Jyotsna Hariharan’s Reubuttal is an audio drama performed by 5 actors, Phoebe Strole, Michael Crouch, Nina Mehta, Peter Ganim, and Dan Bittner, with sound effects to make it more realistic. It’s about two teens in their senior year who are fighting their parents’ expectations of them.  Alex Dassan is a young Indian woman whose parents expect her to go into marine biology, but who wants to be a writer. Jeremy Beekman’s parents expect him to go into medicine, but he wants to be an artist. They meet in a debate team, where they practice argumentative skills, and this gives them some confidence to make their cases. But there are many emotional factors to overcome in both their families. Alex’s mother returned to India when Alex was a little girl, and her father is busy in his research lab so he never talks to her except to check up on her. Jeremy’s parents are still together, but fight all the time. Jeremy’s older brother already rejected his parents’ expectations, so Jeremy feels all the more pressure to do what they want.

It’s not a very sophisticated story, setting out a simple plot clocking in at 100 minutes. The acting is often awkward. But it is an unusual experiment that might mean something to teens in similar situations.

© 2017 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches philosophy in NYC.