In David Ives' “Sure Thing” and “Foreplay, or The Art of The Fugue” Ives uses many overlapping elements, including linguistic determinism to illustrate similar and alternate realities, the use of stock character types, repetitiveness, audio cues, and humor both relatable and otherwise. All of these devices combine to create elements of absurdity. Ives uses absurdity alongside themes of dating and sexual tension to make a commentary about these situations, as well as to create a fantastic comedic setting for his intellectual tomfoolery. In viewing these two plays, regardless if it is as a reader or an audience member, it is easy to recognize these overlapping themes that are unique to Ives. In this essay I will compare “Sure thing” and “Foreplay,…show more content… Traces of it can be found in most of his plays, and “Sure Thing” and “Foreplay” are no exceptions to this. In “Sure Thing”, we have multiple realities of a couple's first (and in some realities, last) conversation playing out. The same actors are kept for Bill and Betty, and these characters remain the same for the most part. The same actors are kept, the same attitudes remain in how they interact. It is mainly reactions and integral facts that are altered in Bill and Betty's character. In “Foreplay”, however, we are given an insight to three different realities where it is left ambiguous as to whether we are viewing three different potentials. The actors themselves change, names change, integral life facts also change, yet we and the characters are left with an odd sense of Deja Vu as we watch the same date play out three times in unison. We are left wondering if Chuck, Chuck II, and Chuck III are all the same Chuck or perhaps three different men named Chuck who are remarkably similar and all on dates with remarkably similar women. Are Amy, Annie, and Alma three different women on an unfortunate first date? Or are they different potentials of the same woman for Chuck? Are they dating different Chucks or the same, singular Chuck who implements the same mini-golf pick-up game? It is unrealistic to believe that these lines would honestly work on three individual women. The audience is meant to pick up on precisely that as one