By Kyle A. Thomas
Judith Benson (Jacqueline Grandt) chastises her student-teacher, Ms. Carter (Aundria Tranay), while her journalism student, Micah (Kason Chesky), looks on. Image credit: Redtwist Theatre.
What is the nature of truth? Or is it Truth? And what about multiple, varied truths?
Sorry to start with the philosophical questions, but this play presents some hard truths that—of all the arts—theatre is best equipped to handle. After all, theatre has long shared an abstract relationship with truth. It’s a viewpoint the film V for Vendetta expresses: “artists use lies to tell the truth.” Of course, a dramatic arc guided by the trope, “the truth will set you free,” which is true for V for Vendetta, belies how a tidy and cathartic dénouement often escapes our everyday interactions with the truth. But where individual realities are aggregations of lived experience made concrete in a mold we each call our “truth,” theatre is an aggregate of representations and reflections made to seem real so as to complicate an individual’s relationship with said truth. Theatre is a place in which we come face to face with truth, even when it’s not the kind we might expect.
How does one know the truth—and know that the ways in which it’s received are true?
Questions regarding the nature of truth and how we come to know it lie at the heart of Redtwist Theatre’s world-premiere production of The Totality of All Things by Erik Gernand and directed by Enrico Spada. Set in the months leading up to the 2016 election, the play grapples with events between teachers and students in a small-town high school in rural Indiana. The story largely follows Judith Benson (Jacqueline Grandt), the school’s journalism teacher, as she guides her student, Micah (Kason Chesky), through the process of investigating and reporting for the school’s newspaper an incident involving a graffitied hate-symbol on Ms. Benson’s classroom bulletin board. Questions about who spray-painted the symbol, their motivations, and the target of their hate motivate both Judith and Micah’s investigation toward journalistic aims: a desire to uncover the truth in service of the public good. With each piece of the puzzle that falls into place, the incident—and even the symbol of hate itself—reveal uncomfortable truths about the town, the school, and the individuals whom it affects.
But this is not merely a journalistic procedural drama. Gernand’s play sets off a nuclear bomb of sorts: where a relatively straightforward hateful action—that might normally result in a limited, containable reaction—actually ends up leaving a wake of interpersonal destruction due to how quickly it strips away any sense of normalcy previously built by the characters over the years. Where a procedural drama might surprise us with a new twist or turn with each new piece of information uncovered, Totality is concerned with the broader fallout that results as each character makes sense of the incident in light of their own individual truths. Judith’s colleague and best friend, DeeAnn (Suzy Krueckeberg), does not share her vehement judgment of the perpetrator, choosing instead to question what proportionally appalling act would warrant someone spray-painting a blatant hate-symbol on Judith’s bulletin board. Their fellow teacher in the same hallway, Gregg (Philip C. Matthews), worries that the investigation might target the wrong person and/or publicly level unfounded or unprovable accusations against a student, causing further harm and trauma. And the student-teacher, Ms. Carter (Aundria Tranay), finds herself caught between the teachers and students, advocating for a truth that straddles the line between the earnestness of adulthood and the receptiveness of adolescence. Of course, no school setting would be complete without the administrative cover of a principal, Mr. Benson (Phil Aman), who—while attempting to appear neutral—clearly runs interference for the school board. Altogether, the power of Totality of All Things is less about the incident itself and more about the internal—aka relational—character struggles which it incites.
Seek truth.
Those words adorn the bulletin board in Ms. Benson’s classroom as you are ushered into the theatre—a small space where the audience sits on either side of playing area like social spectators waiting to pounce on the perpetrator, should they be clearly identified. Brandii Champagne’s straightforward but inspired scenic design captures the universality of American classrooms as stark, neutral spaces adorned only with a modicum of allowable expressive phenomena—which a teacher might frame within provided bulletin boards like the one containing Ms. Benson’s truncated missive. The play is punctuated by the unfolding of Micah’s article on the incident, accompanied by sound cues (with sound design by Nicholas Evan Svoboda) that suggest a wider social aggression and outrage that exists on the margins of the story and, to some degree, is brought to bear on the characters as the temperatures rise across the town and school. The design follows with what the play presents: truth is not without its boundaries. But, as we uncover, any truth that we are able to grasp is solely bounded by our own understandings of the world and our proclivities toward those who inhabit it.
Overall, The Totality of All Things is a poignant and powerful play that fully explores how theatre is itself a missive about truth and the varied affects the truth presents to individuals and society. The play further delves into the role of journalism and its relationship to the truth, laid bare most affectively in the relationship between Micah and Judith—portrayed in standout performances by Chesky and Grandt, respectively—as the former carries out his investigation and constructs his personal insight on the incident and those involved; to which Judith grows increasingly distrustful. The ensemble is a choir of voices clamoring for truth that they, as individuals, can grasp—though, Tranay’s Ms. Carter produces a profoundly dynamic conduit giving the audience permission to question the veracity of the truth they are witnessing. In short, The Totality of All Things presents truth as contestable ground, a space held by the righteous and their fervent belief in the imperviousness of their truth.
The Totality of All Things by Eric Gernand and directed by Enrico Spada is a cannot miss production. Shows run Tuesday through Sunday until January 19th at Redtwist Theatre (1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.). Tickets available at www.redtwisttheatre.org/totality.