The Story
At Del Boca Vista Phase III, routine is sacred, privacy is mostly theoretical, and everyone knows far too much about everybody else.
Gerry Signfeld, Gorge Crustanza, Eileen Bennets, Cosmic Skrammer, and resident hall monitor Nooman have learned to survive by turning pudding, paperwork, bingo, and contraband cheese into a complete social order.
When Nooman dies under suspicious circumstances, the residents—and the audience members already drawn into their community—must follow the grudges, rituals, and misplaced evidence revealing what really happened.
The future has changed almost everything except human nature.
Why I Wrote It
I was interested in the strange combination of pettiness, intimacy, dependence, and performance that can emerge in communal life—especially later in life, when routine becomes its own kind of social power.
The 2040 setting exaggerates wellness culture, bureaucracy, surveillance, and routine just enough to reveal what is already absurd in the present.
Underneath the jokes, the play asks what survives when people no longer perform competence for the larger world, but still very much perform it for each other.
Production Approach
Signfeld 2040 is written in the Mystery Theatre Unlimited style: a floor-level interactive mystery for restaurants, event spaces, banquet facilities, and other nontraditional venues.
The evening begins with an informal audience mingle in character, followed by two scripted acts. The audience then participates in an interrogation and accusation sequence before the brief final act reveals what really happened.
Scenery is minimal. The world comes to life through the actors, costumes, props, and the audience’s participation.
At its heart, this is a comedy about people who are still competing for dignity, leverage, attention, comfort, and the right to define their own story.
