Simulticity
Playwright Ian Pierce has a problem with reality. But then, all good playwrights do. Unlike ethnographers, who strive to reproduce life without altering it, thoughtful playwrights routinely redefine reality in their own terms, constructing controlled models of potentially volatile situations and using the outcomes to try to extrapolate to universal truths about human existence.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s a strategy that worked beautifully in his Living in the Present Tense, in which a mysterious citywide blackout sends a trio of zealots to the home of a feckless college graduate where one electric light inexplicably burns. Over the course of a single frantic hour, the intruders’ fervent desire to assign meaning to the burning bulb leads them to twist facts and elevate a curious electrical phenomenon to a quasi-religious miracle. Needing to believe in something greater than faulty wiring, they browbeat the student–and one another–until their collective reality begins to conform to their needs.
Simulticity offers a cunning conundrum with the potential for a great emotional punch. As played with unwavering intensity by Patrick Populorum, Charm is a man whose heartbreaking hope is to escape himself. As he says late in the play, “I lost control of my life and wished to no longer be a part of it.” The upheaval has something to do with Twine–a mysterious, mercurial creature as played by Fanny Madison–with whom he can never seem to connect. In fact the first time he “meets” her onstage, the two joyfully call out each other’s names, run toward each other with open arms, then smack together like bumper cars. Charm tries the scene again, and this time the two end up chasing each other around the stage. The next time Twine slaps him, then simply loses interest.
