The There, There
The There, There (Feb 2015)
Written by Jason Gray Platt
Directed by Courtney Sale
Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Role: M
Mr. Von Dohlen performed in the play reading over two weekends.
The cast is as follows: Week one: Nick Mills, Vin Kridakorn, Nasser Faris and Lenny Von Dohlen.
Week two: Nick Millls, Melisa Recalde, Lenny Von Dohlen and Lise Bruneau.
The play description from The National New Play Network,
The There There explores the impact of existing and emergent technologies on the relationship of two characters, K and M, over the course of their lives. Beginning in the present day when they meet in college, the play follows them over forty-five years into the near future, when they are in their sixties and have a child. Though both characters attempt to end the relationship at one time or another, the eternal ties permeating the thousands of emails, pictures, and network associations that exist in the digital world – made manifest theatrically in intermezzos that precede each scene – prevent them from ever fully severing their emotional connection. The mourning process involved in saying goodbye is never able to complete itself.
As the play moves forward, these technologies expand into holograms and individualized computers located within the body, which bring the two even closer. The piece concludes with a glimpse at the life of their child, who is leaving home to enter college, the very age we found K and M in at the play’s opening. Though the child and his generation have rejected their parents’ obsession with digital gadgetry, they appear to suffer from the same emotional uncertainties. Are the illusions generated by technology influencing the way we grieve and love, or are they only a parallel to the assorted illusions we have always permitted ourselves to form about the people we care about?
From a YouTube video descripton from the Denver Center for the Arts:
Jason Gray Platt's new play The There There looks at one couple's relationship over 60 years, with two sets of actors playing the lovers as young and old. The twist of staging it as a featured reading at the 2015 Colorado New Play Summit is that the play features two overlapping casts. On the first weekend of the Summit, the couple was played as two men (Nick Mills, Vin Kridakorn, Nasser Faris and Lenny Von Dohlen). The second weekend of the Summit, the couple was played as a man and a woman (Mills, Von Dohlen, Melissa Recalde and Lise Bruneau). So audiences who saw both readings saw one set of male actors play the same script opposite men, and then women. But at its essence, Platt says, gender is irrelevant to telling a story that strives to be about "how technology informs the loss of loved ones, and how our increasing connection with one another is complicating our ability to grieve fully for people." The reading's director was Courtney Sale, and the reader was Heather Hughes.
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