2 minute read
Introduction from Anita Stewart
We have a history of creating time capsules for others to find. Burying them in the ground or shooting them off into space as references to ourselves. In Last Ship to Proxima Centauri, Greg Lam’s Clauder competition play asks us to imagine what might happen if we hurtled ourselves into space. What might we find at the end of our journey and how might we be invited in?
Last Ship to Proxima Centauri takes us thousands of years into our future to join the inhabitants of a spaceship from Seattle, Washington, 2000 years into a journey to reach a new home. It is a delight to see the remnants of modern culture that Greg has decided would be our legacy—they are as magnificent, mundane, and comical as the Tesla now drifting off into space is a testament to Elon Musk’s (and by extension our) technical prowess.
As much as this play can be viewed as a fun blast from the past to the future, Greg is also thinking about the “norms” of our present day, from language to governments, and from entertainment to guns. Greg creates an altered lens through which we view the modern world, and in doing so, he gives us a different way to think. In Greg’s future,
Americans are the ones who arrive late. We are the ones who are refugees and want access. He asks us to imagine what we might say, what we might do, how we might feel. And by positioning us as the “outsider,” he makes us think about the thousands of refugees who make treacherous journeys to our borders today.
How would we handle meeting people from our past? How would they handle us? If a group of soldiers from the Civil War appeared off the coast of Maine asking to disembark on our shores, how would we greet them? When refugees make a year-long trek to our shores looking for safety and survival now, what do we do? At this moment, as thousands of Ukrainians find their world upended by a political battle for turf, I think the question for us all is: how do we find a way to make the world we have better for everyone?
I want to give a shout-out to the Clauder Competition that has helped to make this play possible. Now in its 42nd year, this blind submission competition offers writers from the New England area the opportunity to have their scripts considered. We inspire writers by guaranteeing at least two readers’ reviews and an individualized response back to every writer. We nurture the highest-ranking plays through weeklong workshops with actors and directors during the Little Festival of the Unexpected, and we launch the grand prize winner through a full production in a two-year cycle.
Here’s to our collective future. I hope that we can inspire, nurture, and launch not only many more writers, but also all of us to build a future that looks different from our past and present.
