]FAQs[

Why are you making this project?

From age 12-17, I was actively catfishing gamer boiz on the internet. At the time, I told myself that it was because I liked the male attention, which was only half-true. As a 31-year-old non-binary person, I now know what that moment in my life meant for my self-expression - and other people's as well. It was a very messy time in my life, and I got into a lot of trouble and hurt a lot of people's feelings. Curiously, there were several people I met who were also lying about their online identity. As an adult, I find the diverse reasons of why people catfish to be very fascinating, compelling, and rife with sociopolitical implications.

I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a play about catfishing, but I wasn't sure how to make it. When I started making this project in August 2023, I was already incredibly bored with theatre in general. The standard process of writing plays (playwright works alone, shows the completed draft to others, then receives feedback for editing) felt very undynamic for me. I was hungry for something different and to learn new skills as an artist.

But I didn't want this to be just a narrative about gender exploration and trans identity. I really wanted to zoom out and explore other people's reasons for catfishing. A lightbulb moment came when I watched a YouTube series about a group of online vigilantes who were pranking groups of Indian "scammers" that tricked people in the U.S. into giving them their money. The vigilantes' perspectives were quite moralistic. "How dare they try to cheat people out of their hard-earned money?"

My mind went in a different direction. Why are they scamming people? Clearly they didn't wake up one day and say, "I feel like screwing a bunch of people over." Transformative justice is a huge influence in my work, and one of the core tenets of transformative justice is that crime is often rooted in survival. People do not turn to crime unless they are desperate, and I believe that to be true of the Indian scammers we seem to be so scared of. This was the impetus for Arjun's character in this project, but also the overarching ethos behind [cod] ]catfish[. My hope is that this project will help remind ourselves of the humanity behind our screens, and to consider who we may be speaking to through the veil of online anonymity.

What is the ideal way to experience this project?

The website is intended to be viewed before or after attending a performance for [cod] ]catfish[. Alternatively, you can choose not to visit the website entirely, since the play is written so that folks who haven't experienced the web elements can still catch onto the story. But personally, I think the full experience of the project is to visit the website and watch the performance.

As far as the web elements go, ideally it would take about an hour to comb through the entire website. You can come and go as you please, and at any moment you can purchase a ticket for the project on UCLA School of Theater's ticket page. The workshop production for [cod] ]catfish[ will take place on June 8th, 2024. Stay tuned for more updates, including the official launch of the project!

How do you plan to get the general public to engage with the web elements?

Currently, I'm having talks with the TFT (Theatre, Film, & Television) department at UCLA to help promote the weblink. I'm also interested in viral marketing for this project, and this could potentially include QR code stickers that lead to the site, as well as mysterious emails sent from Zephyr itself. Much of this work has also been built within the DMA (Design Media Arts) department, and I would be engaging with them as well.

Also, by holding playtesting events, I hope to build an audience from other people's interest in the project. I believe Gen Z engages with the internet in a radically different way than I do, so I'm hungry to hear from this perspective. As a millenial, my relationship to the internet is vastly different from theirs.

What is the future of this project?

After the workshop production in June, I plan to apply for multiple opportunities for funding and residency support for this project. I have lots of leads on where this could be, but I'm most interested in engaging with arts orgs that are comfortable working at the intersection of performance and technology. Theatre companies should reach out as well if they're comfortable with producing a web-theatre project that may have needs they're unfamiliar with.

The future of this project will use WebSockets. While I'm still trying to understand how WebSockets can be used for this project, the reason why I'm using them is because I think of it as an opportunity to melt the theatre and web elements together, rather than keeping them separate. As an interdisciplinary artist, I often find that my attempts to make "interdisciplinary art" often results in having different mediums sequestered into disparate corners of a project - which we sometimes see in dance-theatre work, for example. (I used to make dance-theatre work, so I get to say that. :P)

Who are you working with on this project? Can I work with you?

Yes please! While I feel capable of doing this by myself, I would much rather not. It's very difficult and isolating to work alone, and I'm a huge extrovert that thrives off of collaborating with other people. Currently, I'm in great need of folks who would be interested in providing coding support, as well as sound design for the web elements. But I'm also in need of a dramaturg who would be interested in acting as a sounding board for a lot of my ideas. Please reach out by checking out the links at the bottom of this page!

Some potential collaborators are emerging, but I have to stay quiet about that right now. [cod] ]catfish[ is being created under the mentorship and guidance of various UCLA professors, including Jeff Burke, Lauren McCarthy, Sylvan Oswald, Casey Reas, and Dominic Taylor. If you have any questions about what I'm like as a collaborator, don't hesitate to drop me a line and say hello!

Where can I read the stage play version of [cod] ]catfish[?

Once Draft #2 of [cod] ]catfish[ is complete in the Spring, I will be uploading it to my NPX page. A print-friendly version is also available upon request. The link to my NPX page can be found at the bottom of this page.

Why can't you just write a normal play?

No thank you. "Normal" plays bore me. I want to make art projects that are hard to define, and can only be experienced.

How can I contact you, or learn more about your work?

Thanks for showing an interest! To contact me directly, shoot me an email at carlparenthesisos [at] gmail [dot] com. To learn more about me or my work, follow these links: