The story of waking up naked next to someone whose name you don’t know isn’t new. However, Ride, playing at the PCL Studio at the TransAlta Art Barns, uses that story – often presented in a humorous light – to explore something much darker.

Elizabeth (played by Sereana Malani) and Joe (Cole Humeny) are the two individuals in question who’ve spent the night together. Each is intensely lonely or emotionally damaged, and of course has things to do and places to be after spending the night together.  But, the two strangers can’t seem to separate, spending the entire day together, trying to remember how they met,  playing Scrabble, sharing stories about their pasts, and – most centrally – trying to figure out whether or not they actually had sex. Ride not only challenges the “morning after” scenario by not being humorous (as we typically see in movies), but also by not having…