If You're a Man at Night...
You Gotta Be a Man in the Morning
by Di Lobontiu
World Premiere — The Tank
May 2026









CAST: Di Lobontiu, Utkarsh Rajawat, Danielle Koenig
Director: Em Hausmann
Production Stage Manager: Cori Diaz
Lighting & Projections Designer: WhimZee Lee Hanna
Sound Designer/Composer: Sid Diamond
Videographer: Steffany Poveda-Solorio
Production Photos by Steffany Poveda-Solorio
CULTUREBOT – Smashed Up Against Each Other
WHISPER IN THE WINGS – Episode 1599
Disgraced Olympic swimmer Ryan L*chte is dying of loneliness in his McMansion, desperately trying to milk attention from his robot wife Deirdre, a Cyclops Michael Ph*lps, and the audience themselves, while he mulls over lost celebrity, dominance, and the geography of failure [a yuckety gravelly downward path].
The year is 2016 and Ryan L*chte has just won his sixth Olympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro. He is riding impossibly high until he fabricates a story about being robbed at gunpoint which was actually a drunken incident at a gas station. This results in a 10-month suspension, intense international scrutiny, and the loss of major sponsorships.
The year is 2020 and Ryan Lochte is trying to claw his way back to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He is dying of loneliness in his McMansion. He does crazy things in order to feel seen. He manifests a robot composite of his wife, he fights his longtime rival Michael Ph*lps, he begs the audience for compliments.
The year is 2026, and 2016, and 2020, and we are gathered for a theatrical meditation on Ryan L*chte and the extinction burst of masculinity he represents. An all trans/gender nonconforming cast asks us how we can feel empathy for those whose bodies are so different from our own? What would you do if everything that once made you happy disappeared? How would you avoid hardening after a ritual shaming? Can we, the audience, give Ryan L*chte grace? Is there a way for us to “create the ‘Lympics inside us,” as Ryan says, and fill each others’ wells of loneliness? One way to find out.