Q & A — M. Allen Cunningham

Kenyon Saint Claire is the son of a distinguished literary family, a keeper and teacher of the written word, but his America is a land of small screens, moving images, big pharma, high-tech distraction, and endless advertising. False impressions are the stock-in-trade, and big metrics matter, especially onscreen. That's where Kenyon finds himself, drawn into the electronic environs of primetime television, isolated behind glass, portraying a televised version of himself on a scripted game show, as cameras feed his image to fifteen million viewers. The year is 1956. Inspired by true events, employing a groundbreaking form that evokes our agitated, media-soaked century, M. Allen Cunningham's Q&A urgently animates America's misunderstood quiz show scandals in light of our own time, as a moment of cultural reckoning whose reverberations we feel all around us today: in reality television, TV politics, the triumph of incoherence, and the pandemic problem of how to be real in a world of screen-induced self-deception. Stuck in his televised box, Kenyon must confront the win-or-lose proposition of his age and answer his toughest question yet: When the world and its machines are so busy creating us, how can we possibly create ourselves?