Alternative Friends

"So no one told you life was gonna be this way… "

The opening line in the Friends theme song hints at the rift between expectations and realities in life. That’s about as deep as the show goes in stimulating critical discourse to challenge social constructs. But that wasn’t the purpose of Friends. What if it was? How can performative comedy become a medium to promote discussion and debate of our collective future?

The workshop Alternative Friends sought to answer questions that explore the changing dynamics of global economics, politics, race, gender, sexuality and technology. It began with an introduction to the sitcom as a storytelling device. Participants were guided through worldbuilding, creating character profiles, and drafting and performing their script. During the process, clips of Friends and Parks and Recreation were shown to highlight the ubiquity of Trodov’s Theory of story progression. The two groups wrote and performed their own storylines, satirizing intrusive technologies and moral dilemmas that arise in their future worlds. Work developed at the Future Friends Conference, Maribor, Slovenia (April 2019), conceived of by Dash MacDonald, Jimmy Loizeau, Matt Ward and James Auger