Ann Hirsch's Rhizome-commissioned play Playground was performed at The George Wood Theatre, Goldsmiths University, London this past July after premiering at the New Museum last fall. The play tells the story of a teenage girl and her 27-year old internet suitor, set in an AOL chatroom against a backdrop of 1990s dialup internet. In a review for ArtMonthly, critic Morgan Quaintance argued that:
Hirsch was rightly using those tropes [of theatre-in-education for teens] in a clear case of content dictating form. Brechtian distanciation or some other avant-garde strategy of spectator activation might have satisfied a conservative desire for an oblique and austsere denial of pleasure, but it would have been entirely inappropriate. In order to hit home the two-step message that affect leads to emotion and emotion leads to action (in "real life"), Hirsch had to utilise the most affective strategies theatre had to offer: trained actors, a black-box theatre, the fourth wall and the possibility of audience-character identification. In short, Playground was a triumph for Hirsch and a landmark for internet-aware art.
View extracts from the performance above.