Last night I saw the final performance of Greenhouse Ensemble's Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's own stage adaptation of his dystopian novel from the McCarthy era.
Sadly, the play felt all-too-relevant in 2024. In the futuristic world of the play, reading itself is not outlawed--just reading books. Instead, information is delivered in bite-sized packages, much like Twitter or TikTok.
Why are books banned? Well, because they're too upsetting to different groups. As the Fire Captain explains, if a book is offensive to a racial group, an ethnic group, a religious group, a certain gender, the solution is always simply to burn it. Better to destroy a thing, he argues, than to allow any group to feel uncomfortable.
If that sounds familiar, so do the technological advancements postulated by Bradbury. Characters walk into a room and are immediately greeted by an electronic voice that can control every appliance in the house. (She's not named Alexa, but she might as well be!) Giant televisions pander for people's attention, and characters interact more with their screens than with one another.
One prediction that struck me as particularly jarring was that people would have their own names and faces used in television shows. A hit program about a family replaces real families, with our own names and faces inserted into pre-set storylines. The individualization of entertainment allows for micro-targeting, keeping everyone entranced by the technology and avoiding real life.
Rebelling against all of this is Montag, played in this production by the director, Hazen Cuyler. He was backed up by a game cast, including Leah Barker, Joseph D’Amore, Anne Fizzard, Frank Hankey, Robert James Hickey, Miranda Renée, and Spencer Scott.
Sadly, the show is closed now, but I look forward to seeing what Greenhouse Ensemble does next.