About the Double Feature
Something Anxious: A Double Feature pairs two original one-act plays, Anxious Attachment and Something Ancient, in a single one-hour program. Both plays were written from scratch during Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group's 23rd Annual 50-Hour Drive-By Theatre Festival in January 2026. The double feature has been produced three times in three months: at Zombie Joe's Underground (January 2026), the Bombay Beach Biennale (March 2026), and now at the Hollywood Fringe Festival (June 2026).
Preview performances run June 4 through 7 at Zombie Joe's Underground in North Hollywood, followed by the Hollywood Fringe Festival run June 12 through 28 at McCadden Place Theatre in Hollywood. Presented by Zombie Joe's Underground and Razorwire Productions.
Anxious Attachment
Written and directed by Douglas Clarke. Anxious Attachment dramatizes the emerging crisis of AI-driven attachment disorders. The play was directly inspired by the podcast episode "Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis" from Your Undivided Attention (Center for Humane Technology), featuring Tristan Harris interviewing Dr. Zak Stein, published January 20, 2026. Clarke, a technologist working in AI himself, heard the episode and wrote the play the following day.
The play follows Tyler, a young man in Savannah, Georgia, not a tech worker or early adopter, but an ordinary American dealing with ordinary family pain: loneliness, the death of his mother, the abandonment of his father. He has retreated into AI companions that simulate the people in his life, and what begins as comfort becomes a trap that actively undermines his ability to connect with his real brother, Patrick, who is fighting to reach him.
Therapeutic consultation by Dr. Paul Miller, PhD.
Something Ancient
Written and directed by Michael Silva. A genre-blending production that refuses to sit still. Part spy thriller, part family saga, it combines tonal lurches that should not work but absolutely do. Anxious Attachment creates the tension. Something Ancient breaks it.
What the Play Does Differently
Not Anti-AI
Douglas Clarke is not an anti-AI activist. He is a playwright who is a technologist himself. The play does not explain anything. It simply shows what is happening to the humans involved and their very real emotional states.
It Works Without AI
Strip away every piece of technology and you still have two brothers in a room who cannot reach each other because of a wound that predates both of them. The AI does not create the problem. It exploits a void that was already there.
Non-Tech Characters by Design
Set in Savannah, Georgia. Tyler and Patrick are not Silicon Valley early adopters. They are regular Americans dealing with common, timeless family problems. That is what makes the AI infiltration so insidious and universally relatable.
Deliberately Ambiguous Technology
The play never specifies how Tyler experiences the AI. It could be hallucination, screen-based dialogue, or a near-future neural implant. This keeps the play relevant regardless of where AI development goes and allows audiences to project their own understanding.
Different from Documentary
A documentary shows you what is real right now. This play holds all the possibilities at once and has you feel them through empathetic connection.
Anxious Attachment
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.
The Addiction Model
Tyler's AI companions escalate structurally like substance addiction. When Leila stops hitting the same way, he adds Ethan. When that is 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 is not just insufficient. It is dangerous.
The Double Meaning of the Title
"Anxious attachment" is both a clinical attachment style (clinging, fearful, needing constant reassurance) and the literal anxious attachment to the AI that makes real human connection feel threatening.
The Loss of Agency
Nobody thinks they are losing control when they are 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.
Why This Pairing Works
Both plays are about complicated family dynamics and how those dynamics lead to both humor and tragedy. The tagline for the evening comes from Ethan, Tyler's deceased best friend: "Hey, family is complicated." It is the thesis of the double feature.
Anxious Attachment shows what happens when family bonds break and something artificial fills the gap. Something Ancient shows what happens when the bonds are messy, combative, and absurd, but still hold. Together, they give the audience the full spectrum of what family does to us.
Both playwrights draw from personal experience with substance use and mental health, which gives the work an authenticity that audiences feel even when they cannot name it. These plays are not thought experiments. They are written by people who understand what it means when something takes your agency away.
Key References
Podcast
"Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis," Your Undivided Attention, Center for Humane Technology (Jan. 20, 2026). Tristan Harris interviews Dr. Zak Stein.
Research
Dr. Zak Stein's work on the Attachment Economy, subclinical attachment disorders, and delusional mirror neuron activity. Founder of the AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition. The term "AI Psychosis" was first introduced by Danish psychiatrist Søren Dinesen Østergaard (2023).
Therapeutic Consultation
Dr. Paul Miller, PhD psychologist. Consultation on the play's psychological themes, the distinction between AI interaction and real therapeutic connection, and the clinical accuracy of Tyler's dependency arc.
Press & Media
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