Playwright's Note: Thinking Caps

This play is not trying to predict the future. It's about how amazing the present is right now and how used to it we all are.

My nieces and nephews don't know a world before cell phones and the Internet. I've never lived in a world without cable or home video. My parents remember when TV was only black and white, and my grandma was 22 when the atomic bomb changed the world. There's no way to fully convey how absolutely revolutionary these concepts are when, to you and I, they've always been around. But, every day we hold better technology in our hands than what sent man to the moon, and we use it to play games.

The moment Martin Cooper at Motorola called his rival, Joel S. Engal, at Bell Labs in 1973 from outside of a New York Hilton practically divides human history into “before cell phones” and “after cell phones.” My nieces and nephews are starting to reach 10 years old as of this production. Someday, they'll tell their kids about a world before 3-D printing, self-driving cars, nano-surgery and possibly even electronic telepathy.

And, we can only imagine how they might tell them.

– Keith Gatchel