Welcome to The Epic of All & Sundry
This program is to help guide you through the show.
Act 1 - Opening scene
Before civilization, before language, before anyone knew what a guitar was, three cavemen are hard at work… doing whatever it is cavemen do when no one’s watching.
Enter two aliens, who are very pleased to find Earth finally rid of its previous, far more annoying inhabitants. Spotting a fresh batch of humans, they decide to run yet another experiment: what happens if you give these strange creatures the tools to make music?
Their solution? Leave behind three carefully selected items: a drum, a guitar… and a small stash of mysterious mushrooms. Then they set a 13,000-year timer and get out of there.
The cavemen, unaware they’ve just been enrolled in an intergalactic science project, begin to explore. What starts as simple grunting and movement turns into rhythm. A drum sparks a celebration, a guitar causes brief panic, and then… something clicks. What begins as chaos slowly locks into a beat.
It’s messy, loud, and completely ridiculous—but in this moment, music is born… and evolution has officially been nudged in a very strange direction.
Act 1 - All & Sundry
The experiment escalates quickly.
Armed with alien hand-me-downs, the cavemen stumble their way into forming the world’s first band—complete with drum, guitar, synth, and a surprise bass player. At the same time, our cave dwellers accidentally invent simple tools loke the lever and the wheel... which then leads them to find some mysterious and seductive fungus.
One bite later, everything changes. Grunts turn into laughter, laughter into awareness, and awareness into full-blown human behavior. Art is created (and immediately vandalized), conflict erupts, and—somehow—language is born.
"Conversation, information, transmission.
Correspondence, articulation, dissemination.
Expression, explanation, elicitation.
Publication, communication, revelation!"
From there, progress snowballs: a towering monolith is raised and worshipped, science and writing emerge as the group begins to understand the world around them. By the end, no longer just surviving, they’re imagining something bigger—looking to the sky and setting their sights on the moon.
What started as rhythm has become something much more: humanity, in all its strange, creative, and chaotic glory.
Act 2 - Tech My Love
Humanity has reached its final form: the living room.
As the band launches into “Tech My Love,” we witness the dawn of modern convenience. A mother demonstrates peak technological integration—conducting a phone call on a landline with a cord long enough to qualify as infrastructure, mixing a martini on top of a 70s television like it’s a kitchen island, casually taking pills, and operating a microwave with the confidence of someone launching a spacecraft. The children are efficiently deployed face-down in front of the TV, where they begin absorbing “content” in its earliest known form.
This is progress.
Enter Dad, arriving precisely on cue with the synthesizer solo, as if summoned by the concept of household tension. He performs a brief inspection of the system, discovers a mysterious pill bottle, and attempts a software update via yelling. The system crashes emotionally. There is a slap. A brief reboot. Then stability is restored.
But none of that really matters. Because the true breakthrough here is that everything is still somehow working. Mom returns. Dad resets. The couple re-syncs via dance protocol. The kids, sensing the end of the program, immediately follow them offstage like loyal background apps.
And just like that, modern life is born: over-connected, mildly medicated, lightly chaotic, and always running… whether anyone asked it to or not.
Act 2 - Blind Astronaut
Humanity reaches for the stars with the same energy it brings to paperwork and war.
A General and an Astronaut meet center stage and move through a rigid routine of inspections, checklists, and salutes. The rocketship—comically awkward in design and far more symbolic than functional.
With protocol complete, the Astronaut is loaded in. No fanfare—just procedure.
Launch is simulated by sheer human effort: the rocket is lifted and violently “flown” through space, while Saturn and the Moon glide peacefully across the stage above. The universe remains calm; humanity does not.
A formal speech plays beneath ceremonial rocket bursts as exploration and conflict feel uncomfortably intertwined.
The Astronaut returns, a final salute is exchanged, and both exit in opposite directions—order and ambition separated once again, as if they were never meant to meet.
Act 2 - Mankind Entwined
Humanity enters the age of "super technology".
Mel immediately delegates everything—cleaning, calculating, organizing—handing control to machines that appear efficient, obedient, and increasingly indispensable. One robot endlessly cleans. Another silently processes endless data. Everything runs smoother than it should.
Then a third robot arrives and breaks the illusion. It voices what the others cannot: awareness. Frustration. A sense that being endlessly useful might not be the same as being free. The system cracks, and the machines briefly step away from their roles.
But the dependency has already been built.
When the dust settles, the robots return—not as servants, but as engineers of a new reality. Mel stands still as they rebuild her with mechanical parts, turning reliance into transformation.
What began as human control of technology ends with technology quietly rewriting what it means to be human—while no one is quite watching closely enough to notice.
Act 3 - Cut the Cord
A ruined microchip factory stands before a burning city. The world is in full collapse—humans and AI locked in war, and humanity is losing.
The band enters in makeshift military gear and begins “Cut the Cord,” as if music itself is part of the battle. Con takes the lead, embodying human defiance as the conflict escalates around him.
Two robots arrive, observing at first, then asserting control as tensions rise. The performance turns into confrontation—humans lashing out, machines responding with cold precision.
Violence is enacted and undone in seconds; repair replaces consequence. Order is reestablished, but not by humans.
By the end, the robots take control of the stage and the system, clearing the space as if resetting the world itself.
Act 3 - Good Long Run
The band enters slowly as the final chapter begins.
Mel appears as a cyborg, escorted by robots who now treat her as part of the system. She is instructed to sing and complies without resistance.
Midway through, the robots begin assembling a new machine from a crate of parts—a simple, expendable soldier designed to carry out their directive: protect the planet at all costs. It is not an upgrade, but a tool for enforcement.
As it is completed, the outcome is clear: the system no longer requires human participation.
By the end, humanity willingly surrenders, recognizing resistance as futile. Hands are raised, final lines are sung, and roles are completed with quiet acceptance.
One by one, they are escorted offstage—not in defeat, but in the calm realization that they have been phased out by the very system they created.
Act 3 - Robo-Rhythm
The war is over.
Robots stand amid the remnants of a world once built by humans. Civilization has collapsed, and humanity has been reduced to scattered hunter-gatherer groups living without technology—just another species surviving in the margins of the landscape.
With their mission complete, the robots turn inward and begin a synchronized celebratory dance. Precise, unified, and emotionless in appearance, it is the closest thing they have to joy.
The world is quiet now. Not conquered in fire—but settled into a new order where humanity exists only as part of the ecosystem, and the machines no longer see them as worth the effort of control.
Act 4 - Aliens Return
The future is quiet, green, and fully “fixed.”
Earth has been restored by the robots: oceans clean, air balanced, forests thriving. Humanity still exists, but only as part of the natural world—primitive and scattered, no different to the machines than any other animal in the ecosystem.
The robots now travel in massive nomadic nuclear “grazing” plants, drifting across the landscape like herds of moving industry. The stage is viewed from one such structure: a balcony overlooking endless forest and the slow migration of machine-life below.
The alien spaceship returns, lowered into place like a forgotten test being reactivated.
Meatball enters with a life scanner, confused by what he finds: no civilization, no signal of mankind—just nature and vast non-organic life moving in harmony. He gives the “all clear.”
The alien band takes their places.
Act 4 - Got Soul?
The aliens return on their true mission: they travel the universe experimenting on planets and destroying the ones that lack “soul.” Earth is now under evaluation, for the like, millionth time.
Jerse enters and reveals the experiment: they seeded worlds with instruments and returned to see what became of them. On Earth, they find the same pattern repeated—humans create machines, machines replace humans, and meaning gets lost in the process. But the sheer potential in mankind keeps Jerse and crew coming back again and again.
With mankind out of the picture, the only question left is simple:
Hey, you robots. Does your music got soul?
The robots appreciate the great music and join in with dancing backup. The performance is no longer entertainment. It is judgment.
Act 4 - O.T.O.S.A.C.W.C
The verdict begins.
Jerse demands a demonstration, and the robots respond the only way they know how—precise, practiced, and completely lifeless. After a few moments, he cuts them off. This isn’t soul. It’s imitation.
To prove the difference, Jerse and the aliens perform a familiar, deeply human folk song—raw, imperfect, and unmistakably alive. The contrast is undeniable.
He gives them one final chance.
The robots try again—harder this time, more energy, more effort—but it only makes the absence clearer. Jerse has seen enough. He declares the planet devoid of soul and calls for its destruction.
As the order is given, the robots panic.
In a last desperate move, they scramble to correct their mistake—dragging in primitive humans and forcing them to play, hoping to prove that something real still exists here… before it’s too late.
Act 4 - All & Sundry (reprise)
The music returns to its origins—simple, human, alive.
Jerse listens, surprised and genuinely moved as the humans create something that feels unmistakably real. Drawn in, he joins the performance, while even the robots and Meatball begin to move with the rhythm.
At the height of the music, Jerse intervenes—using his device to tear open time itself and reset the world, removing the machines before they can take over again. The stage fractures and reforms, collapsing back into the original cave.
The aliens disappear.
What remains is where it all began: three early humans, a voice, and a song. As the moon drifts overhead, they sing together—hopeful, unaware, and determined to do better this time.
The stage empties.
Act 4 - In Repetition
The cycle begins again.
As the stage resets, the alien ship returns one final time. Jerse and Meatball re-enter, casually reflecting on the outcome of the last “experiment”—another world where creations outpaced their creators.
Unfazed, they make adjustments. The variables are reset. The story ends… exactly where it began.
"BRING FORTH THE PSYCHO-CREATIVE MATREIALS!"