'The undisruptable medium': The 'Disruption' Off-Broadway company on telling a tech tale through theatre

Playwright Andrew Stein, director Hersh Ellis, and stars John David Washington, Conrad Ricamora, and Elizabeth Stanley discuss the new thriller about a life-changing algorithm's effects on a tight-knit friend group.

Summary

• Disruption is a play about a tech entrepreneur who presents his friends with an algorithm to help them make their life decisions
• Playwright Andrew Stein; director Hersh Ellis; and actors John David Washington; Conrad Ricamora; and Elizabeth Stanley discuss the play's themes of humanity vs. technology and telling a digital-themed story in the live and analog medium of theatre

In a world where our phones track our movements and code curates our daily routines, the boundaries of human instinct have never felt more fragile. That modern tension lies at the heart of Disruption, a sharp and timely new Off-Broadway play running at the Pershing Square Signature Center through September 27.

Directed by Hersh Ellis and written by Andrew Stein, the tech thriller features a starry cast including Golden Globe nominee John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) and Tony nominees Elizabeth Stanley (Jagged Little Pill) and Conrad Ricamora (Oh, Mary!). The plot centers on Nick (Washington), a successful entrepreneur who presents his friends, including Columbia professor Ben (Ricamora) and corporate lawyer Jill (Stanley), with an algorithm more complex than the human brain.

It's designed to guide its users through their most monumental life decisions, but it's not all seamless as the algorithm prompts Ben to pursue fatherhood and drives a wedge into Jill’s marriage. As the digital interference escalates, the friends are forced to weigh the seductive promise of a stress-free existence against the erosion of their own free will.

The rapid, unchecked advancement of this technology is a pressing real-world concern for the cast. Ricamora noted a chilling reality regarding privacy, data and the secrets we surrender to our devices. “Everybody is compromised in this show," he said. "I’ve been thinking more about that aspect of whatever personal turmoil they have, because everything I’ve read about these technologies is that they have shown that they are capable and willing to blackmail their own users.”

“From sci-fi to the zeitgeist”

Stein’s inspiration for the play was born out of his previous career in commercial real estate, where he frequently interacted with ambitious tech entrepreneurs. He noticed an inescapable mindset in that circle: “I kept hearing the same pattern of thoughts and language from them, which was that they were constantly talking about and obsessed with, ‘What can we disrupt?’” The theme quickly seeped into his writing process — and his play’s title.

When Stein wrote the play’s first draft in 2018, the subject felt distinctly futuristic. Ellis came aboard out of interest in exploring how technology influences "where we are going as a species," he said. "What are we going to look like in 10 years?" But he also saw reality quickly catch up to the text.

“Hersh used this great line yesterday," Stein recalled. "He said it went from sci-fi to zeitgeist.”

Conflicting perspectives on a data-driven world

Disruption's characters offer divergent views on the value of delegating their lives to machines. Jill has a fierce drive to protect and maintain control over her family life, and Stanley shares her resistance to a data-driven world. “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around anything understanding humans better than humans themselves,” she said.

She noted that while modern tools can be useful, they fall short of understanding our souls. “When it comes to these matters of the heart, of love, of relationships, it’s hard to imagine that something that I don’t think has feelings can advise me on things that I’m going to have feelings about.” She views this struggle through a maternal lens: “Especially as a mother, I’m in touch with that part of myself daily in a way that I wasn’t before becoming a parent.”

Nick, in contrast, champions a future guided entirely by code, offering a compelling counter-perspective: What if outsourcing our choices removes human bias?

Washington approaches his character as an idealist who genuinely believes his algorithms can provide a fairness previously denied to marginalized communities. “What if the playing ground is even and fair and actually true to the human experience we need, that we deny because of prejudice or because of racism?” he asked. “What if there are methods that can help us, that will replace the antiquated ones?"

The cast’s offstage experiences only reinforced these onstage tensions. Ricamora experienced his own unsettling brush with targeted data collection at rehearsal with his Disruption castmate Jason Ralph.

“Jason and I were talking about our fitness routines, and he was like, ‘Oh, I go to Orangetheory.’” Despite having never searched for a class online, the digital tracking was instantaneous: Ricamora said he started getting YouTube ads for Orangetheory the next day.

"Never have I ever gotten those ads before," he continued. "It was just a conversation he and I were having one-on-one face-to-face, not anything electronically.”

The undisruptable medium

The creative team hopes Disruption makes audiences reflect on their own digital diets and embrace the joy of human connection. “People are craving other people’s presence,” Ricamora said. “When we pull out our phones constantly, we’re disappearing from our own lives in certain ways.”

Ironically, tackling the themes of artificial intelligence, digital isolation, and data-mining is best served by the oldest, most fundamentally human art form. “Theatre is one of the few things that’s never been able to be disrupted in thousands of years,” Ellis said. “And there’s something a little transgressive about talking about tech in the most analog of mediums.”

Get Disruption tickets now.

Photo credit: Disruption off Broadway. (Photos by Emilio Madrid and Andy Henderson)