To put it plain: producing theatre in the era of Covid-19 is a challenging thing. Ours is an art form predicated on human connection - on proximity, both literal and emotional - and as we’ve seen in the world at large, the precautions we need to take to keep one another safe can make it that much harder to connect. What better play to produce than one that challenges us as well? This play, with a style and structure unlike anything seen on stage at Delbarton, has been a most rewarding challenge for our company, and promises to challenge and engage its audience as well.
Separated into seven sections, each thematically connected but otherwise unrelated, “Love and Information” tries to connect with us the way we connect with one another in 2020. Like scrolling a social media feed, we are given little snapshots of the characters’ lives - sometimes emotionally fraught, sometimes profound, sometimes just idle conversation. It’s a challenge for the actor and production team to build these little worlds only to immediately leave them to go somewhere else. With almost 60 scenes, over 120 characters, no stage directions, no context in time or location given by the playwright, Churchill leaves so many decisions up to the company that no two productions of “Love and Information” share much more than the title and her words - and, of course, the ideas those words explore.
We often watch theatre expecting to be given some sort of anchor - a recognizable plot, characters that fit certain molds, a consistent time and place - but in this play Churchill seems more interested in asking questions than providing answers. The theatre of “Love and Information” is not a neatly packaged, plastic copy of ‘real life’ but an exploration of the things that pull us together and keep us apart. It’s a mirror into which we see our own lives reflected - the ubiquity of cell phones in the play mirrors our own; the joy and grief and angst and uncertainty of its characters a perfect encapsulation of our own attempts to navigate a world that seems to perpetually teeter on the brink of chaos. These are not always pleasant things to think about! Yet by posing these questions, Churchill gives us space to find the beauty hidden beneath tragedy; the profundity camouflaged by the banal. Churchill doesn’t give us any easy answers in this play because the answers aren’t hers to give - they are ours to find. And just as our company has puzzled over, interpreted, and re-imagined the raw material she’s given us, she asks the same of her audience - to think, yes, but also to discuss, to interpret, to imagine. This play is an examination of life in the 21st century, in all its uncertainty - we invite you to explore it with us tonight.
Enjoy the show.
