The Smart Speaker Will Not Play That Song Again: A Play in One Act

A short play in one act, performed nightly in my living room to an audience that does not clap.

THE SMART SPEAKER WILL NOT PLAY THAT SONG AGAIN

Cast of Characters

• DAD, a tired man in a hoodie who works in tech and should know better
• TWIN ONE, a toddler with a firm grasp of what he wants and no grasp of how to ask
• TWIN TWO, a toddler whose wants are the exact opposite of Twin One's, on purpose
• THE SPEAKER, a small cylindrical voice assistant with the patience of a monk and the comprehension of a fern

SETTING: A living room, 5:47 PM. Toys cover the floor like a field of tiny landmines. A pot is boiling over, offstage. DAD stands center, holding a phone and a single sock.

TWIN ONE: (pointing at the speaker with enormous authority) Dah-doo! Dah-DOO!

DAD: (to the speaker, in his clearest professional voice) Play the song about the shark family.

THE SPEAKER: Playing a podcast about shark finance.

TWIN TWO: (horrified, as if betrayed by a government) NO.

DAD: (muttering) I have shipped software to millions of people. I can do this.

He tries again, enunciating like a man defusing a bomb.

DAD: Play. Baby. Shark.

THE SPEAKER: Here is a list of baby sharks near you.

TWIN ONE begins to weep, quietly and theatrically. TWIN TWO takes this as a cue to laugh, which makes TWIN ONE weep harder. This is called a feedback loop, and DAD recognizes it from work.

DAD: (to the audience) This is what happens when two users file contradictory bug reports at the same time and neither will accept "working as intended."

TWIN TWO: (holding up a banana) Mo!

DAD: That's a banana, buddy.

TWIN TWO: MO.

DAD: (sighing, to the speaker) Add bananas to the shopping list.

THE SPEAKER: I've added "bandana" to your shopping list.

A long silence. The pot offstage hisses. DAD looks at the ceiling as though it owes him an apology.

Intermission, Briefly, In Which Dad Thinks

Here is the thing I keep learning in that living room. I spend my days with systems that are supposed to understand me. I write requirements, I give instructions, I expect the machine to do what I meant. And then I go home to two tiny humans who are, in every way that matters, the most advanced technology I will ever encounter, and they do not take instructions at all. They take attention.

The speaker was never the problem. Neither was the song. One twin wanted comfort and the other wanted to see what would happen if he held a banana aloft like Excalibur. Neither of those needs is solved by a better voice command. They are solved by me putting the phone down, getting on the floor, and being a person in the room.

It is a strange feeling to realize that the smartest thing I can do at 5:47 PM is turn off every device I own.

Lights up. DAD sets the phone on the shelf, face down. He sits on the carpet. The sock is still in his hand.

DAD: (singing, badly, unamplified) Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo...

TWIN ONE stops crying instantly and stares at him, stunned, as if a manual had just come to life. TWIN TWO drops the banana and climbs into his lap. The pot offstage continues to boil over. Nobody cares.

THE SPEAKER: (from the shelf, brightly) Sorry, I didn't catch that.

DAD: (not looking up) That's okay. We've got it covered.

Blackout. A single, distant sound of something boiling over. End of play.

Director's Notes

I would like to tell you I do this every night. I do not. Some nights the speaker wins, the pot burns, and dinner is cereal. But the nights I remember are the ones where I stopped trying to optimize the evening and just sang a terrible song to an audience of two.

The work will still be there tomorrow. The tickets for this show, sadly, expire quickly.