Christopher Chen’s The Motion, is receiving a grand and magnificent mounting at Arena Stage. The show features five capable actors interpreting a thoughtful, ardent script. Nancy Robinette leads a cast made up of Nikkole Salter, Peregrine Teng Heard, Nehal Joshi and Barzin Akhavan. The show has a lush musical score by Charles Coes and Nathan A. Roberts. This score supports director Hana S. Sharif’s ingenious staging of scenes that are wordless much of the time. The merging of music and wordless drama felt to me like watching a classic silent movie. There was a lot of goodness to look at. But ultimately, this was an experience that engaged my mind while leaving the rest of me unmoved.
The premise of the production is that we, the audience, are attending a debate on the following motion: “Ban Animal Testing Now! Yes or No.”
I hate debates. What I usually take away from a debate is knowing who among the participants is the better debater. While they can be helpful, the rules of debate, Robert’s Rules of Order and the like seem to be designed to interfere and contain any human relationship that might arise in the process of civic or political engagement. In my experience, removing human relationships from these processes is often detrimental for any Black folks (or other non-white folks) who are caught up in them. As director Hana S. Sharif writes in her program notes: “debate so often only moves the needle..backwards”.
The motion is reductionist. It minimizes the stakes involved in the decision to indulge in or refrain from animal testing. The question establishes a framework that prevents reasoning together and, instead, promotes objectification and remaining locked to the particular role or point of view that you’ve chosen or that you’ve been assigned.
But that’s intentional. The constraints established because of the way that the motion is worded are just a catalyst for the play’s drama. The audience gets the chance to vote for their preferred outcome. Then, in the course of the debate someone asks the question: “In your mind what does it mean to be human?” and everything changes. Suddenly, lights flash, the debaters are tossed about the stage and, as if they were all in an episode of The Twilight Zone, the debaters discover that 1) they are not able to leave and, 2) for a while, they can hear each other’s thoughts.
The exploration of the experiences that the characters undergo as a result of being forced to remain in this alternate reality is bulk of the play.
What I understood the title to mean seemed to change in response to watching them in their new reality. At one point I thought to myself that “the motion that I am now giving my attention to is the motion of human beings living fully and overtly in relationship with one another through what, for all we know, could be infinite time.” In the play, this time was acknowledged by griefs, joys and sound of wine glasses, not just clinking but resonating through the theater space.
Do the characters change as a result of their experience? Does the audience change? Maybe you’ll have to see the show yourself and decide.
All I can honestly say is that when the show was over and I walked out of the theater, I did not feel oppressed by the debate. Instead I felt refreshed, relieved and gratified.
Running time: approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes with no intermission.
The Motion runs through June 14. Tickets can be found here.
