A Conversation with Playwright/Composer Stephen Gilbane, "Lost Cellphone Weekend," Write Act Repertory at the Brickhouse Theatre, by James Scarborough

In "Lost Cellphone Weekend," Emmy Award-winning composer Stephen Gilbane adapts Billy Wilder's noir classic about alcoholism into a dark comedy about our addiction to screens. The premise is simple: Don Birnam spends a weekend without his phone, making audiences face their own tech habits.

Gilbane's musical, directed by Darrin Yalacki, uses film noir's shadowy style to show our dependence on technology. The production explores how technology has changed our relationships and identities.

The work stands out for its self-awareness - a noir parody about artists who think their art can fix society. This meta-commentary enriches what could be a simple critique of digital life. By asking "Can you survive a weekend offline?", Gilbane invites audiences not just to laugh at Don's withdrawal symptoms but to see themselves in his struggle.

The musical balances serious themes with humor, promising an engaging 80-minute journey through our tech-obsessed culture while showing the human need for connection that drives our screen use.

Below follows an email conversation with Stephen Gilbane.

JS: Your musical transposes the addiction narrative from Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend" from alcohol to social media. What specific parallels did you find between these two dependencies that made this adaptation feel urgent for contemporary audiences?

SG: The initial idea for this came to me back in 2015, when articles were just starting to come out on how cellphone apps had this alarming addictive quality.  Since then, of course, there have been academic studies confirming that these apps have been specifically designed to trigger dopamine centers of our brain, so as to keep users glued to their sites.  Even entire podcasts (for example, “Offline with Jon Favreau”) have popped up devoted to exploring dangerous implications of this scourge.  I have been a big fan of noir forever, and “The Lost Weekend” was Hollywood’s first serious look at alcohol addiction, so at some point, I thought, what if we were to re-tell that story but adapted to this new addiction?

JS: The show is described as a "noir parody." How do you balance honoring the conventions of film noir while simultaneously using them to critique modern digital culture? Does the noir aesthetic offer particular advantages for telling this story?

SG: The hope is that an unlikely mash-up between the noir storytelling, Broadway musical styles, and modern digital technology would be incongruous enough to generate humor that would shake folks up without being didactic.  As you said, the story is fairly simple, and it was fairly straightforward to adapt Don’s journey to today’s digital addiction.

JS: Your background includes composing for film and improvisation work. How did these experiences influence your approach to creating music that captures both the psychological turmoil of digital withdrawal and the stylistic elements of noir?

SG: Film composers and improv music directors both must be able to pull from any style, ideally, to suit the project or improvised scene.  To that end, I’ve studied noir composers like Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa, to be able to tap that sound for suspense/horror films and improv style parodies I’ve worked on.  For this show, I literally took some of Rozsa’s cues and wrote & orchestrated my own take on each one, to try to infuse the show with that distinctive “Noir” sound.  It’s a fascinating musical style!

JS: The press materials mention this is a "cautionary tale" and a "parody on artists' that try to singlehandedly solve social problems through their writings." Is this self-referential? To what extent do you see theater and musical storytelling as vehicles for social change versus entertainment?

SG: Yes, there’s more than a little self-parody in the framing story of the writers who are creating the noir adaptation.  There can be a knee-jerk response of creators to write simple morality tales to rail against whatever societal ill is offending them; I wanted to make fun of that while acknowledging the very real social problem.

JS: In developing Don Birnam's character, how did you approach making his struggle with technology addiction relatable while avoiding either demonizing technology or trivializing addiction?

SG: Hopefully, by focusing on the relationships that are being ignored or abandoned (as in alcoholism) as a result of the addiction.  This was especially one of the goals of the framing story of the writer and his daughter.

JS: How did you collaborate with director Darrin Yalacki and choreographer Misty West to physicalize the abstract concept of digital dependency? What staging challenges did this present?

SG: Since I’m on the East Coast, I was available for questions on Zoom from Darrin, but ultimately he and the choreographer handled those issues themselves independently. 

This production has been a very fruitful way of seeing how this in-development script and score are interpreted without the writer/composer breathing down the neck of the director.  Plus, the production in Lowell, MA, last year was enthusiastically received, and with the alterations to the script made, (with dramaturgical guidance from Tamra Pica of Write Act) for this production, I’m excited to see this new version put up on its feet.  The hope of myself and the folks at Write Act is that this whole process will strengthen the show as a whole.

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30PM and Sundays at 2:00PM, April 5 through April 27, 2025 (no shows on Easter Sunday April 20). Tickets are $25 general admission, $20 for students/seniors/union members with ID. The Write Act Repertory at the Brickhouse Theatre is located at 10950 Peach Grove Street, North Hollywood, California 91601. For more information, click here and here.