At SPA 2013, delegates were invited to create a response to Tom Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, taking the themes from the play into the world of software development. The session was led by Seb Rose.
This was our team's effort. We imagined Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as developers on a failing project, with an angry boss desperate to blame someone for the bug recently released to production. Unfortunately, neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern have any idea about which release has been deployed, but a scan through the commit log reveals that Hamlet was the culprit, and a bad merge got rid of the attempted fix.
GUIL: Wait a minute - we came from roughly south according to a rough map.
ROS: I see. Well, which way did we come in? (GUIL looks around vaguely.) Roughly.
GUIL: (clears his throat) In the morning the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.
ROS: That it's morning?
GUIL: If it is, and the sun is over there (his right as he faces the audience) for instance, that (front) would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there (his left)... that... (lamely) would still be northerly. (Picking up.) To put it another way, if we came from down there (front) and it is morning, the sun would be up there (his left), and if it is actually over there (his right) and it's still morning, we must have come from up there (behind him), and if that is southerly (his left) and the sun is really over there (front), then it's afternoon. However, if none of these is the case -
ROS: Why don't you go and have a look?
GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer?
We hoped to have Hamlet rewrite the commit history to blame Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but there's only so much you can show in a live demo.
I forgot to take the names of the other contributors - do let me know and I'll be sure to credit you.