Elaine’s comment was “This won’t play in Peoria,” but you’ll have to ask her if that does or does not preclude Goshen!

I don’t have any particular comments on details, since I get the sense that this project, even more than some of your others, is one for which the details would evolve significantly in the process of production. Overall, though, I think it’s a clever piece of meta-theater. It’s got the cynical super-self-consciousness typical of the genre, but it also signals an ambition to plumb the depths of how representation in general (not just theatrical representation) is integral to our core moral and spiritual identities, at both cultural and individual levels–and how representation is always a tautological endgame. The piece’s organization as the priorities of the Aristotelian definition theater, in reverse, is witty, although this is something that few individuals in your audience will get. And, in general, this is the problem faced with meta-theater: only those well versed in theatrical convention, ancient to contemporary, will fully engage with the ideas of the script, and thus the size of a fully receptive audience, in Goshen, will likely be small. It might become, nonetheless, compelling theater for a broader audience, I think, depending on how it’s produced. A key, especially, will be the performances, particularly of the Devil. If those lines can be delivered with a combination of nudge-nudge-wink-wink irony, on the one hand, and ‘real’ emotion, on the other, they may draw in those who otherwise will be confused.

Bobby