. That’s just a skill that you need to have as an actor. I thought there’s no better place to learn that in this environment, where everyone would be supporting them through that, which is just often not the case in the professional world, unfortunately.
Miller: I suppose it’s also the case that… I mean, the reason you wrote this play is that all these issues are real life issues that that every young person, and many people who are no longer young, deal with on a daily basis. This is our collective world. It’s not like you’re telling these actors something about the world that they don’t already know about.
Adriance: Yeah.
Miller: As I mentioned at the beginning, you first got involved with OCT when you were 8 years old. Was that as an actor?
Adriance: Yeah, I was taking classes. Yeah.
Miller: What made you think, I want to get involved in writing plays or in directing them?
Adriance: I think that I took my first playwriting class as a freshman because I always liked writing. I just always enjoyed it. Then I also had this theater background and also really enjoyed theater. So I kind of thought why, let’s see if I can put them together. And then in that class, I just remember I loved the environment of a writing workshop where people are bringing in pages and we’re reading them out loud. It just felt so exciting. And I was like, oh, this is something I want to keep doing.
Miller: And you’ve kept doing it.
Adriance: Yeah.
Miller: What’s kept you going?
Adriance: I think that just that same feeling of excitement. I don’t know. I just, I love it so much. nd I think there’s also something really powerful about telling stories on a stage in a world where our dominant form of storytelling is film, is visual. And I remember in that first playwriting class, Matt told us… because people, we’re all trained to interpret TV and movies, we’re really good at that because we watch so much of that. So when you’re writing a play, you have to figure out how to make it something that can only be told on a stage. And I think that that ethos is really carried through to how I wrote this play. And that if you wrote down the events of the plot of “SPIDER”, it would seem like this kind of realistic thing that you could see on a TV show, maybe. But then the way that it’s actually told is that you have one character talking to another and then all of a sudden, one of the characters is suddenly playing a different character of a different age, different gender. And that’s something that can only really happen on the stage. And it’s not something that is commented on in the world of the play, it’s just how it’s being told.
Miller: Right, just so, for example, one of the actors… at one point, two 17 or 18 year old boys are talking to other friend,s and then one of them mentions his mother ‒ I think I’m getting this right ‒ and then all of a sudden he becomes his mother or maybe his sibling, and then they just… it’s sort of seamless. Then they go on from that and then eventually they turn back to the character they had been before. It seems to ask a lot of actors. What’s the challenge for the actors in this play?
Adriance: Yeah, I think there was a challenge in figuring out how to really create each character, because then the way that the doubling happens over the play also shifts and then there’s moments where a character isn’t their original character for a long time. And I think the challenge is just really figuring out how to truthfully inhabit the circumstances of someone whose experience is very different from yours. Like, for example, you mentioned one of the teenage boys suddenly playing a younger kid. But then also other characters play their own parents. And that was also something that I remember we talked about in rehearsals. There’s just a moment at the end that is just honestly hard for a teenager to play with their life experience because they’re playing a parent in this very particular situation. But I think it was a really cool challenge for the actors.
Miller: It’s interesting that you mentioned that, even early on when you started playwriting, you got this bit of advice that you have to think about your audience as being steeped in visual culture and think about what can you do on a play that belongs on a stage. It seems like one of the things you’ve ended up doing in this particular play is do a critique of that screen culture that we are all enmeshed in. How conscious was that? Obviously, it’s consciously an exploration and critique of screen culture, broadly. But, how conscious was it to have that be a part of a theater work?
Adriance: That was something I thought about at the beginning, like how do we see this video that the characters are making because it comes up so much and how do we actually interpret it? And in the end, it just didn’t feel very live to actually show it or it didn’t feel like the most interesting way to show that theatrically. And I would say that I don’t think there’s necessarily anything inherently wrong with screens themselves. But I do think that there is something pretty dark about the way that we’re all trained to use them all the time, constantly, and often at the expense of our real life connection with other people.
Miller: You’re gonna be graduating from Brown with a degree in playwriting this spring. What are your plans? What are your hopes?
Adriance: I mean, I hope I can keep writing plays. I’m really interested in exploring different models of theater. I feel very familiar with this playwright-director model where someone writes a play, someone interprets it, you get actors. But I’m really interested in exploring device theater, which is much less hierarchical and it’s more of like a group creation process. So I’m just interested in continuing to explore theater and maybe in other places now.
Miller: Madeleine, thank you.
Adriance: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: Madeleine Adriance is the playwright of “SPIDER”, which opens tomorrow at Oregon Children’s Theater and runs through November 5th.
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