Hope Li: What you’re about to hear is a pilot episode of Project VA, a new student podcast from The Torch Podcast Network. “The Critic” is a script written by screenwriting major Kendsy Kendall and voice acted and dramatized by three students behind Project VA. Here we go! CARLOS Well, there goes two hundred bucks straight down the toilet. LEXI Good thing the cash didn’t come from your own pocket. Oh, and happy birthday by the way. CARLOS Thanks, Lex! Anyway that show was total crap. LEXI Kind of a bummer you got a front row seat to it, huh? CARLOS Tragic is more like it. A hot mess from start to finish. MATT But the cast seemed pretty put together during the Backstage Meet and Greet. CARLOS Being a good person and being a good performer are two completely different things. MATT Well, you’re not wrong. CARLOS And bro, don’t even get me started on the leads. MATT I thought they were pretty good. CARLOS He was good for nothing. And she was just pretty. MATT Dang. Hot take. CARLOS Their chemistry should’ve been hot, but the love scenes were duds. No sparks flew. The man had zero rizz. LEXI He’s a deformed monster for three fourths of the play. I don’t think he’s supposed to have any. CARLOS Well, in the movie it was based on, she’s supposed to be attracted to his personality despite his deformity. It’s the whole point of the story, but they completely fumbled it. LEXI Have you read the book? CARLOS Yeah, of course. LEXI Then somehow you forgot that the personality-deformity tension is just the main purpose of her character arc. MATT You’re missing the big picture, bro. The whole point of the story is about the monster’s internal transformation. LEXI Slow down. We’re using some pretty big words, Matt. I’ll translate it to English for him: the story is about how the monster learns to love the world around him, even though the people he shares it with despise him. MATT That’s a cute way to put it. You get the gist, right Carlos? CARLOS Guys, I’ve read the book like ten times. That’s not what it’s about. LEXI I don’t know which book you’ve been reading, but clearly it’s not the right one. MATT Guess he’s never heard of the unabridged version. CARLOS Unabridged? MATT Yessir. Dixon Malcolm explored the topic quite extensively. The man was brilliant! LEXI I wouldn’t go that far. Clearly his publishers and editors didn’t think so. MATT The only reason they had to cut so much of it out was because he was ahead of the time. LEXI Matt, he was causing massive waves between county districts. Pretty much riots. MATT He was being progressive. LEXI He spent ten years fighting over the copyright. His family had to go into hiding. He was out of his mind! MATT He was a visionary, Lexi. It was his magnum opus. You’re still tracking with us, right? CARLOS Um...yeah. LEXI The guy was a lunatic, but thank God his wife brought him to his senses. MATT True. He almost lost his career. LEXI He almost lost his whole family! Those bullies were borderline assassins. And Carlos, you know what’s really wild? CARLOS Yeah, what? LEXI Is how his original drafts survived after his office got bombed by that cult. MATT Well, that’s because his wife locked them in a suitcase and hid it in their basement closet during his manic episode. LEXI Absolute queen! And that’s why on the first page of all the standard editions, he says “For my love and life, Annika...” MATT “The rescue to our little opus.” LEXI But obviously you already knew all that stuff, right? CARLOS Some of it. But how did you guys learn about all this? MATT There’s a really niche documentary called “All For the Opus”. LEXI And a bunch of articles online. You just have to know where to look. MATT Plus we both read the unabridged version and the standard edition. LEXI We did a capstone project on it for our AP Lit class last year. MATT Now there’s two hundred hours we ain’t never getting back. LEXI But we still got to keep that A Plus, baby! MATT Heck yeah! CARLOS Well the show still sucked! MATT Yeah, maybe you’re right. The book was better. LEXI The unabridged version, of course. Hope Li: We’re so excited to see Project VA launch and grow. If you liked what you heard, or you have a script of your own you’d like to hear dramatized, OR if YOU want to give voice acting a try, let us know by DMing us on Instagram @kbr_the_torch or emailing project.va.biola@gmail.com. See the show notes for some more details.