X

by Alistair McDowall

Mandell Weiss Theatre
University of California, San Diego

San Diego, California
February-March 2024

When X by Alistair McDowall begins, we are introduced to five travelers waiting to be picked up from their mission on planet Pluto. We are in a near future where much of the earth is no longer habitable, and Pluto is being explored as a viable option for human life. But their research base has lost radio signal, and their expedition has already lasted much longer than expected. The group is tasked with trying to determine if their pickup is late, if their pickup is no longer coming, or--most frighteningly-if they've lost contact with their pickup because earth itself has ceased to exist. As the passing time becomes increasingly more difficult to track, events begin to move out of sequence, and the line between what is real and what isn't becomes blurred. The travelers are desperate to sort through their fragmented memories, and to maintain control of their own lives. X is an evocative, hilarious, and devastating play that uses the metaphor of being lost in space to explore the loss of personal and collective memory, and specifically to portray one woman’s plight to remember her daughter as she battles Alzheimer’s. We are shown in X the vast similarities between the life and death of a person and the life and death of a planet. As we as a planet creep closer and closer to having to face the existential threat of environmental degradation, X could not be more timely. How do we want to be remembered, and who will remain to remember us?