Review: We Were Nothing by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs

You may want to budget some extra time for locating the venue if you don't already know Monstrosity Studio or have an informative friend involved in the Poison Apple Initiative production of We Were Nothing by Will Arbery.

I wound up driving through a series of parking lots surrounding rental barracks south of Oltorf, then got warmer when I crossed west across South First.  It's been dark for quite a while by 7 p.m. and other than the street signs at intersections, you're not going to find many helpful postings of house numbers.  I got lucky. Artistic Director Bastion Carboni was standing out on the sidewalk talking on the phone.

Turns out that the studio is in a two-story structure behind the modest bungalow at 2514 Wilson Street.  Once upstairs, I slipped into a spot on the stretch of floor in front of the assortment of chairs clumped on one side of the bare studio with the high ceilings. A wall of brown wrapping paper had been improvised across one corner of the room, table lamps were set directly on the floor to our left and right, and high overhead some floodlights hung from rails duct-taped to the ceiling.

The apparent anonymity of the venue contrasted with the evident ease of the crowd of friends sipping St. Arnold's beer.  Carboni has an extensive circle of acquaintances in Austin's respectable underworld of creatives, engaged over the past three years as he and others of the Initiative have presented challenges ranging from Sartre to Büchner's Woyzek to Neil LaBute to Carboni (several times).  For a couple of years his acerbic theatre reviews livened up the Austin Chronicle, but he gave that up to spend more time on his own writing.  

Arbery's piece for two young women is, in fact, about anonymity and friendship -- or to be more precise, anomie in friendship.  Kelly and Shelly don't resemble one another physically, but they're as millenially alike as two peas in a pod.  The actresses Kayla Newman and Tarah Zolman -- ironically, even their real names resemble one another -- appear on either side of that bare space when the lights come up.  Their speech is off-handed, incomplete, distracted, a shorthand of social communication that inquires, reassures, offers random observations -- but doesn't really go anywhere.  We realize quickly that in the story they're not sharing the physical space at all: they've been besties since high school but they've drifted farther and farther apart.

Though we hear their communications as dialogue, it's quickly evident that playwright Avery is giving us digital variations, vignettes expressed through different media: Kelly tries telephoning Shelly but has to leave a voicemail; the women speak by cell phone; they blip to one another in oddly syncopated instant messages; they eventually connect via video.  Their messages are casual but incomplete; we as audience are gradually able to make out that they've both reached that age where they're supposed to be adults, but they don't yet really know what that means.  Shelly has had some sort of crisis but remains enigmatic about it; Kelly has been patchy about staying in contact; the two offer one another ritual reassurances but they share a disdain for various other mutual -- acquaintances? former friends? -- whose life developments seem peculiar or simply alien.

Their girltalk has a lot of white noise.  A confused striving is going on throughout this 70-minute script, but it's not obvious simply because it's not articulated.  Because they are not articulate, in the least, about life events or about the odd, neglected relationship between them.  Nor does either have a plan, a goal or any expressed ambition.

Talk in the theatre is almost always decisive, crafted and purposeful.  Think of the clash of speech in most contemporary drama, whether crafted or transcribed and repurposed.  Arbery's women characters sound inane at first, but as they continue to exchange words, their elliptical expression becomes more compelling, engaging us because of their very inability to put thoughts and feelings into words.  We have a pointillist coloring book before us with only the most general outlines visible.

This sort of speech must be hell to memorize, and one's tempted to suspect that if memory lapses the actor might comfortably vamp in millenial talk.  Surely that's not the case with Newman and Zolman, for the through-line of their emotional engagement is clear.  Carboni supports them with simple but vivid blocking -- for instance, as the women trade a series of small apologies, tiny but significant acknowledgments, he has them progressively ripping off sections of that brown paper wall that looms behind them.

Long distance relationships can be kept alive.  Face-to-face relationships are more difficult, more challenging, perhaps more threatening because they offer less field for evasive action. Kelly arrives to visit Shelly in the final scene, one that's disorienting and deeply moving.  One woman starts to share a secret, then pulls back; they teeter on the edge of something unexperienced and unknown.  How much are you willing to reveal to your friend?  How much do you need your friend?  What is it that you need?  Can you put it into words?

This is theatre for their contemporaries, an evening that touches anyone who's still striving to define identity and affinity.  Tarah Zolman and Kayla Newman lay out the vulnerabilities, and neither the playwright nor the director provides them with a reassuring resolution that would turn this exercise into a comforting 'well-made' play.

That's just the point, of course.  Living is striving; simple certainities are no comforts. 

 

(Stage managed by Keith Sechrest, who also did sound design)

 

Review by Jeff Davis, Broadway World, Dec 17

Review by Philip John, Texas Arts & Culture, Dec 19

 

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We Were Nothing
by Will Arbery
Poison Apple Initiative

Sliding scale: $15-$25
Pay-what-you-can Wednesdays / Free beer Fridays