Hello economics comedy friends and fans! (This post is duplicated on my Substack, which is very occasional and always completely free!)

In the next few years we’re going to be hearing a lot about Keynes’s hundred-year-old essay “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren” (1930), which predicted vastly higher living standards for much of humanity (correct!), a fifteen-hour workweek (not quite!), and a society that will “prefer the good to the useful… and honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well”—which sounds promising for economics comedy, and also for my latest endeavor: Seize The Initiative!, a romantic comedy that will premiere at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival July 26 – Aug 4.

The director is Fringe audience-choice-award-winner Josh Patterson. There are five great actors. (Not me, I’m the playwright!) There’s lots more info, including a link to the full script, at what may be the best vanity URL ever: Yoram-Com.com. And there’s a truly awesome poster. (Copied below, along with a 60-second ad-style summary.)

Want to support the play? Tell everyone you know in Utah to come see it, and help promote @SeizeSLC if you spend time on social media. And if you’re not in SLC, well, for just $50 I will mail you a beautiful 11 x 17 show poster(international shipping is more, or maybe it’s easier to just print it yourself!); for $150 the cast will sign your poster (or you can upsize to a 14 x 22 “window card”-sized poster or get a signed copy of my Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change); for $500 you can get your name on the truly awesome poster as a supporter; and for considerably more we can bring the show to you! (We’re exploring shows around Utah and Idaho, on the west coast, on the east coast… and anywhere in between, so let’s talk! yoram@standupeconomist.com, 206-351-5719, and PS I’m @standupecon on Venmoand am grateful for any and all support!) Oh, and I should mention that for the $500 I’ll also do my best to have you listed as a co-producer if and when the play becomes a Major Motion Picture: if I walk the red carpet, you walk the red carpet! (This “seed round” funding opportunity ends soon! Co-producer opportunities will cost more once we’re wowing them at the Vermillion Film Festival 🙂

You can also help by hiring me to do economics comedy—which now includes hilarious stories about the lucrative world of theater productions!—at your school or corporate event. Economics comedy has always been a niche market, and I’m still trying to recover from the pandemic-induced slump, but hope springs eternal that both the play and my comedy will turn out to be handy at that can’t-come-soon-enough moment when, as Keynes writes, “for the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

60-second-ad-style summary: 

  1. Close-up on SAUL: “I meet hundreds of women every day…”
  2. Zoom out to show that SAUL is wearing a campaign sandwich board and speaking at a campaign training session: “It’s like speed dating.”
  3. Different camera angle, still on SAUL: “At best, you could meet the love of your life…”
  4. Cut to GRACE, who (with NIKKI) is waiting to enter a concert venue and is speaking to SAUL, who is collecting signatures from them: “We’ve got an extra ticket to the show, want to come?”
  5. Cut to NIKKI, responding to GRACE: “Wait, you’re inviting Jimmy John to join us?”
  6. Back to SAUL at the training session: “…at worst, you might find someone you can  rope into volunteering for the campaign.”
  7. Cut to GRACE, flirting with SAUL outside the concert venue: “I would like to see what you look like without a sandwich board.”
  8. Cut to SAUL, responding to GRACE: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to see what you look like with a sandwich board.”
  9. Voice-over narrator: Directed by Great Salt Lake Fringe audience-choice-award-winner Josh Patterson…
  10.  Cut to KATHERINE, speaking to SAUL: “I know, I know. You’re just putting the ‘action’ into climate action.”
  11. Voice-over narrator: Seize The Initiative! is a romantic comedy about falling in love…
  12. Cut to LANCE, at a wedding giving a toast: “I recently had a vasectomy…”
  13. Voice-over narrator: …with democracy.
  14. Cut to KATHERINE, speaking to GRACE and SAUL: “This campaign is doomed.”
  15. Voice-over narrator: Coming July 26 to the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival.
  16. Cut to NIKKI, speaking with GRACE: You know how some men, they’re only after one thing? [GRACE murmurs in assent.] What if signature-gathering is his one thing?