“A captivating, hypnotic, and mesmerizing work of art, easily one of the best plays I’ve seen this year… So compelling, so haunting, so thoroughly absorbing. I loved this show.”
– NYTheater.com
“Equal parts installation art and surreal montage.”
– New York Magazine online
“A daring performance about memory and identity. Welcome to Nowhere captures beautifully the psychic haziness it takes on as a major theme.”
– Village Voice
“The show draws you into an intimate embrace, as if the characters are whispering in your ear while you watch their dreams.”
– Gothamist
“The video sequences in Welcome to Nowhere are so beautifully shot they put most major films to shame.” – Off Off Blogway
“Though cloaked in shadow and speaking in muted tones, hold their listeners spellbound… Like the powerful acting, much of the imagery contained in the film proves mesmerizing. One recurring desert starscape is just as transportive as any planetarium.”
– Queens Chronicle
Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story…Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) is a hybrid of theater and cinema. During the performance, a constant stream of video is projected above the cast. In scenes of prolonged stillness, silence and impassivity, doppelgangers of the characters we meet onstage navigate a hyper-real cinematic landscape as if lost in a dream, creating parallel narratives that echo, reflect and refract each moment of the play.
Staged in one of Temporary Distortion’s signature, claustrophobic boxlike installations, the live performers’ softly spoken words are amplified by microphones. Referencing filmic styles of performance, underplayed and restrained, they tell the story of a man who is haunted by his past and drifting across America. There is blood across the dashboard, headlights in the rearview mirror and the vague memory of a hitchhiker who may have been a dream.
Conceived by Kenneth Collins
With Video by William Cusick
CAST: Ben Beckley, Stacey Collins, Brian Greer, Lorraine Mattox, Jessica Pagan, Stephanie Silver
Costumes: TaraFawn Marek
Music & Sound: John Sullivan
Motion Graphics: Jon Weiss
Assistant Director: Christine Vartoughian
Video Assistant: Anh Dang
Temporary Distortion has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of theatre by staging plays in claustrophobic boxlike structures, with little physical movement and a unique restrained style of acting.
Welcome to Nowhere was developed at The Ontological-Hysteric Theater and received its N.Y. premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2007 as part of its Visiting Artist Program. It will be performed in March and April at the Via Festival in Maubeuge, France and at the Exit Festival in Paris.
Original PS122 Run: Feb 20 – 23, 2008
Also playing in the COIL 2009 Festival