The Omniscient Bus

A note from the Director

‘But I’m ten years old.’ This is the best line to summarize many’s mentality dealing with many of the current events nowadays. The complete unknown, the utter nihilism. Yes. A ten-year-old child shouldn’t have dealt with the world falling apart, neither should a twenty-year-old college student, or even a seventy-year-old retired grandparent. Ever since the beginning of the 21st century, there’s an idea of lingering panic surrounding our society – will the world end? If so, when will that happen? 
The Omniscient Bus is a student co-written work about how humans combat the transient changes in their lives. Set in the scaring future, the Children from the well-known kids’s show/children’s book – the Magical School Bus – are being teleported by the Bus into different futuristic times. During this ‘field trip’, they were learning the problems, and were maybe prepared to solve someas well. 
Seeing elementary school student being forced to teleported into different futuristic worlds and deal with a crippling apocalypse is a rather uncomfortable feeling – being too young and too naive to handle those big topics, they are forced to take in too much responsibility from our world. Similar with this experience, each and every one of us now live in a world filled with constant changes, with everything and nothing happening around at the same time. Within this world, it’s hard for us to learn how to navigatethrough life, as kids, as young adults, or even as full grown-ups.
When my dear friend Emery first talked about this play with me in the spring, I remember myself thinking ‘there is never a play like this one’. Though imagined something completely different when I first heard about the concept, I don’t wish to change a single bit of what we have today. I thank Emery for their beautiful mind everyday, without your work, we will never see something as special. Whenever I step into the rehearsal room, I am always in awe of our writers, for putting your hearts and souls in this special work. Truly, there is never a play formatted and weaved the works from a collective in such clever way. I wish this play could be an opportunity for everyone involved to reflect and think. I wish this play leads to new ideas, discussions, or even debates.
Here, I want to take one last chance to thank all our casts, our writers, our crews, the Bluejay board members, everyone who ever helped this production, and everyone who’s watching it right now. I sincerely hope this production could become something as special as it is to me for all of you. A simple ‘thank you’ feels like an insufficient way to express how grateful I am to you all. This production won’t be an extravagant flaming piece of art today without everyone here to add the firewoods. Without the entire village’s hard work, theater will never be as great. Thank you, thank you, and THANK YOU. 

一人难挑千斤担，众人能移万座山。我今与君歌一曲，请君为我倾耳听。
祝愿大家永远热爱舞台、热爱剧场。我此时此刻于家中真挚地爱且感谢着你们。

NOW, WHO’S DRIVING THIS GODDAMN BUS?!?

– Emie Liu ’27, Director

A note from the Playwright

A year ago this week, Trump was elected for his second term in office. It felt like a doomsday event. Ican recall when one of my educator friends described children crying that morning, confused and upset over the election and resulting panic. This same person, incredibly upset herself, struggled to console them. It made me question: how can we help the next generations fight against fascism when we ourselves are bearers of Nihilism?
This is one of the questions I asked the other writers of The Omniscient Bus this summer when we sat down to write this show. (I had been upset about the lack of voice Emerson College gives tostudent playwrights, so I invited five other playwrights to work on a short play festival with me. This is no ordinary play festival though – it’s an omnibus! A true experiment in theatrical collaboration.) As we built the world of this play, we came to realize that the apocalypse we were trying to capture was a parallel of our own reality – one filled with AI and consumerism and doomscrolling and interpersonal conflict.
I hope you enjoy this show, despite any impending doom. I hope you can find joy in collaborative artmaking and experimentation. I am honored to have made this show alongside some of myclosest friends – thank you Lily, Emma, Kelly, and Lizzie for encouraging me throughout this process. Thank YOU for supporting our experiment, and remember to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

I KEEP TRYING. I THINK ABOUT MY MOM… I THINK ABOUT MY FRIENDS…

– Emery Frost ’27, Creator & Playwright