Our first teaser video for “The Curse of Rangda” has been released on YouTube! Edited by Andrew Soto.

Our next Dark Tour, called “The Curse of Rangda” is officially underway! The first read-thru and timing happened on August 13 to flush out ideas for the script and evaluate possible staging issues.

Compared to the usual in-your-face intensity of previous Dark Tours, this one will be in a more creepy, unnerving fashion. We want to tread new territory.

And speaking of that, we will return to our favorite new venue, the Texas State Museum of Asian Cultures! Performances are October 26, 27, and 28. Performances are based on reservations and start times are 8:00, 8:20, 8:40, 9:00, 9:20, and 9:40, each night.

A series of open rehearsals of the in-production drone music piece will happen at noon on Friday, June 24 via the Instagram account @verderbermichael

This will be one of many short performance / rehearsals that will occur in the development towards a final piece. More dates will be posted soon!

(by Michael Verderber. This essay was written to be read during the talkback/ Q&A at the Texas State Museum of Asian Cultures, but it was not read due to time constraints.)

When mounting a science fiction play, I ran into a huge problem that all of my research did not prepare me for. I had picked up several books on astronomy terms, theories, and events, and I quickly realized that these were all geocentric points of view – literally and metaphorically.

At first glance, this play appears like many other science fiction works in which several humans go to terraform, but “Planetes: Extinction” is not exactly about that. It is designed to bait the reader and audience into thinking so. But it is about an alien life form called the Valgar that are are doing that. The audience is baited into thinking they are human due to the commonplace tendency of sci-fi to be about humans. Even the number of syllables in each line of poetry are nine – same number of planets in our solar system. All design.

However, the issue became one of navigation. We know that sailors, much like the Valgarians, use constellations to help themselves navigate. That is where the geocentric view comes into play (as opposed to heliocentric). However, the Valgarians could not use constellations for their own navigation as it is an invention of humans from the physical viewpoint of Earth. Perspective-wise, where they are from (Terruh; another bait name), a constellation like the Big Dipper would look like nothing but random scattered stars, depending on what part of space they are entering our galaxy from. Thus, I could have made up constellations that they created, but that felt insulting to science and legitimate constellations. I opted for quadrants instead.

So, I felt this loss of terminology; I felt like I needed to avoid the problem by circumventing that sort of man-made language and man-made terminology all together. It did make the script feel science-less, but from the perspective of a life form coming in from beyond Pluto and heading towards Earth, it makes sense that things are quite backwards. Several man-made terms, ideas, machinations, and others had to be weighed: should I include this for the sake of science that a human audience would understand? Or do I omit it for the sake of the Valgarians’ point of view, who have never been in this galaxy before?

I thought that writing the syllables would be the most difficult part of the development process, as every line of the work is in strictly 9 syllables. But it was the conceptualizing science from another intelligent life forms’ perspective that proved to be the most difficult.

As you may have seen in the production, the actors mimed the usage of tools. We discussed the “alien” nature of these objects and tools. So, each actor was instructed to visualize and create a machine that their character would use for whichever task they were working on. On the second day of rehearsal, I stressed, “I don’t even want to know what your tool is!” I wanted to be as surprised as you may have been.

That notion brings me to the language and communication issues that the play brings to light. Through conversations with the production team, we talked at length one night that no matter how advanced we think we are as a human species, we still might not be able to communicate with another life form even at its the most basic level. Consider how many millions of species of animals there are on this planet alone. We cannot clearly communicate with any of them, but humans. Sure, we know what a dog’s bark might mean or what a cat probably wants when they rub up on our leg, but it is still not transparent communication. We are using conjecture to presume what they want: food, a walk, or attention.

That is just on a vocal and behavioral level. As one member of our crew mentioned: “plants talk” Presumably, what he meant was that flora and fauna use tacit modes of communication to assist each other, like how trees don’t entangle themselves with each other so that they can share equal lighting and nutrients. It’s called “crown shyness”. We have little idea how they just know that and how they communicate. So if we cannot even fully fathom crown shyness, we might be unable to to communicate with another species.

I suspect that when we do come in contact with another species, we might have the same communication issues we do with giraffes or any plants. Either their communication and language is so beyond our comprehension or we are beyond their levels of communication. It will probably be a matter of who lands on whose planet first. The smarter specie will prevail.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CeHB8rLlGqK/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Michael Verderber’s new drone/poetry project, GL1TCH3D, had a work-in-progress performance on May 28, 2022 as part of Drone Day. Although not currently a fully fledged Zero Untitled project, GL1TCH3D is well on it’s way to completion with livestreaming performances planned (dates TBD). The performance is viewable from his personal Instagram.

The performance has since been renamed “Glitched” to avoid confusion with other accounts with similar names.

Well, it is official! Texas State Museum of Asian Cultures in Corpus Christi will play host to Zero Untitled for the world premiere performance of “Planetes: Extinction”, a new science fiction avant-garde play (written and directed by) Michael Verderber on June 16 & 17, 2022.

The performance will uphold the avant garde style of Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC in the 1970s.

EDIT: This show will no longer be a livestream. It will be a private performance that will be posted on YouTube!

The first Premature Punchline face to face live show was recently performed at The Flower Box in Kingsville, Texas on April 1st, 2022. Touted as a “New Face Showcase”, the show featured performances by four new PrePunchers: Aaron, Adonai, Andrea, and Diego, alongside a bevvy of veteran performers.

The set of five games was Press Conference, New Choice, What’s My Pitch?, Partners in Speech, and Party Quirks. In heavy rotation and earning a significant amount of stage time were the new performers, all of which had never performed with Zero Untitled before.

All of these new faces will likely been seen in upcoming Zero Untitled productions.

This just in! Our latest comedic one-woman monologue has been accepted to the Equity Library Theater of New York Summer 2022 Virtual Play Festival in New York City. The play, written and performed by Katherine Orozco-Verderber, was directed by Mack Allen and Michael Verderber.

It recently had its digital premiere as part of the “Textual Overture: Throes of Passion” video production last month. The performance is still viewable on our ZeroUntitledFilms YouTube page. According to ELT Director Johnny Culver, the festival “will also be hosting a free in-person live version of the festival in New York City in August, with room for up to 20 short plays.” More information will be updated soon.

Premature Punchline will have its FIRST live show in years at The Flower Box on April 1st, 2022 at 7:00. Admission is pay-what-you-can!