“#9” played through June 7 at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200.
Hannah (Hanna Cheek), like many women, is not comfortable with the image of her body, or she was once, but then along came the internet; David (David Ryan Smith), after a chain of dramatically spotty text message reports, has just lost his father in a faraway natural disaster; Matt (Matt Dellapina), immersing himself in online encyclopedias, will soon be a father; and Kevin (Kevin Townley) is looking for love, on facebook. In a digital culture, human tragedies and processes must somehow span the gap between emotion and the binarizing logic of the web. Though we suppose that mourning and romance are only easier with a cable internet connection, “#9,” under the direction of Mr. Tom Ridgely, renders for us a different image.
It is the predilection of the analog generation, the “digital immigrants,” to claim that “digital natives” are moving too fast; it is likewise the “digital natives” who presume that “digital immigrants” are impaired or moving too slow. Generational disputes such as this one are not new to history, having materialized before as suspicion between modernist and postmodernist, traditionalist and progressive, loyalist and patriot. Never before, however, has the disagreement turned on so distinct a boundary: technology. Perhaps because “#9″ is set in the gap between reality and the devices of technology it can at time be bizarre. Often it is incomprehensible. This could be, as Fredric Jameson once suggested about modern and postmodern, because humanity still lacks the “perceptual apparatus” required to understand the odd space, the hyperspace, on the other side of the gap. Or, perhaps, the play is just not very good.
The borderland of “#9″ is a gap. We could call this gap “Echoland,” a cyber space in “#9″ where straw bodies and information float, detached from reality –or where a few scenes float, detached from theatrical convention. I am not sure which. In the Echoland, emotions are streamlined and concentrated on web pages in “about me” paragraphs and buttons: “like this,” “friend me.” But the ease of cyber existence is soon found to be misleading when human things intervene and the psychical realities of each character lag somehow behind hyper reality.
When David’s father dies in a storm that hits his island home, the internet is shown to be a mourning inhibitor. After asking a group of his “friends” to donate their status at a facebook memorial service, David soon encrypts his father online in a facebook profile of his own. As our memories of those we’ve lost eventually fade during the process of normal mourning, the facebook zombie that David creates seems to produce a “new unfamiliar pain” for which he is unprepared. Similarly, for Matt, the expectant father, a web search denudes his image of fatherhood—an effect achieved by a musical-postmodern web crawl through various online encyclopedias. Kevin mistakes online dating statistics and palm reading for authentic destiny and searches the web for his soul mate. Relatedly, I suppose, Kevin meets Marshall McLuhan somewhere between sleep and the internet. From Mr. McLuhan, he receives advice on which we are led to ponder. Consider this: if “radio is the extension of the aural, high-fidelity photography of the visual” what to us is the internet? Mr. McLuhan tells Kevin that “the medium is the message,” before vanishes into a mirror.
What is the internet? Some among the digital immigrants may be hoping that it is a passing fad. Us natives know, it’s no fad. But it’s definitely not the rival universe that “#9″ suggests it is. “#9″ manages to entertain, despite the lack of structure and, in some places, sense or apparent meaning. I feel cheated because I did not know that the audience was invited to text message the performers with content. Had I known, I doubt my experience would have changed much. I give “#9″ a 7–I couldn’t resist.
