🖹 View the Program

Preview: APR 1-3, 2025
Opening: APR 4, 2025
Closing: APR 26, 2025
ASL Performance: APR 22, 2025

$25 Preview Performances
$40 Performances

Estimated Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes, with a 20 minute intermission

Qualia
by Ashleigh Ann Gardner

A Radioactive Love Story
Qualia, a post-nuclear play by Central Florida playwright and The Studio Theatre veteran, Ashleigh Ann Gardner, is a dystopian story set 100 years in the future. The world has been decimated by toxic radiation save a few lingering humans. Alex lives alone safely tucked away in a bunker made by her doomsday prepping parents. Her only companion is Dom, a compassionate AI program engineered by her late mother. Alex and Dom are the only sentient creatures for miles. Until one day a knock outside the bunker door turns their safe world upside down. This intelligent and modern play explores the formula for being human. Is using logic, expressing emotion, and feeling love enough; or is a traditional corporeal form also required? Join us for this funny and honest science fiction play about finding what it means to be human in an isolated world.

Full cast and production credits listed below!

CONTENT ADVISORY

Content Advisory Notes (may contain spoilers) ▼

Trigger Warning:
This play takes place inside of a bunker one hundred years after a nuclear fallout. The play handles topics of depression, isolation, loneliness, love, and what it means to be human.

Adult Content: This play takes place inside of a bunker one hundred years after a nuclear fallout. The play handles topics of depression, isolation, loneliness, love, and what it means to be human. There is technology and computer language and lingo used in this play. Alex's only companion is an AI inside the bunker with her.

advisory scale 1 of 6

Sexual Content: A few sex jokes and a little bit of flirting.

advisory scale 3 of 6

Language: Word Count – Jesus 5X, Jesus f*cking christ 6X, Oh my god 21X, Sh*t 15X, Boobs 2X, F*ck 16X, F*cking 10X, F*cker 1X, F*cked 1X, Pr*ck 1X, Hell 3X, Bullsh*t 1X, Asshole 4X, Godammit 3X, Goddamn 2X

advisory scale 2 of 6

Loud Noises: There are possible loud metal noises.

advisory scale 2 of 6

Strobe Effect: There is a small strobe effect in the beginning of the show.