Growing up watching “Friends” in reruns and on Netflix, a part of me wanted to live in the goofy, familiar, sanitized sitcom world, where all your friends are miraculously on hand at any given time of the day to obsess over the latest conflict. Elyanow’s play sets us right in the middle of this fluffy fantasy - six friends in an unusually large New York apartment live day in and day out in their world of hijinks. But when Chloe, the group’s “pretty one,” meets Omar, a man from outside the bubble, cracks begin to show, and Chloe starts to realize that their life could mean more than a 22-minute-long plot (plus commercial breaks). 

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In directing “The Idiot Box,” I focused especially on the idea of letting the “hard things” into the world. As we progressed through the play, the set, costumes, and physical palette of the actors became less sterilized, less polished, and more real. Similarly, the characters themselves became less sterilized in how they acted towards each other and in response to each other. “Innocent” comments that could once be brushed off started to show their sinister roots, and my actors explored their characters’ buried flaws as it started to become more and more impossible to hide their secrets. After all, life can’t just be wrapped up in a sitcom bow - and when we try to do so, our worst parts always seem to burst out of the wrapping paper.