GROUP CHAT Episode Eight

Can you get the CIA to fund poets again?

Previously on GROUP CHAT: The cast receives the results of the GROUP CHAT Viewer Survey, the GROUP CHAT Stalker returns, and one beloved cast member takes his final bow.

This week: Who does James work for?

In 1951, George de Mohrenschildt, a recently naturalized US citizen born and raised in Russian Belarus, settled with his third wife in Dallas, Texas to pursue a career as a geologist in the petroleum industry. Over the next decade, de Mohrenschildt established himself as a fixture of both the local oil industry and the local Russian-American community. In 1962, a colleague introduced him to Marina Oswald, another recent Russian immigrant to the area, and her husband, Lee. At the end of his life, de Mohrenschildt would reach out to his friend George H. W. Bush to explain that the CIA had engaged him to monitor Lee, then deceased and immortalized in American mythology as the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

How often are the people we meet and befriend secretly working on behalf of the United States government? This week, the members of the GROUP CHAT cast ask themselves this very question.

The beginning of the week finds James frustrated about a recent post by emerging writer Mariah Kreutter:

Later, Ross and Audrey address his comments on last week’s episode, in which he revealed his behind-the-scenes attempts to orchestrate a romance between them:

As the week progresses, some suspicions about James’ ministrations, and the motives behind them, begin to arise:

Finally, an anonymous respondent to the GROUP CHAT Viewer Survey provides some shocking revelations about James’ time at Iowa, and raises some unsettling questions:

Is there more to James’ relationship with the family behind the Merril Lynch financial empire? Is UFO research secretly funding students of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop? Will Ross and Audrey ever go on a real date? Only the coming episodes of GROUP CHAT will yield these privileged secrets, so tune in next week to hear them first!

GROUP CHAT is a production of Grey Fiction Media. All episodes are written, directed, edited, and produced by Stephen Piccarella. All original music by Sebastian Castillo.