“The SuperNature of Things” is the brainchild of the creative folks at Spectral Theatre Society who have for the past 17 years been dedicated to producing original, obscure and bizarre "genre" scripts for a growing cult following. By exploring a diversity of themes, Spectral Theatre has endeavored to bring its love of spectacle to the stage; to deliver strange and wonderful tales, rich in flavour; and, above all, to offer a strikingly unusual taste of what live theatre can be. The show concept itself is distilled from their ongoing love affair with audio drama, the glory days of broadcast radio, podcasts and an ardent disdain for the echo chamber that is social media.
Each episode of “The SuperNature of Things" will be a light-hearted take on amateur journalism, but a take that also unpacks real questions about what counts as "evidence" (e.g. responsible journalism with fact-checking), and what counts as opinion only (e.g. most online blogs). Our fictional setting is the town of Grimmsfield, in an unnamed western Canadian province. This is where our protagonist Felicity Frances has put together a podcast for credit toward her journalism studies at Grimmsfield Valley University. Her crack team of reporters includes "Scoops" Daily, a young and enthusiastic reporter, and Shadbolt Raftsbury, a less young and rather cantankerous wannabe-reporter. Together they investigate and debunk issues of the day that although semi-fictionalized, are rooted in real life hot topics and controversies like the legalization of cannabis (and not cannibalism), whether Canadians can believe everything that Twitter says about Jordan Peterson (nope), and if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-then-it-is-type-organizations (we're looking at YOU, NXIVM!). In so doing it is our hope to foster the principles of healthy scepticism and critical analysis in a subtle "user-friendly" way, while hopefully sidestepping the unfortunate "knee jerk" effect that often derails most attempts at rational public discourse.