The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe is a one-woman seriocomedy show performed by Lily Tomlin and written by Jane Wagner. Debuting in 1985, Tomlin plays Trudy, a homeless bag lady who has contact with aliens studying the people of Earth, and who, thanks to alien technology, has telepathic flashbacks into various people's lives over the 70s and early 80s, as the characters reflect on life, work, relationships, and feminism.
A 2022 Revival has the show performed by Cecily Strong.
Tropes in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe:
- Adaptation Distillation: The 2022 run cuts the 2-hour time down to about 90 minutes.
- Bourgeois Bohemian: Lyn and Bob are interested feminism and holistic living but are are rather high earners.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Inverted. Chrissy had contemplated committing suicide but was too afraid. She wishes she had the courage to do it, but then thinks if she had that courage, her life would be worth living.
- Catchphrase Insult: Agnus's insult for everyone is "speck", or "microspeck" when she really means it.
- Child Prodigy: Edie and Marge's (and Rick's) son is a violin prodigy who played Carnegie Hall.
- Fantastic Anthropologist: The aliens are studying Earthlings to see if they show any signs of intelligence
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Chrissy has contemplated suicide and even wrote a note, but didn't go through with it. The note is later found by Kate, who found it oddly uplifting and inspirational.
- Greek Chorus: Trudy fills the role, explaining how the aliens are studying people on Earth and using her as a liaison to make contact with various people to study.
- Hairy Girl: Edie.Lyn: Is that Spanish moss?
- Humans Through Alien Eyes:
- The aliens don't understand art, or the human idea of art. Trudy says they have trouble distinguishing between a can of soup, and an Andy Warhol painting of a can of soup.
- At the end, the Trudy takes the aliens to see a play, but the aliens don't understand that they're supposed to watch the play, and instead watch the audience, but at least they do learn something about humans from that experience.
- Hyperlink Story: The story lines for each character are independent but intersect each other. Toward the end, Kate explains that Trudy gave her the umbrella hat in a rainstorm while laughing with characters from another story, suggesting that the stories connected in part because Trudy chooses new subjects while following up on old subjects.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At the end Trudy draws a parallel between the audience of the in-story play where the aliens saw all the people sitting in the dark and laughing together, to the audience watching.
- Parental Neglect: Agnus's parents are divorced. Her mother is in Europe. Her father got custody even though he didn't want it and spends all his time working, and her step-mother berates her. They finally locked her out after she interfered with one of her father's experiments at work.
- Passed-Over Promotion: Lyn is passed over for promotion in favor of a younger woman.
- Setting Update: In the 2022 revival, Trudy seems to live in the present day, referencing modern things like iPhones and Elon Musk. However, the other characters still live in the 1972-1985 timeframe.
- That Mysterious Thing: Trudy's mentions an umbrella hat she has that's used to connect to people telepathically (though she doesn't wear it on stage, except once, very briefly). Trudy let Kate wear the umbrella hat at the end, suggesting that the hat might only work on people who've tried the hat on at least once.
- The Un-Favorite: Agnus feels like her father gives all his attention to her "siblings" (biomatter he grows in his job as a genetics research scientist).
- Unstuck in Time: Trudy has haphazard telepathic flashbacks to points in various people's lives caused by an alien technology. The alien technology itself can be considered unstuck in time since it can work retroactively: Kate put on the umbrella hat at the end, but Trudy had been able to flash back to a time before Kate put it on.
