Speechless by The Moving Company Left Me Speechless at the Jungle Theater

Speechless accurately describes both the show and my reaction to it. A remount of The Moving Company’s 2017 production that aimed to reflect our collective despair following the 2016 election of Donald Trump. This latest production is either forecasting a return to despair or reflecting our dread of what may happen. Whichever it is, the message of the piece, if I read it correctly, is that through community we can comfort each other and work to brighten our future. The show which runs about 75 minutes doesn’t contain a single spoken word. There is music and the actors make sounds like sneezing, but otherwise it all plays out like a silent movie. It’s not a comedy or a drama but it hits both veins of theatre throughout. It contains elements of Chaplin at his most pathosie with touches of Keaton’s surrealism but the movement is always graceful and purposeful. Opening with the death of Hope ,the five performers, Kenzi Allen, Steven Epp, Helen Hatch, Nathan Keepers, and Randy Reyes go through the motions of a funeral. The greive, they enjoy some refreshment and companionship, they clean up, they move on. From the ashes of the cremated hope will finally rise the possibility of a brighter world, if they can just get through the grief.

There is hardly anything more I can say without trying to describe the actions they perform, which I will not attempt. I think the information above will give you a road map through which to navigate the show. But, we all bring to something like this our own perception, so don’t feel inhibited by my reading, allow yourself to interpret what you see in your own way. I was more or less speechless after the show, unsure how to process or interpret it, I needed time to sit with it a bit. It’s obviously a sad show at the beginning, but I encourage you to laugh when something touches you as funny. I think one of the lessons is that, even in the darkest times we should find humor when and wherever we can. Speechless runs through November 10th at the Jungle Theater in Uptown. For more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.themovingco.org/

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