Exploring ethics and ethos in The Electric Boy

This article is a self-examination of the process and intentions behind writing the stage play, The Electric Boy . It considers the ethics and ethos that arise throughout the play in an effort to more deeply clarify the underlying tensions associated with those elements. As a play that might be considered ‘absurdist’, The Electric Boy probes issues of adoption, infertility, commercialism and what it means to be human on a planet where there is no scarcity of people. The play presents an infertile couple in capitalist America and their quest for a child in this fast-paced, ‘Frankensteinean’, dark comedy. The archetypal characters acerbically deliberate, discuss, deduct and raise ethical questions that are relevant to our world today. Technology, science and money mesh to beget the first mail-order Electric Boy. Ultimately a threat to the order and arrangement of the human world, the Electric Boy must be sacrificed.