The Comedy of Existence Reflected Onstage

It's something called Here There Where It’s just three people on a stage. Everything is black. As the show open, chalk is marked on the ground outlining some basic boundaries that will more or less be used in the course of the rest of the show. Three characters receive and invitation for a party. Where is the party? Well...it’s not exactly clear, but the three people onstage have to work out exactly where it is that htey’re going to leave from if they’re going to be able to make any headway at all.


Italian writer/performer/filmmaker Alessandro Renda joins Gigante’s Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson in a jarringly funny, little exploration into the nature of reality. The three performers engage in a brief performance that seems to conjure a sort of existentialist Marx Brothers sort of an energy that playfully and whimsically tumbles across the stage. The nature of time, space emotion and intention whimsically pop through a narrative that has some breathtakingly simple bits of breathtaking metaphysical depth.


One notable moment has Kralj having a conversation with a prerecorded version of herself that is being projected larger than life at the back of the stage. She’s asking herself about who she is and who she was and she’s answering herself...but she already knows the answers. Elsewhere, Renda is performing a live monologue as video footage of him plays in the background...driving around in search of direction in video as he stands perfectly still onstage. Anderson also has a solo moment in which he considers some of the first principles if superheroing. It’s a surprisingly novel monologue that manages to stake out some strikingly new ground relating to power and responsiibility in a superhero genre that’s been around for over 80 years.


For the most part, the three are all onstage or screen together at various moments over the course of a brief, intermission-less performance that casually touches reality from many different angles. The narrative ends where most stories begin. The whole thing feels like a tripe, little anti-show that plays on all of the empty spaces, silences and darknesses that exist along the edges of perception. On at least one level, it’s as though the show is as much about what it ISN’T as it is about what it is. Theatre like. This doesn’t come around often. It’s breathtakingly deep in a way that feels deliciously organic. It’s all very simple...but the simplest things leave an audience with the most room to consider so much more room for thought on the way out of the theatre.


Theatre Gigante’s Here There Where continues through May 19th at Kenilworth 508 Theatre on 1925 E. Kenilworth Boulevard. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante Online.