I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I first set out to Portland’s Artist Repertory Theatre to see Melory Mirashrafi’s production of Racecar Racecar Racecar by Kallan Dana, something I repeatedly told my friend Mei on our way to see the show. Which is funny, I was entering with more context than I normally would! I’m participating in ART’s Pathways mentorship program this year, which Melory is leading, and she gave us all access to the script to read weeks before the show opened. So in theory I should be entering with a strong sense of the show, but I got to be honest when I read through the script I was thoroughly confused – but also left with a feeling of excitement. The script plays so deeply in a sense of unreality; drifting in and out of seemingly imagined moments and refusing to address some of its most crucial questions and themes directly – I couldn’t picture how it would work onstage, and how this would play with (and reveal parts of) the themes within the piece. But that’s one of the beautiful things about scripts as art, they serve two roles. Both as an artistic piece in their own right, and as only part of a larger puzzle.

To provide a basis of context for the play, let me give you a quick synopsis! Which serves as a reminder, I will be spoiling elements of the plot and surprises within the show so if you’re hoping to go in blind… well, you probably shouldn’t be reading reviews at all? But consider this your final warning. The play centers around a father-daughter road trip from New York to California, but it gets weird. One of the strongest points of the plays is that I can’t quite tell you when or how it gets weird, it just starts at some point and then ramps up continually. What I can say concretely is that these two are driving and that around Utah/Nevada they get into what seems to be a fatal crash, we then switch to a run of memories and vignettes all mismatched and scrambled together that goes and goes with no break or sense of safety until the plays end. All of this is deeply intentional and mirrors the larger themes of the piece; alcoholism, trauma, childhood, and the intersections between them. Marketing for the show often describes it as a “Lynchian thriller” and while I haven’t seen that much Lynch (having watched Twin Peaks for the first time just… four months ago) I see the resemblance. But we’ll delve more into that later, first some thoughts on the production itself.

Upon walking into the theatre, the first thing that struck me was the set. At first glance it is simply a giant road crossing the length of the stage, stretching all the way up the length of the back wall to under the edges of the front row’s feet. But it was clear there were little surprises in store – Mei, having worked as a lead carpenter and technical director, noticed more of this than I did. I sat there and very astutely noticed the clearly garage-style door placed against the wall and painted to blend in with the road, and confidently predicted it would at some point open. We both noticed little drawers hidden in the stairs that would serve as the seats in the car for the first half of the show – although I don’t think either of us predicted Wendy from Wendy’s would be able to pop out of them (if you want context you should really just go see the show). What Mei was clever enough to catch that I missed entirely was the fact that the non-road segments of the back wall weren’t all solidly one color/texture. She told me she was “very curious about why the wall looked the way that it did,” and so she was very excited when sections of the wall pulled away in the second half of the show to create a backspace where memories the daughter could not participate in played out. I had no idea this was coming, and think I audibly gasped when it did. I was just filled with admiration for the show’s set designer, Rusty Tennant, the whole time. This show poses immense challenges for a set designer as it takes place almost entirely on the road, but changes location constantly – taking place across many states (literally and figuratively). Tennant somehow manages to convey everything within a limited space.

The other element of design I keep coming back to is the sound design – the strings used throughout the piece are simple and yet subtly unnerve you. While I don’t think they fully step into an outright eerie vibe, they rush and are just chromatic enough to convey a sense of panic. They are constantly incorporated into the show, used not only during scene changes but also throughout the sound effects. We’re used to strings being used to convey something pretty, normally we hear strings that are light and melodic, so we are subconsciously made uneasy by this. They were ever present, even subtly, and that contributed to the atmosphere of the play and created a sense that something was wrong. The moment I found it most effective is when we are given a montage of vignettes switching back and forth between the roadtrip we watched happen, and moments from the road-trip our father-daughter duo went on when she was young. The flashbacks are distinguished through two things: black and white sketch photos and a song playing. The song creates a nostalgic vibe and firmly transports us to the past – but I also think it is one of the most eerie choices in the entire play. At this point we’ve grown accustomed to the sound of the strings, so it feels jarring to hear a genuine song play – which is reinforced by the fact the images we are seeing aren’t nice or nostalgic. They paint a picture of trauma, of a father exposing his daughter to alcohol when she was too young and then teaching her to drive while he sits drunken and passed out in the back of the car. Mei and I have both done a little bit of sound design, and so it was the very first thing we discussed on our drive home after the show. It’s easy to overlook, so I always want to give it a shout out: everyone should give kudos to Matt Cherub for his excellent work!

As promised, let’s return to the content of the show. As I stated at the start, I think one of the great strengths of this show is the subtle ways in which it ramps up, and how this starts to provide answers without ever truly stating them. The best example of this is the concept of child molestation that underlies the show. I had already read the script before going in so I was aware this theme would be present, but it was really interesting to hear from Mei about how she was uneasy even in the very early stages of the play. She said; “At first you’re like, ‘oh haha, awkward family roadtrip,’ but there was something very early on that had me sitting there thinking… oh my god, this is going to be bad. But I couldn’t actually tell you what it was.” And this sensation continues throughout the whole script – most of the hints of this theme come through off handed comments, like a man in a gas station asking the father “why are you looking at her like that” or passer-bys calling them husband and wife, or the casual way the dad mentions having sex with the daughter’s mom. It all builds until a chilling final moment where the father refuses to unlock the childlock and let the daughter out. Again, not saying anything directly, but giving you enough information to leave with a sinking feeling that your dread has been all but confirmed. This all makes me turn back to the idea of the show as a Lynchian thriller, and specifically how this mirrors Twin Peaks (spoiler ahead) – another show about the violence a father enacts upon his daughter where so much goes unanswered, where an atmosphere of unreality is built up to convey both the humor of the piece and the grave tragedy that underlies it.

Finally, I would be remiss to not mention the amazing acting showcase throughout the show, by all the actors, but especially by the daughter – portrayed by Jerilyn Armstrong. The scene where she is being puppeted will stick with me for a long time, it was just truly amazing body work. The whole ensemble did an amazing job with physical choices, be that through jerks forward to show the car slamming to a stop or the way that all dragged the daughter around the stage. 

All in all, I think this show was masterfully done (to quote Mei as we left the theatre: “you can tell Melory it was really fucking well directed”), despite the fact I am left feeling like I didn’t quite grasp all the pieces of the puzzle. More than anything that has inspired a feeling within me that I ought to see the show again, there is so much more that I feel like I could capture if I viewed the show again – and countless new questions that I could carry with me. Something Mei and I kept repeating is the idea that you leave feeling like you just need to sit with the material, that you haven’t fully processed it. It is a show that begs to be experienced, even as you are left sitting there with a pit in your stomach that grows deeper the longer the show goes on.

June 7th, just under a year ago, I sat under dim stars in a small town I’d grown to call home. It was covered in spring fog, but the clouds held close to the ground, allowing me the grace to see the night sky in most of its glory. It was one of my favorite things about this town, an aspect of rural life I had never known I could love: its slightness, how little there was there. My friend, Kyra, sat beside me as we looked towards one of the oldest buildings in town (named Old Main, as so many hallmarks of campuses around the country are), and talked until one day turned to the next. It felt, in many ways, as though we were stuck there, perhaps we were. It was, after all, one of the few times in life I’ve sat knowing my life was about to change.

In less than twelve hours, we would walk across a stage once our name was called. We would be handed a diploma and then expected to clear out by day’s end. A chapter of our life would close, never to be returned to. It’s a strange thing, going to a college of just under a thousand. You build up a familiarity without ever exchanging words. Over the course of four years, faces in the distance are repeated throughout events, you grow fond of the brass bands’ tuba players’ mannerisms before you can remember her name. There is a great tragedy in this ending, of being thrust out of the style of living you’ve grown to know and love. But what struck us the most was how unspoken this tragedy was—there was a weight placed upon everyone, but no one wanted to “ruin” a goodbye by speaking it into the room, there was a palpable desire to fill these final memories together with joy. And so we moved through those final days with great love, but rarely true conversation. All the sweet, and none of the bitter. Well, the bitter was plenty, we were simply pretending it wasn’t, until every now and then someone would weep, often softly, but enough to break the illusion.

Kyra was the first person to say the unspoken aloud with me, and I think we were both better off for it. We cried, thoroughly, about what would soon be missing. Which in many ways allowed us to thoroughly grieve, despite having no ability to stop the change from coming. As we sat, staring through the hazy darkness at Old Main, we joked about how if you squint you could almost see our future selves waving off towards where we are now, grad caps adorned. Squinting and staring right back towards us. We affectionately began to call these ghosts: the imprint of our memories upon physical space. You can’t remember everything, you can not hold onto any one moment longer. It all flows away from you. But you can return to locations and walk through your old memories to be haunted by your past ghosts. You couldn’t turn a bend without seeing a memory play out in front of you. A blessing, in many ways, to live so thoroughly in your past that you can see it around you. But also a curse, to be reminded it’s gone by and that it’s always changing.

Here I am a year later; it is spring once again. I’ve grown convinced it is impossible to perceive the passage of time, at least not accurately. It shifts speed, days drag along while months fly by. Somehow I am in my hometown of Portland, Oregon again, indefinitely for the first time over four years. I am watching a brand new play by E.M. Lewis called Apple Hunters performed at Artist Repertory Theatre, when the protagonist, Eddie, states simply and plainly that “life got dark all of a sudden.” The characters in this play have all undergone recent traumas and, while I am lucky enough to have been relatively trauma free for the last few years, I couldn’t help but feel like this sentiment rang true to me. Because he’s right. The bad times come, tragedy strikes unexpectedly, you lose grasp on the parts of life that you thought you had control over—and then time keeps moving forward. Both the light and the dark soon become distant memories, and the cycle repeats again and again.

I am fortunate that my life has been incredibly bright recently. I’ve moved back to a city that I love where I still have friends from years ago. I am collecting connections in arts and through work in the community. The year after graduating is transitional, it has to be, but I am finally starting to feel pieces click into place. My life is starting to build into something new, slowly but surely. But despite that every now and again something hits me, and I find myself weepy. The first time I noticed this was when I found myself beginning to cry over a mother and daughter who walked past me while on a long walk around my old high school. The child was jumping up and down, asking excitedly about inviting their friends over… and something about that stung. I can remember when I was that age, I can remember being that excited about seeing my friends, and life from that time strikes me now as so simple. It wasn’t of course, little about being a kid is simple when you’re the kid. The world is a big, unknown place you’re just starting to figure out; it only feels simple with that hindsight, that’s how nostalgia gets you. And then you’re left wishing you could return, with the knowledge you have now. 

Overall I can’t shake the feeling that back then, be that childhood or my college days, I had something to build towards. There were goals that felt concrete, whereas now goals feel nebulous. A degree is a tactile thing, with requirements laid out before me that I can check off a list. Making a career is… not. There is no one right way to do it which, while exciting, is also terrifying. You’re creating your own milestones, you no longer know when life will change. I think this is the part that I find the hardest, because the life changes you do know are coming are often tragedies. I know, one day, the people around me will die. There is no avoiding this, it’s one of the great tragedies of the human condition. We move through life knowing it, our knowing changes nothing. So we ignore it, until we can’t. But every now and then, for me it just appears as this grand dread that my next milestone is the death of a loved one. That just like my years since childhood, the years until then will fly by unexpectedly with no way for me to slow them down.

This is where the characters in Apple Hunters spoke to me on a fundamental level, they are experiencing this very thing. At their core they are haunted characters. They have lost loved ones, and they so desperately want them back. But they are also haunted by nostalgia. “Nobody warns you how much of your adult life you’re going to spend in survival mode,” says Eddie, before later going on about a memory from his childhood. Time spent with his brother and two close friends by the river all day, eating blackberries and sharing “true things” with one another. Don’t we all long for those times? I find it can be especially hard when the ghosts surround you. This is a play that takes place in rural Washington, where the characters have lived their entire lives. It is certain to be swimming with ghosts. So is Portland for me, I think it’s why I feel the pull of childhood so heavily now. I’m surrounded by memories that I haven’t interacted with in years. Many versions of myself, all overlaying one another throughout this city.

And while I am filled with memory, there is also the tangible sense of loss. In the last year I have found myself increasingly forced into entire days dedicated to getting to work, working, and recovering from work. To fit in anything else is a puzzle, and inevitably not everything can fit neatly into it. More often than not, what gets left behind are connections I treasure. Old friends who now live far away, people whose lives I once knew intimately that I can only speak to once a month or so over the phone. We don’t like to address it but it hits against the soul, often subtly, and builds up over time. There is a moment in the play where Eddie boldly claims that we should not aim to be rocks, “rocks shatter.” But I want to push back on that notion: rocks erode. It’s largely imperceptible, and yet its effects are everywhere: from the creation of river canyons to sand on the beach. Time eats at it as it does at us. One day we notice, without having seen the process, that valleys have emerged and suddenly there is a space between us and those we care about. Between us and our past.

Eddie and his friends then take a moment to discuss the elements of life that they’ve lost control over. The passing of loved ones, a wife undergoing cancer, the memory of childhood abuse resurfacing. They are, of course, powerless to stop any of this but simply discussing it helps lift the weight, if only a little. No longer are they eating blackberries while birds fly by, now it is an apple as they huddle by fire. A mirror image, but not the same: it never will be. Time has harmed them all, but it has also enriched them. There is a depth to their friendship they are able to discuss now, a closeness that can only be forged in time. It’s the tricky relationship we have; we hate to see old moments pass, we can’t wait for new moments to come. Me leaving behind my college friends has allowed me to better foster old friendships with those I knew here, and new ones with strangers I’d otherwise have never met. It all ebbs and flows, and no one knows where they’ll end up. The tragedy persists, but connections are forged and reforged through them.

After we graduated, Kyra ended up working at Fire Island National Seashore as a park ranger for a season. It’s a barrier island off the coast of Long Island and it is always in flux—it’s a thin stretch of sand, built up over years, constantly subject to wind and waves. Parts of it remain the same for many years, but even they are in constant movement. Kyra told me once that rangers there are fond of saying, “on a barrier island, the only constant is change.” Perhaps there are lessons there for all of us.

Taking Liberties. By Jennifer Wright.

There will forever be a soft spot in my heart for avant-garde music that ventures into the vein of performance art—I studied the works of John Cage and George Brecht in college, it’s a category of music I take a lot of influence from. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I walked into Wright’s Taking Liberties, all I knew was that it would include two pianists and an interactive element. So I was just as shocked as the friends I brought along when I learned there were eighty rolls of washi tape spread throughout the room, and that the performance would not end until the audience had applied all of the tape to the performers. Something that felt especially challenging given that there were only about ten to fifteen of us there. Over the course of the Fertile Grounds Festival they did this performance three times, each time with a different theme, primarily emphasized by the style of outfit they chose to wear. The only one I could make was the late night showing, where they wore night gowns.

I was deeply impressed musically by their ability to not only play, but withstand all the distractions and create something that had musical coherency. Once their arms were taped together by the audience, they simply transitioned to playing more cluster notes. I am also, admittedly, a sucker for interactive pieces and found it interesting to see how everyone’s tactics for using the tape changed as the show went on. Some people ended up getting more and more creative while others just created the same bundles of tape balls and put them on the performers shoulders and back again and again. I started making little loops so that I could make a roll of tape loops that reached from the shoulder to the floor. Meanwhile my friend Talia got the tape to spell out hello.

My friends and I left with a mix of opinions on its effectiveness though. The point the show was trying to get across was a commentary on how society views women as objects, and the performers highlighted in their talkback how this audience in particular was quick to look for ways to restrain the performers. I do think it is a somewhat flawed experiment. In the intro speech they say to do anything you want with the tape, and explicitly mention that we can tape up their fingers and hands. So I think there is an element of being led to a pre-existing conclusion. But I still think there is plenty to be gleaned here on how society views women, based on examining subconscious elements of where people place the tape, how quickly they place the tape, and so on. My friends, however, did not agree, with one saying that she felt upset by the piece—although she is also a big Beatles fan and the creator cited Yoko Ono as an influence, so I do think that may have played a role. In the end, I found it both interesting and uncomfortable, as so much good performance art should be. They mentioned taking inspiration from Marina Abramović, another great artist, and I always appreciate a piece that implicates you as an unknowing participant in the greater themes of society.

Blue Quarantine. By Kathryn Claire.

This is the last piece I watched during the Fertile Grounds Festival, on the last day of the festival, and I found it deeply fitting not to end on. This is so clearly a show that could only be produced within a community willing to foster and love new and experimental art, something I believe Claire herself underscored by thanking individually so many of the people sitting in that small room. There were only around 15 of us there, and we filled every seat. She used the word multidisciplinary to describe the type of work she wants to return to creating (after having been mostly a musician over recent years), and I think it fits this piece exceptionally well. Throughout the piece Claire crawls across the floor, recites lines that eventually build to full sentences, sings to us, to her instrument, and plays violin—using effect petals to loop and repeat sounds while she continues on. It’s a mix of dance, theatre, poetry, and music.

Born out of the pandemic, Claire described this performance as something that came about in pieces. She told us that the musical elements began by simply messing around during quarantine when she was bored. A lot of the text came from a poem she wrote during that time, but it is also a reflection on art—how we lose it over time, how it comes back to us. How when it does, it is seen with new eyes that somehow inevitably change it. In a way the fragmented and repetitive nature of the piece illustrates the very process of artmaking, returning to work over and over until you find something that completes the little elements that you like. I really enjoy the message behind this, even if it took me a while before I genuinely started to click with the piece. 

I was intrigued to hear that Blue Quarantine does have an official sound to it—it’s being released as a song, which we listened to in full! It was shocking to hear how all these musical and lyrical elements combine into a finished project, immediately after watching them in fragments. There will be a full album released later this year, Blue Quarantine is just the single, and I am very excited to listen to what this work will be like. I can’t help but wonder whether or not she will bring the same discipline to these works as she releases them, or will save that for whatever her next show ends up being. Either way, it sounds like Claire has plans for the future, as she mentioned how this is the type of work she wants to be doing more of—and I am excited to see where it leads her.