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Berkeley’s Impact Theater specializes in new plays for a 20-something audience that grew up on television, film and music, without much experience in live theater. 

In that vein, the company opened its fifth season Friday at Eighth Street Studio in Berkeley with the world premiere of Erin Carr’s play “TV Sucks My Ass.” In line with Impact’s mission, this play is about 20-somethings just out of college, struggling to find meaningful lives and work. 

Running about 75 minutes without an intermission, “TV Sucks My Ass” is a rambling episodic story about a 24-year-old former actress named Van (Alyssa Bostwick) who works as a production assistant on an exploitative and uninspiring television show. 

Feminist Van hates her job and dreams of producing her own television series about a woman who travels backwards in time to meet famous women of history and help them through their times of personal difficulty. 

In her personal life, Van has a crush on musician roommate Adam (Eric Herzog), but since she is not thin and glamorous, Van feels romantically challenged. 

Van’s professional break comes unexpectedly when she is offered the role of a zaftig woman who undergoes liposuction on live television, on a show called “Lighten Up.” From the idea of liposuction, Carr’s play takes its title, “TV Sucks My Ass.” 

A large cast show with more than ten actors, several doubling in multiple roles, “TV Sucks My Ass” is part didactic political dissertation and part romantic melodrama. The show has a feminist spin, and deals with the gender politics of body image and women’s feelings of physical inadequacy. 

But it is a rambling story that zigs and zags disconnectedly in varying directions. At times “TV Sucks My Ass” has the feel of a script workshopped to the point where it has lost its focus. 

Additionally, many of the play’s gags are familiar, and not that funny. For example, an exploitative radio station has the call letters “KRAP.” 

Likewise, the play’s sleazy or macho men (J. McMullen, Noah James Butler and Dominic Vignolo) may be a reality in present-day life, but the characterizations and storylines around their behaviors aren’t fresh. We’ve seen them many times before in television and movies. 

Most important, at the play’s end when Van is faced with the conflicts of working on an exploitative liposuction show that contradicts her personal principles, the story takes a fluky twist. This twist allows the character of Van to equivocate, copping out on the character’s deeper development, and the story’s resolution. 

Under Sarah O’Connell’s hesitant direction, the acting in the show is rough-edged, from a mostly youthful cast. Many of the lines are given heavy sarcastic readings by the actors, but it would take more than hammy satirical posing to maximize the comedy of this script. 

As the play’s central character, Bostwick’s Van is not a strong presence, although she warms to the performance as the show progresses. Noah James Butler’s drag Zsa Zsa Gabor is one of the evening’s funniest bits. 

Director O’Connell has designed an appropriately cheesy living room for most of the action, with satellite spaces for the television production scenes. 

Playwright Carr graduated this past spring from Middlebury College, where she was a theater major. Her plays “Frostbite” and “Communication Breakdown” have both been finalists in the Actors Theater of Louisville National Ten Minute Play Contest. 

Producing new plays is always a gamble, and most established theater companies are afraid to do it. Kudos to the people at Impact for taking chances and avoiding the easy route. Producing world premieres in the theater world makes a difference. 

And if it turns out you are 24 years old, just out of college, and struggling with a career in the film or television business, “TV Sucks My Ass” just might describe your life. 

“TV Sucks My Ass,” presented by Impact Theater at Eighth Street Studio, 2525 8th Street, Berkeley, $5 (students), $10 (general). (510) 464-4468.