Between One and Zero - Alaina Hammond

Description

“Reading an Alaina Hammond play is always unsettling, but in a delicious way. It's like sitting across the poker table from a master player. You wonder when she will reveal just what she's holding. The two characters (or maybe it's one?) in Between One and Zero seem so real, and like all of us they seek relief from pain, even the kind that's been carried for a long, long time. The conversation Melba carries on with this interviewer is plausible—too excusable, in fact, for the reader to turn away from and dismiss! And wow, any fan of time travel (I am one!) can find true and clear satisfaction in this quick, fun read.”

—Peter Gould, Ph.D.
Author of Write Naked (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), Burnt Toast (Alfred A. Knopf) and Horse-Drawn Yogurt (Green Writers Press)

A woman is being interviewed for a position she already has. The interviewer keeps coming back to the refrain: Would you be better off somewhere else, AS someone else? Between One and Zero is a shocking psychological and metaphysical drama, in which playwright Alaina Hammond probes Melba’s entire existence. The audience is simultaneously prosecutor and defendant—both Melba, and her “friendly” interrogator.

Praise

“A generation of women would have been saved from unfulfilling marriages if Isaac Asimov had written this dystopian marriage counselling session in time. Now, we have Alaina Hammond to thank for reminding us that we can make choices in life rather than settling for what we have. This consoling exchange pierces through futile efforts to pretend that life can be black-and-white or zero-and-one, instead, reminding us that “forks beget forks.”

—Rebecca Carr
Teaching Fellow in European Studies, Trinity College Dublin

“Alaina Hammond’s short plays are an intriguing blend of contemporary touchstones and quirky humor with a shot of early Theater of the Absurd. They can stand alone, like little windows into ‘Did I hear that right?’ reality, or they can be collected into a wonderful evening of eavesdropping on a world in which threads of conversation lead to spools of tangled relationships and extracted identities.”

—Eric Bass, Co-Founder of Sandglass Theater

About the Playwright

Alaina Hammond is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist. Over fifty of her original plays have been produced off-off Broadway. In 2025, she received Pushcart Prize nominations for “Jane Passes The Bar Exam,” “To Serve In Retail Hell,” “As Numb As I Am,” and “Why I Said What I Said To The Bartender,” and she received Best Microfiction nominations for “Muffin Or Something” and “Wigless.” She is the author of the novelette Jillian, Formerly Known as Frog Girl, and lives in California with her husband and son.