An Undeveloped Sound

Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre until February 11, 2023
Tickets from $37.08 at www.eventbrite.com

Posted January 31, 2023

I really need to see An Undeveloped Sound again. It’s an unsettling work by writer/director Jonathon Young that feels like Beckett, Kafka and Sartre – all of whom used liminal spaces for their plays and novels long before liminal spaces became a ‘thing’ – with hints of Goethe’s Faust and, in my mind, Milton’s Paradise Lost. (Liminal – from the Latin root limen or threshold – indicates a point of transition, betwixt and between, neither here nor there. It has, in popular usage, come to include derelict buildings, abandoned malls, hallways that go nowhere, re-purposed spaces, empty playgrounds. Images abound on Reddit.)

In such a place, Young has set his play; what was an empty lot is now a call centre. But what is being sold here? Units. What kind of units? We don’t know nor do the people who answer the phones. “We have you as moving in.” To what? “Please hold.”

Lucian (Ryan Beil) appears to be in charge and Wade (Andrew McNee) and Belle (Laara Sadiq) are employed at individual fluorescent-lit desks, a chair and a phone. Looming over them is a huge Pattison-style billboard with nothing but grey lines on it. Front and centre is the seated Little One, a motionless, silent toddler in a puffy snowsuit. A knock on the door and Heidi (Amy Rutherford), a self-described “specialist”, arrives. Much is made of the distinction between specialist and spokesperson. But for whom do these spokespersons speak? Heidi is hired.

McNee, Beil, Sadiq, Rutherford and Ruby Henderson, who comes in at the end as a dancer, are all fully committed to this challenging work but who, really, are their characters and why should we care – with the possible exception of Sadiq’s Belle who might have lost a child and is obsessed with The Little One?

In a recent CBC interview, Young replied to the question, “What is An Undeveloped Sound about?” that it is about “everything” and, in a sense, it is. That is, if life itself is viewed as liminal – the space between life and death – his play is about everything. Beckett’s line from Waiting For Godot is that we are born astride the grave. Hence, life might simply be the gap between life and death and we are all simply “on hold”.

My guest at the first of two previews of this world premiere has been keenly following the rise of interest in liminality and described the three stages to me; it appears that An Undeveloped Sound fits quite neatly into these stages. The quirky little dance at the end might, therefore, be a celebration of communitas, a uniting of people who experience liminality (like a disaster, a war, a flood) together. Lucian, Wade, Belle and, eventually, Heidi form a bond in this no-place.

Another feature of liminal spaces in addition to fluorescent lights in an abandoned space is “chillwave” defined as a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It loosely emulates 1980s electropop while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia (Wikipedia). Loscil provides such a soundscape with tolling bells and a soothing yet somehow suspiciously pleasant score.

And then there’s writer/director Young’s reference to using Goethe’s Faust as a springboard. If Lucian is Lucifer/Mephistopheles what exactly is the bargain Young is suggesting Wade, Belle and Heidi – and by extension, us – have made with the devil? Distraction? I see more Paradise Lost than Faust here; all of us flung headlong from a previously somewhat benign world.

Where does all this leave the rest of us who haven’t been following this liminality thing and have long since forgotten Goethe’s Faust? Bewildered. But intrigued.

A mental exercise, An Undeveloped Sound dredged up in me long-ago musings on mortality, the incomprehensibility of non-being and  thoughts on all the great pacifiers and distractions (Netflix, CBC, theatre) from the here and now which, we all know, is disturbing with its daily reminders of global warming, recession and the not-over-yet Covid that mutates faster than we can say XBB.1.5. Looking back, rather than to an uncertain future, is seductive.

Somehow, like Beckett, Kafka and Sartre, An Undeveloped Sound is provocative but not grim. It invites self-examination; for some, it is a matter of putting the pain of the past behind before it kills us. For others, it is putting the so-called good old days aside and accepting the world for what it is right now. Snowy. Beautiful.

The Electric Company Theatre (producer) and co-presenters – the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs – are back. All’s well. Well, not really. We’re all just on hold.