52 Pick Up

52 Pick-up

written by TJ Dawe and Rita Bozi

Leslie Patrick and Jeremy Stein of Act One Productions, photo by Joseph Andrade 52 cards in a deck. 52 scenes about a couple's relationship. The title of each scene is written on a card. At the start of the show the deck is shuffled and tossed in the air. The actors pick up the cards one at a time, and that's the order of that performance's scenes.

The story: very simple. They meet, the fall in love, they fall out of love, they break up. But with the concept you might see them break up before they meet. You might see the reiteration of jokes that haven't happened yet, or apologies for arguments that haven't happened yet.

Every performance is replete with enough amazing coincidences for audiences to constantly disbelieve that the order really is random.

The odds of two performances of 52 Pick Up ever having the scenes in the same order are 1 in 80 658 175 170 943 878 571 660 636 856 403 766 975 289 505 440 883 277 824 000 00 000 000. More or less. Although this number is outrageously big, it is real. The formula for finding the maximum number of variations in a deck of 52 cards is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48 x 47... all the way down to x 3 x 2 x 1. the scientific notation for it is "52!".

As a point of interest, the odds of getting all six numbers right and thereby winning the Lotto 6/49 are 1 in 10 068 347 520.

Theatre Simple took 52-Pick to Singapore for an Arts Festival in June 2004 where it sold out many performances. Reviews to come.

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