The World May be Flat at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

The World May Be Flat is an intimate, two-character drama about survival and everything that comes after. Created from a Pulse survivor’s experience, the play follows Noah, a survivor living in Orlando, as he struggles to process trauma, grief and the increasing pressure to move on ten years later. Now in a relationship with Jagger, a younger partner shaped by a different cultural and political reality, Noah finds himself frozen in amber, caught between the life he lost and the one he is trying to build. Set entirely in their apartment, the play unfolds through sharp, emotionally charged dialogue that blends humor, tension and vulnerability. As the two clash over LGBTQ+ identity, politics and what it means to heal, deeper truths begin to surface—about survivor’s guilt, internalized shame and the isolating experience of carrying trauma in a world that increasingly expects silence.

Rather than revisiting the tragedy itself, The World May Be Flat explores the aftermath; the disorientation of being unable to forget while everything around you moves forward—and what happens when a broader cultural and political climate seeks to silence LGBTQ+ identity altogether. The play explores the meaning of memory and memorialization, giving voice to the burden of carrying grief in a culture where some believe there is a “correct” way to mourn and where expressing that grief on one’s own terms can lead to judgment, silencing and attack.

The play offers no easy answers. Instead, it presents a deeply human portrait inspired by lived experiences. It asks what it means to survive, and what healing looks like when the world has already decided you should be fine.