Hello, Hollywood.

50 Hours

In January 2026, Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group hosted its 23rd Annual Drive-By Theatre Festival, a 50-hour sprint in which playwrights write, casts assemble, and companies rehearse and perform entirely original work, with props assigned by lottery.

Douglas Clarke pulled his props (Krispy Kreme paper hats, ski goggles and a desert cap, a "Clayface" action figure with a note in his mouth, a framed picture of a Day of the Dead woman) and started writing. He'd been listening to a podcast the previous day: "Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis" from Your Undivided Attention, aired January 20, 2026. Its discussions hadn't left him.

Anxious Attachment came out of those 50 hours. So did Something Ancient, written by Michael Silva, participating in the same festival, with his own lottery props: a briefcase with keys, plastic grapes, two laser pointers, and an Eiffel Tower statue with a hidden knife built in.

Once both writers had put their first strokes to paper, Douglas and Michael headed to a cafe to start writing in earnest. Over the following 24 hours they traded pages and checked each other's work until both plays were finished.

Two plays. Two families. Written simultaneously in Los Angeles in one day. That's the inception.

The Desert

Anxious Attachment didn't stop at ZJU. Actor Cameron Gregg brought it to the Bombay Beach Biennale, a contemporary art event held at Bombay Beach, a ghost town on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea in Southern California.

Gregg, who had played Cameron in the original production, stepped into the director's chair for the Biennale and also played the role of Tyler. Tarcila Neves joined the cast as Leila, and created the artwork that became the visual identity of the show.

The audience sat outside under string lights, in the ruins of a former resort, watching a play about what happens when someone offers their deepest vulnerabilities to a technology designed to soothe them. Performing under the isolated desert sky made everything hit differently.

The Double Feature

After the Biennale, the question became: what next? The two plays had been born at the same festival, written independently, about completely different families in completely different situations, and yet they shared something.

Both were about what tears a family apart. Both asked what steps into the gap. One went dark and intimate. The other went strange and wide. Together they gave an audience the full spectrum of what family does to us.

The idea of packaging them as a double feature came naturally. One hour. Two plays. One ticket. The double feature debuted as a preview run at Zombie Joe's Underground in North Hollywood, June 4 through 7, before its full Hollywood Fringe run at McCadden Place Theatre, presented by Zombie Joe's Underground and Razorwire Productions.

Both plays born in 50 hours in North Hollywood. Now debuting as a double feature at its home base before going over the hill into Hollywood.