Incomplete Conversations
Funerals are plays. Most organized rituals are. There is pageantry, a purpose, a prescribed order of events. I went to a lot of them when I lived with my grandparents for much of my youth. When you're old, funerals are a pretty major social activity. I appreciate the way Incomplete Conversations by writer/director Nell Voss, produced by Silent Theatre captures the backstage drama of the funeral ritual.
The show centers around the funeral of a beloved young pastor, James Edward Klein played by Victor Holstein, who may or may not have been murdered. Klein's ghost is watching his own funeral, and flashing back to various events of his life, and the often tumultuous relationships with his family and colleagues. The show is immersive and site specific, taking place in the various different rooms of the Tapestry Church on Irving Park.
I've seen site specific shows before, I recall a fine production of Hamlet I watched in a mansion on a north side beach once several years ago where the audience followed the actors from room to room. This one's different, it's not quite linear, there is no prescribed order and you can go where your whims take you. If you're looking to absorb the entire story, which is generally my goal as an audience member, you may be out of luck. I certainly didn't. I wandered and caught what I could..."Uh, they're having an affair, maybe those folks are having an affair too, that lady's pregnant obviously, oh there's some theological banter, these people are really mad for some reason" is my summary of what I could glean about the show's plot.
And perhaps that was all I was supposed to get, it's right there in the title, we experience this show as we sometimes experience life, without much of a road map, making only our best guesses as to what's going on around us.
I admire and understand what Voss was going for here even if I didn't feel like it was necessarily my thing.
I do recommend it to anyone intrigued by this kind of experimental theatrical technique. Like any good funeral there were real cookies, and they were good.
The show centers around the funeral of a beloved young pastor, James Edward Klein played by Victor Holstein, who may or may not have been murdered. Klein's ghost is watching his own funeral, and flashing back to various events of his life, and the often tumultuous relationships with his family and colleagues. The show is immersive and site specific, taking place in the various different rooms of the Tapestry Church on Irving Park.
I've seen site specific shows before, I recall a fine production of Hamlet I watched in a mansion on a north side beach once several years ago where the audience followed the actors from room to room. This one's different, it's not quite linear, there is no prescribed order and you can go where your whims take you. If you're looking to absorb the entire story, which is generally my goal as an audience member, you may be out of luck. I certainly didn't. I wandered and caught what I could..."Uh, they're having an affair, maybe those folks are having an affair too, that lady's pregnant obviously, oh there's some theological banter, these people are really mad for some reason" is my summary of what I could glean about the show's plot.
And perhaps that was all I was supposed to get, it's right there in the title, we experience this show as we sometimes experience life, without much of a road map, making only our best guesses as to what's going on around us.
I admire and understand what Voss was going for here even if I didn't feel like it was necessarily my thing.
I do recommend it to anyone intrigued by this kind of experimental theatrical technique. Like any good funeral there were real cookies, and they were good.
Regular performances begin November 1st and run Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at
7:30p.m. through November 23rd.
Tickets are $20 or pay-what-you-can
Tapestry Fellowship Church 3824 W. Irving Park Road
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