The Listening Room

By Michaela Jeffery

Potent and topical, The Listening Room is a powerful new political drama set at the turn of the next century. At the heart of a forgotten society calling itself The Earie, young dissidents use radio telescopes to salvage fragments of earlier civilizations still ricocheting between stars. These 'Listeners' fight against growing pressure from the governing central Council, whose hold over the imaginations of the population of The Earie has all but buried the practice of 'Listening.' As the tone of their world tilts away from discourse and curiosity toward emotional rhetoric and fear-fueled isolationism, the last remaining Listeners - Marcus, Lanolin, Fayette and Rouke - strike out wildly against the new reality. Marcus holds public audiences in the streets. Lanolin keeps secret records in the event of the sudden disappearance of the Listeners. On the eve of a high-profile 'disciplinary hearing,' a blind girl walks seven miles through the desert to the outpost called The Listening Room to ask for sanctuary - Isobel wants to become a Listener...