CARLSBAD, California — When I was in college my friends and I used to enjoy philosophical riddles. One in particular (I know you heard these riddles as well) that I remember was “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it still make a sound?” Based on what I think I know, I would say yes! Others might disagree arguing that sound is a vibrating sensation, so no! How important is this exercise in the scheme of things? Maybe as important, or not, as is Will Eno’s solo performance piece Thom Pain (based on nothing) now playing at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.
Who is Thom Paine? What does he do? Does he have a family? Is he rich/poor? Does he work? The answers to these questions is ‘your guess is as good as mine. Frankly, it matters not, unless of course you have those curiosities. I do not. They never entered my mind.
But especially in this piece it really doesn’t matter. He’s surely not the 17th century revolutionary Thomas Paine who wrote Common Sense and Rights of Man. But maybe Eno took a page from Paine’s playbook. It surely wasn’t from his Common Sense pamphlet. But he did get it right with Rights of Man. Some in the audience exercised their right to get up and leave during the show.
Picture yourself at a seminar and before the actual work begins, the leader takes you through a meditation lasting about 60 minutes. The monologue, Thom Pain (based on nothing), is nothing more than a stream of consciousness; of symbols, suggestions packed with fragments of ideas that run clockwise and counter clockwise always with, what I imagined, a theme running through that the performer keeps coming back to. If that sounds elusive, well so is thewhole piece. I guess you could say that it is whatever you want it to be.
Eno’s narrative, with Adam Brick as the speaker, starts off in total darkness and silence. A voice sounds, “How wonderful to see you all”, claims the narrator. He strikes 2 matches and both fail. “I should quit”. Still we are in darkness. Do we laugh? Do we answer? Do we care? Do we want to stay or get up and leave? “Do you like magic?” he asks. I wonder when the lights will come up. I wonder if he’s about to do a magic trick in the dark. When the lights do come up a man in a dark suit, Thom Pain is standing before us cleaning lens-less
glasses. He puts them back in his pocket.
And so begins our journey with Pain, starting with a story of an infant, a dog, a little boy and a cowboy suit and his continuing trip into adulthood. And then he segues to having a raffle with prizes. He walks back and forth into the aisles staring down at audience members as if he’s going to chose one to be a guinea pig. He talks directly to the audience then focuses his attention elsewhere and then goes back to his raffle shtick, his magic question, and the little boy in the cowboy suit, and on and on. And so goes the exercise ending unexpectedly yet none too soon for this reviewer, with the question, “Isn’t it great to be alive?”
I have, in one of my past lives sat through many types of meditations. Most of them focused on relaxation using visualizations. I must admit this was a new theatre adventure for me and in some way, it did touch me as artistic director Kristianne Kurner hoped it would. Venturing into the year of the Ensemble, New Village Arts Theatre personnel hoped that Thom Pain (based on nothing) would act as a participatory piece for the audience to get involved emotionally and mentally. As a group by hearing the same words yet leaving with a different sense of involvement the audience becomes the Ensemble, the silent actors on their own stage.
My involvement in this experiment consisted about wondering exactly where Eno was going with this package and mentally making decisions about how I would react if Brick alias Pain ever picked me to go on stage with him and what I would say. My mind also wandered into a visual of the little boy in the cowboy suit and what he looked like.
I stayed for the discussion after the show and I must admit it was lively, varied but with strong indications that the solo piece well received. Some found humor in the piece. I found it oddly amusing but not funny. The New York Times found it to be ‘both devastating and hilarious’… ‘A big joke. An inscrutable journey. A bountiful gift’. You be the judge.
If you are looking for an alternative to a traditional theatre experience, Thom Pain (based on nothing) is your best bet.
