The audience seating has been reconfigured into an arena staging that is highly tiered around an incredibly small center – only room for a dozen people or so to stand.  The performers are left with the aisles as their primary playing space so you, the audience are TRULY IMMERSED in each moment.  The music vibrates in your soul.

It is impossible to express what it is that you are going to experience in the audience – – the journey that this show is going to take you on.  The program note says, “In quantum time, we’ll visit elements necessary to life on a molecular level. In human time, we’ll deal with memory, primarily using verbatim memories I harvested from anonymous voicemails. In cosmic time, we’ll deal with time’s essential nature, which is marked and recorded only through collision and violence.”

The oratorio is designed to make each individual person respond to it differently, to interpret the musical textures and textual ideas on your own terms.  I found the final movement of the first act, “Iteration 4: Building DNA via Ticker Tape of Time Spent” to be particularly moving, even while I was laughing. The song is a list of time spent doing tasks like “throwing away unopened mail” and “defogging your glasses” commingled with time spent on more substantial things like “asking for someone to help” or “admiring someone’s face”. It contrasts time wasted with time well-spent and questions which is which. “  I just don’t think I am going to find the words to tell you how much this show just blew my mind away.

I admittedly know so little about music – more’s the shame on me but it certainly didn’t get in the way of me having a magical, truly magical two hours in the theatre.