COLE PORTER IS MY IMAGINARY VR BOYFRIEND

COLE PORTER IS MY IMAGINARY VR BOYFRIEND is a small-cast, darkly comic synth-pop musical about a simulated boyfriend experience—in which the boyfriend is a college-aged Cole Porter, and the simulation's creator is a heartbroken, 31-year-old gay VR programmer named Sam. In the wake of a devastating breakup, Sam spends his days working from his empty apartment, coding, looking for an escape. When Sam suddenly learns that his great-great uncle Stanley went to Yale in 1909, the same year as his songwriter ex-boyfriend Christian's idol Cole Porter, he begins to wonder: what if Stanley knew Cole Porter? Did they kiss? Did they fuck? Did they fall in love??? Using an algorithm that can track the relationship between two characters in a video game, graphic assets from his coworkers, and AI to generate Cole Porter’s dialogue, Sam sets out to find out. Sam’s VR project begins as a collection of bad graphics and glitchy dead-end conversation trees. But it grows into something more and more realistic, magical; a musical, colorful world—like something out of a Baz Luhrmann film. As we shift between the real world and this fantastical one, we learn more about Sam and his ex boyfriend, the difficulties that led to their breakup and how, with Cole, he can wash over the incompatibilities and mistakes he made that led to pain. VR Cole shows nothing but love and acceptance toward Stanley/Sam. He’s a perfect, musical, unconditionally supportive boyfriend. But the lines between Sam and Stanley, and Cole and Christian, begin to blur. Cole begins to behave more like Christian without Sam even realizing it. Sam spends more and more time in the game, neglecting work, friends and family. The VR, AI-powered Cole Porter is his only reliable source of comfort and connection. As time goes on and Sam becomes increasingly addicted to the VR, spending nearly all his time with Cole, suddenly a glitch causes the game to reset. Cole vanishes. It’s all over. Sam is left alone in his empty apartment, weeks of simulated romance gone. And it finally hits Sam how far he’s fallen. He breaks down. It’s the most human experience and he feels it full force. But it is exactly what he needs to do—and exactly what he’s been avoiding—to let him begin to move on and heal. We're going for queer historical fiction meets a BLACK MIRROR episode meets a gay pop concert. The score samples, reinterprets, and recontextualizes some of Cole Porter’s music—glitchy hyperpop meets Troye Sivan or Sam Smith-style gay synth-pop meets piano pastiche in the form of easter egg references to Porter’s songs, including his very early work written in college. Niche and hyperspecific as it may be, it’s a deeply human story about heartbreak and the extreme paths we’ll take to escape the pain of reality. It’s a show for anyone who has been in love and lost.