If “Investigative Theater” isn’t yet a genre, Obie-winning troupe the Civilians are betting it will be. This New York–based company brings its original revue with music (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch to Zero Arrow Theatre this week, courtesy of the American Repertory Theatre and CRASHarts.
The group’s theatrical technique relies on extensive — and, at first glance, unlikely — interviews with various subjects. For the current show, members interrogated a Homeland Security policymaker and an assortment of women named Jessica Lynch. The resulting vignettes reflect a view of current events that’s both comic and thought-provoking.
“One of our guidelines whenever we’re doing a project is not to have a foregone conclusion,” explains writer/director Steven Cosson, who penned the show with songs by Michael Friedman. “Which is tricky when it comes to political questions of the last few years.” The company has been in business since September of 2001, with a mission that’s as much cultural as theatrical. In cases where the members ask people about such current events as the invasion of Iraq, Cosson reports a disarming similarity of responses. “People would say, ‘I couldn’t possibly know the truth because everyone is trying to convince me of something. But I don’t actually know anything because I don’t trust it.’ What we really learned is that people feel inundated and overwhelmed by the stories that are given them. They feel there’s no solid ground.”
During the period when Private Lynch was in captivity, Cosson and crew tracked down and talked to Jessica Lynches all over the country. Finding a Jessica Lynch who’d just won the title of Miss Manhattan turned out to be a “lucky surprise. She was very bright and enthusiastic, as you’d expect a beauty-contest winner to be, but also a real critical thinker who had a lot to say.” The Civilians use her comments to introduce a monologue, and Cosson offers a sampling of her response: “I was thinking of writing a letter — we’re happy she’s come home safely. We share a name, but not the same experience.” At one point during the interview, Miss Manhattan told him, “These are so not the questions I normally get asked.”
As kids growing up outside Washington, DC, Cosson and his brother earned a nickel for every Oliphant political cartoon they could explain to their father. “As a director working this way, we’ve been looking in all sorts of places for inspiration and precedent.” For Cosson, the Civilians’ work is “a little bit of a hybrid. One of my interests is to work with subject matter that’s maybe a little broader than the typical scope of American theater.”
The Civilians in (I Am) Nobody's Lunch | April 25-30 | Zero Arrow Theatre, Arrow St + Mass Ave, Cambridge | $30 | 617.547.8300
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www.amrep.org
