JEREMY LLORENCE
Plays
Be sure to check these out on my page at the New Play Exchange (NPX)
The Great Influencer
Chantel Chrysanthemum is a lifestyle influencer who is branching into the production of wellness products, an opportunity she is graciously sharing with five of her fans through an exclusive retreat. The fans arrive at a Cleveland strip mall, their agreed upon rendezvous point, only to find that Chantel is not present and the experience isn’t quite what she promised. As Chantel begins to make legally dubious requests through direct messages, her fans who must decide what they're willing to risk for their chance at money, internet fame, and the approval of their favorite social media superstar.
Structured in real-time, the play follows a mismatched crew of internet junkies including: a high-school lesbian with infectious optimism, a millennial tech-bro with Peter Pan Syndrome, a single mother with zero awareness of cultural appropriation, a non-binary video game streamer with no followers, and a Baby Boomer with questionable, amorphous politics. The Great Influencer is a comedy about internet celebrity and its impact on personal choices, especially post-pandemic.
Voice of the Net
Set twenty years in the future, the recent advent of Net Lenses as the primary means of internet access has allowed the internet into virtually every facet of society. This shift in technology brings great benefit and detriment, when anyone with an online presence can appear directly in your field of vision. To further complicate the issue, a newly imposed federal regulation allows law enforcement agencies to disable an entire community’s access to the internet based on how much of a threat they seem to pose.
In this net-driven and highly political world, Sgt. Donna Lloyd leads a small federal task force dedicated to solving and preventing net crimes. Recently, her team has been aided by a net vigilante known only as Daria. But when a digital death threat toward a US Senator implicates Daria, Lloyd must determine Daria’s true motives before the violence spreads to the real world.
The Dead Wrestler
An adaptation of the book of poems by Todd Kaneko, The Dead Wrestler follows Kal Harmon and his father, Gene: two men with a deep love of pro wrestling and a growing mutual resentment that began when Kal's mother, Gene's wife, walked out on them almost twenty years ago. Since her disappearance, the two have been searching unsuccessfully for news of the missing matriarch, and are on the verge of giving up. But when Kal comes home for Gene's birthday and announces his engagement to a woman Gene has never met, the two are forced to confront years of built up frustration and unresolved abandonment issues, all through the lens of their interactions with famous dead wrestlers.
Cane River King
After receiving news of his estranged, sticky-fingered uncle Ottie's death, college dropout Emile must travel down from Chicago to his family’s home of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he has been placed in charge of carrying out the last wishes and returning all of Ottie’s stolen crap. Naturally, this is a responsibility Emile would much rather ignore were it not for the insistence of his mother (herself a prodigal daughter), the town priest (who happens to be his mother’s ex-boyfriend), several of his kinsfolk, and maybe even Ottie himself. However, upon arriving in town, Emile begins to learn things about his uncle that challenge the image of the man he thought he knew. As the town reckons with theirs and Ottie’s past, Emile must figure out for himself if he can forgive his uncle’s misdeeds and put him to rest once and for all. Knowing Ottie, it will not be easy.