28 Seeds is an epic radio show, turned comic book, turned musical, that is about the end of the world. It’s incredibly dark and scary, yet remains comical and heavily realistic. As the opening song of the play states, “This is how we end ourselves,” and the main structure of the play follows current social distastes, which include: political deceit, scientific abuse, and our absolute hatred of Canada.

The play starts with our learning of an incoming asteroid on a crash course to Earth known as “Palehorse.” Taken quite literally, this is a social question that has fascinated me since I first heard of the concept on a Discovery Channel special years ago: If you were a scientist and found an asteroid on a crash course that would inevitably destroy the Earth, would you tell the general public? If I were that scientist, I would not tell the public. Although it would be a justice to humanity to warn them of impending doom, I don’t think it would do us good, because I’m convinced we’d all kill each other than try to save humanity. However, like I said, that’s taking the “asteroid” literally.

Palehorse, the “asteroid,” is a metaphor for the impending doom on the political world, because of our government’s misappropriation of scientific discoveries, secretive weapon expansion, and general deceit. When the general public, the majority, the 99%, grows a distaste from what the government and special interests groups, the minority, the 1% makes for us: we stand up, we speak out and we fight back. Anonymous, Occupy, Palehorse. Our rockets designed to fly us to the moon were taken and hollowed out to fire nukes across the globe. We had the H1N1 outbreak. The government promised we’d be fine. In 28 Seeds, the “Peace Ray” designed to destroy the Palehorse asteroid was misappropriated and used to wipe out half of the southern hemisphere. The H.Pig flu caused us to bleed out through our eyes. We’re told we’ll be fine. Really what 28 Seeds is telling us is that there has been an answer to all the political problems all along: listen to your citizens. The government’s failure to listen allowed Palehorse, Anonymous, Occupy to come closer, grow larger, and inevitably strike.

But let’s not think that this play is pessimistic view on society and it’s a sad tale of our lives, because that’s a very, very wrong and unfair view on the play. In reality, this play is hilarious. The general of the US Army is a wild sex fiend, Hannah Monenegro is an over the top enthusiastic (and very horny) morning talk show host, Madame President is an insane Red Queen, Jojo reads panty poems, science is all around, music fills the air, FUCK CANADA AND WILL SOMEONE GET ME A SCIENTIST TO FLIP THAT FUCKING SWITCH. 28 Seeds has the perfect amount of laughter, scantily clad performers, music and a futuristic dystopia.

Check out the sneaky video I took and all the photos, and use the discount code “ERB” to get 50% off your tickets at armyoftoys.com to the last three shows of 28 Seeds this Thursday 5/10, Friday 5/11, and Saturday 5/12.

Love,
Joe

Have a question? Email: joe@joerenken.com or message Joe on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Renken