Photo taken by Matthew Holler

In spite of the sci-fi genre’s vast assortment of intelligent, speculative and character-driven works in print, its flagship stories all seem to feature CGI-laden spaceship battles on the silver screen that are impossible to adapt for the stage. “Theatre is much more powerful when it’s heavy with metaphor,” says Jason Cannon of FST, “and it can be difficult to suspend belief for a typical sci-fi story.” So, when he was scouring scripts for the eccentric programming of FST’s Stage III series, he was pleasantly surprised when he came across “The Nether” by Jennifer Haley, a sci-fi police procedural that evokes some of Philip K. Dick’s more ominous themes.

Like HBO’s Westworld, the play explores the way digital lives can serve as surrogates for darker impulses, allowing people to indulge in revolting activities—rape, pedophilia and murder in this case—with no real-world repercussions. The ethical questions are timely, and this, coupled with the virtual world in which the play’s action takes place, is part of the reason Cannon was so excited to pick the play up for FST. “The play takes place in a digitized fantasy version of an 1880’s Gothic revival house,” he says, “so we’re still in a sci-fi world but it’s a recognizable, impressionistic version of our past, so it feels entirely plausible.” But it was not just the feasibility of the set design and the relevance of the themes that intrigued Cannon.

To say that he reads a lot of screenplays in his search for envelope-pushing productions for FST’s Stage III would be a gross understatement. He has become adept at seeing where a story goes before it actually gets there, but The Nether bucked this trend. “On first read, this play surprised me four times with some twists and ideas,” he said, something that has delighted audiences even if some of the play’s themes have made them uncomfortable. “We’re not in the business of shocking just for the sake of shock,” says Cannon, “but Stage III is definitely for the adventurous theatre-goer.” 

The twists and turns in this psychological thriller can be experienced at FST through February 9th.

Photo taken by Matthew Holler

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