‘Your Wife’s Dead Body’ @ Second Thought Theatre
Photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Jan Farrington
For eons longer than history can tell us, human life has had an inevitable pattern; a birth, a “life cycle,” an inescapable death. Easy, peasy. But of course, being human, we can’t leave well enough alone.
So, what could happen—what in some likelihood will happen—when that pattern can be interrupted, altered, even forestalled by Artificial Intelligence and other technologies? How might new options and expectations change us (for good and ill) and reshape our world? Would we feel grief and loss in a different way? Comedian Alan Alda wrote a book some years ago—Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (and Other Things I’ve Learned)—about a much-loved pet who died…and then quite literally haunted his childhood as a stuffed statue, instead of fading into a beloved memory.
Playwright and actor Jenny Ledel probes the possibilities and problems of artificial intelligence and re-animation in her vividly imagined play Your Wife’s Dead Body, the second of three new works from local writers this season being presented by Second Thought Theatre.
Humor and grief compete for stage space in Ledel’s script, and the wife and husband at the story’s center never stop revealing new facets of their nature. Ledel has a nifty way of inserting small bits of business (a fake-sounding laugh, the mention of a popular restaurant chain) that pay off in startling ways later in the plot. There are three humans (well, plus a “replicant”) onstage, and a two-lane plot that lets us get to know not one but two “Janes” (Ledel plays both). Time flashes back and forth to Jane’s initial decision to let the “Lazarus Project” develop an AI place-holder who will live her life beyond its natural span—and to that decision’s unforseen fallout in the present.
In the end, our encounter with both Janes leaves us amused, a bit horrified, and wrung out with sympathy for their plight—the humans and the AI replicant alike. “It’s dark here,” says the AI Jane, waiting for her body…and our heart stops for a moment.
In the play’s first moments, we’re not entirely sure which Jane we’re looking at. Is the living, human Jane this somber, mechanical-voiced woman in a lab-type jacket being put through her paces, answering mundane questions about personal preferences? (The Qs are posed by a series of unseen corporate voices—Alex Organ, Rhonda Boutté, and Danielle Pickard—who want factual, uncomplicated answers…and aren’t getting them.) Or is Jane the other woman—the bouncy wife-at-home with a slightly more glam and fetching version of Jane-ness? When husband Jackson (Drew Wall) returns home, with a bouquet in hand and a terrified expression, we know that his emotional reactions will be rocketing all over the map, from despairing to hopeful. What else could we expect as he encounters, and tries to live with, the other Jane?
The company claims the ability to reanimate the body of the deceased and infuse it with an AI consciousness—a replicant meant to comfort family and friends, and extend one’s presence (however artificial) in the world. But the human Jane senses a problem—that the “company” doesn’t want full answers about who she is, just clean, simple facts. What’s your favorite “genre” of books? Who is your best friend? Is it possible to create an AI version of an individual person that will satisfy those who’ve known her, or him?
Ledel creates a compelling portrait of her Janes, both of them increasingly uneasy about how authentic this substitution can be. And the newly activated AI Jane—at home with the seriously confounded Jackson—isn’t helped by some very awkward conversataions with inquisitive friend Dan (Francisco Giraldo). The couple’s new getting-to-know-you relationship skews more challenging with every scene.
Alex Organ’s astute direction and pacing makes this 100-minute (or so) piece fly by and hold our interest, perhaps because the time-shifting structure freshens our perspective every few minutes.
The cool-white set design (by Organ with Drew Wall, who plays Jackson) is a runway between past and present, with the Lazarus interrogation space at one end, and a wall of their home’s cabinet doors at the other—full of the surprises and mysteries of Jane’s human life. Lori Honeycutt’s lights veer from brilliant spots to intimate softness, and Cresent R. Haynes’ sound design adds both startling and comforting atmospherics. The costumes by Amanda Capshaw keep things simple—though I’m trying still to decide if I’m seeing or imagining subtle changes that deliberately make the replicant Jane “cuter” than the human one…perhaps as a company selling point. (Get your wife back, but just a bit better?) It reminds us, in a quiet way, that this AI thing isn’t a community service—it’s a money-maker.
The endless corporate Q-and-A sessions irritate Jane from the start, and then anger her as their disinterest in creating a full AI intelligence is exposed. And both Janes begin to ask questions, with the replicant Jane showing some sparks of the “spirit” of her human forebear.
The tagline/theme for this season at STT is “Play Local”—three DFW-based actors and playwrights given space and expert handling by one of the area’s most compelling companies. Playwright Blake Hackler’s intense and emotional Healed in the spring opened the season with extraordinary writing about chronic disease, cures bogus and true, and the trade-offs that come with grief and loss. Ledel’s Your Wife’s Dead Body adds questions, nuance, and the urgency of right now to the conversation—and I can’t wait for Parker Gray’s Incarnate in October.
WHEN: July 9-26, 2025
WHERE: Bryant Hall, 3400 Blackburn, Dallas (beside the Kalita Humphreys)
WEB: secondthoughttheatre.com
