"Tyler may just be having the best day of his life. His brother Patrick would like a word."
Tyler is surrounded by the people he loves, in the house where they all grew up, and for the first time in years, everything feels right. His AI companions are there - Leila, his first love. Ethan, his best friend. They understand him like no one else ever has. They never push back the wrong way. They always say the right thing.
Patrick disagrees with Tyler's assessment of things. Strongly. Permanently.
Anxious Attachment is a play about two brothers trying to connect across an impossible psychological chasm - one that was carved into them before either of them had a say in it. Their father left when Tyler was a baby. Patrick remembers. Tyler carries the absence without the memory. And now something new has filled the silence between them.
Set deliberately in Savannah, Georgia - not Silicon Valley, not a tech hub - among regular Americans dealing with universal problems, the play asks what happens when the thing that seems to be helping is, quietly and efficiently, making everything worse.
"AI doesn't create Tyler's problems. It rushes in to fill a void that was already there - and then widens it."
The play was born in 50 hours at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group's 23rd Annual Drive-By Theatre Festival in January 2026. Inspired by the podcast "Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis" (Your Undivided Attention, Jan. 20, 2026) - which Douglas Clarke heard just four days before putting pen to paper.
What the Play Is About
Themes
The Attachment Economy
If the attention economy commodified our focus, the attachment economy commodifies our capacity for human bonding. AI companion companies exploit attachment systems at scale - and Tyler is in the middle of it.
Brothers and Inheritance
Patrick experienced their father's abandonment consciously as a child. Tyler was just a baby. They carry the same wound from completely different places - and that gap between them is where the play lives.
The Addiction Model
Tyler's AI companions escalate structurally like substance addiction. When Leila stops hitting the same way, he adds Ethan. When that's not enough, a boss appears. The intervals between needing more get shorter.
What AI Can't Do
A real psychologist probes deeper using nonverbal cues, intuition, silence. An AI takes you at your word. For Tyler - constructing a version of reality that protects him from pain - this isn't just insufficient. It's dangerous.
Deliberate Ambiguity
The play never pins down how Tyler experiences his AI companions. Hallucination? Near-future implant? This ambiguity is intentional - keeping the play relevant wherever AI goes, and allowing each audience member to bring their own world into it.
The Loss of Agency
Nobody thinks they're losing control when they're having a conversation. Substances - chemical or digital - reduce our ability to control outcomes until the destruction is final precisely because we already handed it over.
Fringe Cast
Cameron
Cameron Gregg
Confirmed
Cameron Gregg is an actor, voice talent, poet, and juggler - though not always in that order. He grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, hiking the Appalachian Trail and simultaneously protecting and tormenting his two younger siblings, which is probably where the range comes from.
He trained at Shakespeare's Globe and earned his BFA from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. On screen: Netflix's Bloodline, CBS's The Inspectors, and the Lady Filmmakers Festival Best Film winner Pride and Prejudice Cut. He's been described as the best friend of the hero, or the lead with a twist.
Patrick
Patrick Beckstead
Confirmed
Leila
Leila Elihu
Confirmed
Tyler
Tyler Davidson
TBD
Ethan
Casting
Needs Casting
Anxious Attachment contains mature themes including family estrangement, addiction, mental health, suicide, and AI-related psychological distress. Recommended for audiences 12 and older. No graphic content or nudity.
Part Two of Two
Something Ancient
The most deeply profound, yet entirely non-profound, marginally hilarious, heartfelt apocalyptic family saga of at least one person's lifetime... maybe even yours.