By Suni Gigliotti
While watching Westminster Theatre’s Love and Information, it reminded me of sitting quietly listening to RadioLab’s podcast of the “Living Room” where a woman describes her experience of secretly being able to stare into an adjacent apartment complex’s living room. The podcast was deeply private, invasive, and even a bit dangerous, but you couldn’t stop listening just as the woman couldn’t stop watching what events unfolded in her neighbor’s lives – all without them knowing. Westminster Theatre’s production of Love and Information by Caryl Churchill and directed by Jamie Rocha Allan feels a bit like that. It captures that deeply personal and forbidden feeling of voyeurism, with a minimalistic and unconventional approach at story-telling.
Premiering in London in 2012, Love and Information has since gone on to be produced worldwide and with what I can imagine widely unique and varying interpretations. Part of the true beauty of this production is the way in which renowned and innovative female playwright, Churchill, has essentially given the director very little specifics. Churchill’s Love and Information doesn’t have a continual plot nor does it contain characters you are introduced to and then follow through-out. The play is comprised of seven sections, which must be done in order, but the scenes within the sections can be arranged per interpretation and direction of the director and the cast. The scenes also do not contain many stage directions and no specific gendering. An ensemble of actors (in this production’s case, an ensemble of 15 actors) together portray an upward of 100 characters in a myriad of 50+ scenes. Some scenes are pretty traditional, others are more abstract, but you never know what comes next, nor can you get too attached to a scene or its characters as it is ever shifting, and before you know it, over.
Lavinia Adams
The play was described as a “play about relationships in the digital age”, after all, what else would you imagine from a title simply called Love and Information? This digital motif is a subtle one, however, and I was pleased to see that each scene was so much more than that. Many scenes were nuanced and explored complicated topics like memory and trauma, secrets and random knowledge, and the real mind blower is that these interpretations could vary from person to person. All of these topics (and the many other themes) make up relationships, but never did I feel like the play had an agenda to rag on technology and how it “is destroying the way people connect”. Much rather, only a few scenes discussed or utilized technology, but the entire play provided a sense that I was scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and gleaning information about random stranger’s lives.
Allan’s direction specifically embraces minimalism and seems to center around the varying interactions between each character. Very little furniture or props were used in each scene but just enough to give a sense of location – what I imagined was at the decision of the director and the actors in the scene. The choice to make the production minimalistic is a strong one – it forces an audience that is often used to spectacle and glitz to focus on the fundamentals such as the dialogue and characters, and for them to then create their own interpretations.
This minimalism, however, did not stifle creativity from the design team, as some of the true standouts came from Spencer Brown’s lighting design and Katelyn Limber’s sound design. These two elements work together almost synchronistically as they reminded me of a moving mosaic or digital wavelengths scattering through time, like The Matrix. Some scenes were a bit more innovative with staging and I found myself wishing there were more scenes that explored different settings and locations, as the more unique stagings upstaged the repeated settings. Aside from that, these design choices paired well with Allan’s succinct and crisp scene changes which urged the play forward in an intriguing fashion.
Due to the nature of the writing, a real challenge of this type of show is the actors’ ability to drop into circumstances with very little building up to it. Some scenes are relatively low stakes, while others throw characters into painful scenarios like getting a terminal diagnosis or finding out a dark secret. Though some actors and scenes were a bit more effective at dropping into these circumstances, I appreciated how the play motivates an audience to empathize with characters you virtually know nothing about, and maybe only get to know for a few minutes or seconds. One of my favorite scenes was essentially two friends (played by actresses Daisy Sherman and Kallie Filanda) participating in what seemed like a self-hypnosis or memory recall exercise. Both actresses explore the space recalling random objects as the ensemble participated in the scene more representationally and like visual guideposts. This was a good example of this play’s ability to inspire inventive and creative staging.
Kallie Filanda and Daisy Sherman
Truly, one of the best parts of Love and Information is how it captures a very modern world. Due to Churchill’s nonspecific gendering, Allan and the cast did a great job at incorporating non-heterosexual relationships, and it is a breath of fresh air. In fact, many of the relationships are non-heterosexual and interracial, and that captures a narrative of our modern world that is often missed in contemporary plays. The only element that limited some story telling (due to being in a college setting) is that all actors are essentially portraying 18-30s (minus one actress portraying a young teen), and didn’t explore the relationships in older generations. The show begins to feel a bit centered around just the millennial generation, though I think that is a perfectly valid direction to go in with a show like this one and for the Westminster community.
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If you are looking for a show with a consistent plot and relies heavily on spectacle and glamour, this show isn’t for you. However, Love and Information is a great show to challenge conventional storytelling and get down to the basics – leaving you with a lot to think about after.
Westminster College Theatre presents Love and Information by Caryl Churchill
Dumke Blackbox Theatre, Jewett Center for the Performing Arts, Westminster College, 1840 South 1300 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84105
October 12-14, 26-28, 7:30 PM
Tickets: $10
Contact: 801-832-2457
Westminster College Theatre Facebook Page
Love and Information Facebook Event
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