The moment I've chosen to discuss is in scene six, when Fountainhead has just returned to the chat room for a second time, and the others on the chat room are giving him tough love. Haikumom, Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders go on a tangent about how slogans can be a useful tool to help stay positive. While this chat is going on between the online personas, Elliot's reality shows up on stage. He's at a boxing gym, punching a bag. However, while he boxes the ghost haunts him repeating the phrase, "Momken men-fadluck ted-dini gawaz saffari?"
Hudes picks an interesting moment here for the two worlds to intersect, however the text makes perfect sense of this moment. In the script, the online characters are talking about slogans to help them fight off their addictions and in this same moment we see Elliot literally fighting off his demons by boxing. As the crack addicts go through their slogans, Elliot is saying to himself, "Your leg feels great. Your leg feels like a million bucks. No pain. No pain." He's repeating his own slogans. This moment is also especially significant, because we find out later that Elliot is still struggling with painkillers. So although these characters are existing in separate worlds, they're both using slogans to fight off addiction and defeat their demons.
I think the UP "to defeat the demon" would work well for this play, because each individual is dealing with his or her past. This intersectional choice reflects this in terms of several characters in the play. They are take whatever measures they deem necessary to survive, whether it be sarcastic banter in a chat room, or punching a boxing bag. We know that the crack addicts are always struggling with the cravings of their addiction, but this moment provides unique symbolism for Elliot's addiction by physicalizing it with his leg injury. Instead of saying outrightly that he's fighting it Hudes says in the stage directions, "Elliot punches harder. His leg is starting to bother him." which sticks to the UP "to defeat the demon" and shows the struggle in a different way.
To add a layer to your UP, I think one could almost say the demon is denial. Fountainhead is in denial that he has an addiction, Chutes & Ladders is in denial that he doesn't need outside contact/friends, and Elliot is in denial a) that his leg hurts in your boxing example and b) that he had a pain medication problem. It almost seems that the addiction of doing drugs is then replaced by the addiction of denial. You want to constantly fight and say that you're ok, you don't need help, but the struggle of denial is just as real as the struggle of drug use. Although Hudes created two distinct worlds (the "real" world and the chatroom world), in this scene I think she's trying to show that they aren't that far off.
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