Halving it All (Faust, the comedy)
It's about a man whose professional career will go to hell in a handbasket if he can’t improve his multi-tasking skills. Shawanda, the HR consultant offers Jeff two options: an eternal training program, or a new surgical procedure that promises to make any employee an instant multi-tasking god.
Hell, just the sight of blood makes Jeff nervous. He signs up for the training.
The very next morning Jeff cuts his finger with a bagel knife and when his fall knocks him out he awakens in a lustrous, gleaming world. Not being really dead, he’s supposed to go back. But Jeff wheedles his way into one day – a sample of what’s to come if he keeps on the straight and narrow.
It’s a multi-tasking paradise. There’s this row of numbered doors, from “2” up as far as the eye can see, and each day you go through one of those doors and then you get to live concurrent life streams; “tracks,” they call them. In room #2 you get two tracks and room # 8, eight tracks and so on. Jeff’s new here, so the best he can do is door number two. In he goes. Act I curtain.
He’s got two full days to cram into one, so he starts out his morning making love to his wife in his “A” track while at the same time he’s driving to work in “B.” Jeff is sure after he gets the hang of it, those distractions from track B won’t screw up his performance in A.
Why not a round of golf at the same time he’s closing a big sale at work? It’s just a matter of concentration, right? Well yes, that’s true. The day goes by and the adventures mount. By nightfall, it’s a strip joint with the guys from work on track A while track B plops Jeff down at his young daughter’s school variety show. Considering what happens on that fiasco it’s a hell of a way to be eternally happy. Thank God it wasn’t permanent. Jeff should never have been brought here in the first place. End of Act II.
But the lesson he’s learned isn’t the one he expected. And the next morning when he’s tossed back into his normal world, it all starts to get pretty hazy. Isn’t there anybody who can help him remember how to achieve perfect happiness? Should he take Shawanda’s devilishly attractive proposal for surgical removal of the what-cha-ma-call-it?
The best comedies ask a serious question and then find a funny way to get the audience thinking about the answer.
Hell, just the sight of blood makes Jeff nervous. He signs up for the training.
The very next morning Jeff cuts his finger with a bagel knife and when his fall knocks him out he awakens in a lustrous, gleaming world. Not being really dead, he’s supposed to go back. But Jeff wheedles his way into one day – a sample of what’s to come if he keeps on the straight and narrow.
It’s a multi-tasking paradise. There’s this row of numbered doors, from “2” up as far as the eye can see, and each day you go through one of those doors and then you get to live concurrent life streams; “tracks,” they call them. In room #2 you get two tracks and room # 8, eight tracks and so on. Jeff’s new here, so the best he can do is door number two. In he goes. Act I curtain.
He’s got two full days to cram into one, so he starts out his morning making love to his wife in his “A” track while at the same time he’s driving to work in “B.” Jeff is sure after he gets the hang of it, those distractions from track B won’t screw up his performance in A.
Why not a round of golf at the same time he’s closing a big sale at work? It’s just a matter of concentration, right? Well yes, that’s true. The day goes by and the adventures mount. By nightfall, it’s a strip joint with the guys from work on track A while track B plops Jeff down at his young daughter’s school variety show. Considering what happens on that fiasco it’s a hell of a way to be eternally happy. Thank God it wasn’t permanent. Jeff should never have been brought here in the first place. End of Act II.
But the lesson he’s learned isn’t the one he expected. And the next morning when he’s tossed back into his normal world, it all starts to get pretty hazy. Isn’t there anybody who can help him remember how to achieve perfect happiness? Should he take Shawanda’s devilishly attractive proposal for surgical removal of the what-cha-ma-call-it?
The best comedies ask a serious question and then find a funny way to get the audience thinking about the answer.