Word count: 10447 | Since last entry: 453

Went to the theatre tonight, a play called The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow — the story of a Chinese adoptee, now age 22, who happens to be obsessive-compulsive, agoraphobic, and a genius. Unable to leave her house, she builds a flying robot double of herself to go to China and find her birth mother for her. Billed as a “techno-comedy”, it offered some genuine laughs but ended on a downer.

Although it had some extremely affecting moments, and a couple of fine performances (the cold-fish adoptive mother was chillingly real and yet sympathetic), this play was a real mixed bag. I was annoyed by the robot’s traditional 1950’s me-chan-i-cal-voice and jerky movements (until she learned better) and the actress playing the central character just wasn’t strong enough to serve as the play’s hub. The ending was also insufficiently well connected with the rest of the play, both thematically and emotionally. I will say, though, that the parallel relationships of the main character with her robot and the birth mother with the main character really made me think. Subtext — your sign of quality entertainment.

In other, extremely weird, news, I got an email from Carl Fredrick, one of my Writers of the future buds. He just got contracts from Asimov’s for a story he sold there, and in the envelope were my contracts as well. (I got notification of the sale by email back in January, but have been waiting for the contracts.) I can understand that papers sometimes get stuffed into the wrong envelope, but what are the odds they’d go to a friend of mine?