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Omniscience

Omniscience
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Tim Carlson
Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 95
Pub. Date: 2007
ISBN-10: 0889225621
ISBN-13: 9780889225626
Cast Size: 2 female, 2 male, plus 6 any gender

About the Play:

Omniscience is a full-length sci-fi thriller by Tim Carlson. In this paranoid thriller, Warren struggles to finish a war documentary while coping with his troubled wife, a military officer who has just returned from the conflict. Under the pressure of constant corporate and government surveillance, he might be cracking up, or is he coming to see the truth of his world?

Omniscience is a mystery set in the future in a politically reconfigured North America. Documentary film editor Warren Atwell, a man hired by Channel One Media Corp. to make war propaganda videos, struggles to finish editing footage shot by his partner, who disappeared while filming in the battle zone. His wife Lieut. Anna Larson is a young female officer who has just returned from that very same battle, suffering from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome. Her firsthand account of the fracas is decidedly different from the one captured in Atwell's film. They struggle to find physical and psychological shelter from constant corporate and government surveillance. Caught between the fantasy he has concocted for the masses and the reality that is his life, Atwell becomes increasingly paranoid and convinced that Big Brother is watching him. He's right. Based on the classic dystopian themes developed in such works as Nineteen Eighty Four, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid's Tale, Omniscience is a futuristic yet topical tale concerned with the moral, intellectual and psychological consequences of big brother surveillance on everyday lives.

Omniscience premiered in 2004 at Performance Works on Granville Island in Vancouver, garnered critical raves, and was nominated for six Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, including Best Production. The US premiere was at Stage Left Theatre in Chicago in 2008.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male, plus 6 any gender

What people say:

"This assault on the modern media makes a clever stab at warning its audiences of what's to come on this crazy granite planet…. [A] nuanced murder-mystery…." — Vancouver Sun

"[Omniscience] is a gritty and complex drama with a clear, important message about… the censorship of mass media, the lack of true human contact, and the easy access to information about individuals in our society." — Canadian Literature

"Like all treatments of dystopia, Omniscience is provocative, scary and makes us wonder how far down that particular road we have already gone." — Vancouver Courier

"Carlson's new dystopian thriller acquires considerable power—enough to shake up its audience and make us look at the scary political forces that are engulfing us. Omniscience is never less than intelligently provocative." — Georgia Straight

About the Playwright:

Tim Carlson is a Canadian playwright, dramaturge, journalist, and artistic producer of Theatre Conspiracy. From 2009 to 2016, he was co-curator of Club PuSh with the Push International Performing Arts Festival. As a journalist, he worked on staff at the Halifax Daily News, Vancouver Sun, and Georgia Straight. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, earned a journalism degree at University of King's College, Halifax, and an BA in English from the University of Regina.

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