SED Speeches: Theories of Stuff is PlayShop’s answer to TED Talks.  The whole thing reads as a grand satire of TED’s delivery on that desire for feeling smart without doing the hard work of researching anything. 

Jonny Paul serves as our host: the ultramarathoner, novelist, and humblebragger extraordinaire Gavin Toohey.  He bursts into the room, running about and high-fiving the audience before gathering all of that energy into his chest.  Paul undermines his detailed character, however, with a tendency to play everything as serious, heavy, and ponderous, which kills the pacing early in the evening. 

Toohey introduces the event: a TED-like conference in which various accomplished speakers will pontificate for us on a variety of topics.  The topics are generated by transparent ask-fors, which then get turned into titles, such as an audience-suggested emotion “jealousy” being turned into the memorable “Harnessing your Jealous-sea”.  These randomly-generated topics are then matched with a crowd-sourced slideshow, which the speakers must incorporate into their talks.  The one exception seems to be the night’s guest speaker (James McKinnon, the night I attended), who know their topic in advance, but not the contents of the slideshow.

The speeches follow a pretty set pattern: personal anecdote about a need to explore a topic, a series of more-or-less connected thoughts about either that topic or the random photos on the slide show, finished off by a Take Home Message or Big Thought.

Most of my delight comes from watching the performers struggle with the challenge of creating a speech on the spot while staying true to SED’s uber-confident, “I’m better than you, but you can be better too!” inspirational tone. 

So while I appreciate the transparency of generating topics on the spot, I wish that the ask-fors were either more precise or carried into specific arguments before being incorporated into a speech.  It would give a more transparent challenge to the upcoming improviser, raising the stakes and upping the satire.

The improvisers excel when they lean into their characters.  The characters themselves are spot-on parodies of the privileged international speakers commonly found at TED events. 

Particularly memorable are Jen O’Sullivan’s prickly and proud Hester von Haagen Dazs, a defensive South African pediatric surgeon (kids not feet, as Toohey assures us); Ryan Knighton’s floaty shaman and e-book inventor Kale Hebe; and Jed Davies’ insufferably pretentious, slightly detached Jurgo Flammenrot, a Werner Herzog/Andy Warhol-style experimental filmmaker exiled from his unnamed, central European nation for political disagreement. 

I find myself paying attention to many small moments from the speakers who are waiting their turn, or the conference ‘workers’ as they go about their jobs.  Liam Kelly’s eager-to-please pianist and accompanist brightens noticeably every time a speaker turns to him, while Dr von Haagen Dazs argues with misconceptions in the introductions and George Fenn’s OSH-obsessed techie runs hither and yon trying to keep it all together, anxious about every possible mis-step.

The format of a bunch of speeches from each individual onstage could quickly tire, but PlayShop are smart enough to mix it up.  Towards the end of the night, two speakers, Jurgo Flammenrot and Tom Hutchison’s Huntley Palmer (that name!),  demonstrate a device to make washing dishes a chore of the past.  And Stevie Hancox Monk’s YouTube star finishes the evening with a duet about feeling sexy (aren’t they all?).  

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