THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD

In our post-Sleep No More society, theater makers are becoming more specific and refreshingly less epic with what sorts of situations make for worthwhile immersion. Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective’s The Voices in Your Head offers a support group. Rent famously utilized group scenes to give audiences a voyeuristic view into the struggles of bohemian city living. A gathering of vulnerable people with burning things to get off their chests may be fertile territory for dramatization, but having performed in my fair share of immersive productions and participated in hefty sampling of support groups, it’s trickier than one might think to pull off.

If you are choosing to go to a support group, chances are you are dealing with an issue, and you have found a group that specializes in your issue. Voices, being a show, bills itself as a show, only to reveal itself as a support group upon its audience entering St. Lydia’s – an actual nondenominational storefront mini-church in Boerum Hill, renamed St. Lidwina’s for Egg and Spoon’s purposes.

The revelation continues as the sharing begins. What creators Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntree omit that any legit group begins with is a delineation of norms which reinforce expectations for returning members, as well as orient new members. This, however, would impede on the dramatic impact of gradually gleaning from the shares that we are in a space for grieving. The soothing music and sweet snacks now make sense, but, again, why are we, the spectators, here?

Regina (Daphne Overbeck) begins, telling about her complicated marriage before pivoting into describing her husband’s demise from ingesting too much cheese at a party.  She is cheerful as she recounts – the group must be working. Similarly gregarious is Blake (Alex Gibson), whose older boyfriend croaks of a heart attack while working as a mall Santa. It isn’t until Ted (Tom Mezger) enters late that we learn that the deaths responsible for these shares must meet a certain threshold of embarrassing.

Ted’s aunt died taking a Zumba class; he was rejected. Immersive as it is, Voices is not participatory. Even during breaks, actors who, despite the intimate quarters, perform as if onstage talk amongst themselves. We witness the true
participants roleplay and empathize through a collective sort of ironic schadenfreude from within individual invisible bubbles, comprised of what would have fashioned a fine fourth wall, all the less able to suspend our disbelief.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Jonathan Matthews-Guzman