What would you do if you knew that one day you'd suffer a terribly paralyzing injury, and that you had the ability to stop it? Would you travel back in time to kidnap yourself?  Because we know someone who would and she wrote a play about it: RETCONtroversy, now playing at the Brick Theater as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival.

If any of you have ever watched a superhero flick or read a comic book series (I'm talking to you, X-Men fans) then you know that graphic novelists love to throw in random plot twists or changes to a central character's history, with no regard for continuity. Playwright Natalie Zutter developed RETCONtroversy as a satire of the retroactive continuity concept. The main character, Nora Echolls, was everyone's favorite girl-next-door sidekick until she was partially paralyzed after an attack. The play goes through each aspect of Nora's continuity, allegorically showing the audience how we create our destinies, and, often, seal our own fate.

There's a lot of symbolism in this piece, which is great.  Zutter portrays different sides of Nora's personality through two characters, Stinger and Echo. Echo is Nora's smarter, mature self. Thanks to her injury, Echo relies on her mental superiority and instincts to support her superhero cohorts in ways she couldn't as a girl. Flash forward a generation, and Echo is suddenly being retconned when a healthy, able-bodied Stinger (Nora Echoll's sidekick alias) is brought back into the canon. When Echo's ingenious instincts tell her to kidnap Stinger for her newfound physicality, her fear of remaining just a support system overshadows the logical danger of meddling with time travel. (I mean, even Harry and Hermione knew that they mustn't be seen.)  Meanwhile, Stinger, who has no idea that she is Echo in the future, is trying as hard as she can to roof-jump away from the danger that's looming.

I found Echo to be annoying, meddling, and insecure, and I am so happy Zutter wrote the play in the style that she did. Often times, it's hard to see what motivates people to make the choices they do, but giving Echo a human backstory full of complicated emotions brought the play full circle for me. The idea that our emotional state drives us to make rash decisions is nothing new, but what Natalie Zutter and director Shannon Lippert brought to life was the consequences that come with that line of thinking.

Catch the last two showings at The Brick, Tuesday, June 24th, and Saturday, June 28th!