Watch Morgan as Bel in…

Operating Systems

By Gus Schulenberg

When Benita is promoted to CEO of Code Breakers, she’s greeted by two immediate challenges. The first: to address a controversy over rejecting a white student’s application to the program. The second: managing the retirement of Stephen, her mentor and Code Breakers’ charismatic founder. When Jake, an old college friend turned conservative journalist, contacts her for a story, she views the offer as a chance to seize back the narrative. But when Bel, a new Code Breakers employee, accuses Stephen of sexual misconduct, the narrative spins out of her control. One way through the crisis may live in Dani, Benita’s former student and the audience’s intermediary and co-investigator of the difficult truths embedded in the code of the play.

Operating Systems wrestles with how internalized oppression often makes us reinforce oppressive systems even as we work toward justice. In a tokenizing system that often positions oppressed peoples against each other, can the relationships at the heart of the play survive? Is it better to leverage the resources of these systems in service of justice, or to burn the whole thing down?