Playwright’s Note

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This was my attempt at writing a horror show, and for lack of a better category, we’re labeling it as a “horror” (although I think Pete and I will both contend that we hope people also find it funny, which isn’t surprising, considering the line between comedy and horror is a pretty damn thin one).

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We’re living in very sad and alienating times. Very few of us deal with real tragedy on a day-by-day basis (with some exceptions; I’m not indifferent to family illness or things of that ilk). Living in the wealthiest country in the world — and for us New Yorkers, in one of the wealthiest and most expensive cities in the country — very few (if any) in this theatre right now are toiling or befallen with catastrophe. This is, I suspect, a rule of the game when everything is automated and everything is provided for us.

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Yet still…a number of people I know have this free-floating dread and anxiety, that feeling that Something Is Wrong. We can’t put our finger on it, but we feel it: that feeling that we’re obsolete, that we don’t matter, never have mattered and never will matter to anyone or anything.

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So, sometimes people create drama for themselves: make their lives more chaotic and problematic than they really are, thereby giving themselves and their situations a (false) depth of meaning.

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I really don’t know what the solution to this is. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe we just need to sing “Que Sera Sera” and acknowledge how small we are in the world. Yeah, I know: easier said than done.

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The Adventures of Nervous Boy is a play for anyone who has felt a constant and steady fear of dread, who’s felt that the water is up to his or her eyeballs and rising. A play for anyone who’s felt at times that they’re always in the wrong place doing the wrong thing; who’s felt alienated and isolated despite being surrounded by people all the time.

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A play for people who have had their heart broken and have never been able to mend it properly and move on; who have wanted to go on a rampage after a week from hell.

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This is a play for anyone who has wondered if we are indeed in hell.

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Always nervous,

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James “Native Alien” Comtois

New York, 2006