{"id":18279,"date":"2019-09-30T09:38:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T16:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18279"},"modified":"2019-09-30T09:39:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T16:39:55","slug":"dead-mans-cell-phone-looks-at-the-human-phone-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/09\/30\/dead-mans-cell-phone-looks-at-the-human-phone-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone<\/em> looks at the human-phone relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago playwright Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone<\/em>,\u00a0playing now at Victoria\u2019s Theatre Inconnu, fits completely into the category of \u201cmind-bender,\u201d which, in a nutshell, covers anything that can dramatically and rapidly cause your thought pattern to go \u201c\u2026eh?\u201d<\/p>\n

The play’s protagonist, Jean, played by Inconnu regular Melissa Blank, is one of those likeable and slightly ordinary people who seem so desperate to please that you have a feeling something deranged may be lurking under her surface. In the play, Jean is having an ordinary day, drinking coffee in an ordinary cafe, when she answers a cell phone at the next table because its owner refuses to answer it himself. That’s because the owner of the cell phone has died, she discovers, and Jean immediately ends up on a whirlwind too-late-but-that-won’t-stop-her quest to fix this man\u2019s life, a quest which lasts the entire length of the production.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Dead Man’s Cell Phone<\/em> explores how much our phones are part of our identity (photo by Clayton Jevne).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blank is a bit of a marvel on stage\u2014she is a master of facial expressions, whether they be comedic or distraught; she’s able to take the audience on an emotional ride simply by moving her face. Her character\u2019s obsession with righting a dead man\u2019s wrongs made me wonder: does she not have a life of her own?<\/p>\n

The set of Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone<\/em>\u00a0is minimalist: it’s a series of large blocks that are moved about at the beginning of each scene. What makes this production unique is the incorporation of a silhouette puppet show\u2014manipulated by Amira Abdel-Malek\u2014that randomly appearson the wall, enhancing certain scenes and adding artistic whimsy that really makes the show.<\/p>\n

The idea of a play revolving around a cell phone screams about the lack of person-to-person connection today, and how one person feeling lonely might very well adopt another person\u2019s connections if the opportunity arose. Although the plot revolves around Jean, the audience never actually finds out anything about her. After all, she\u2019s using a dead man\u2019s phone, which brings up questions about how much of our identities are tied into our phones.<\/p>\n

Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone\u00a0<\/em>is a mind-bending journey well worth travelling.<\/p>\n

Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone
\n<\/em>Various times, until Saturday, October 12
\n$10 student tickets
\ntheatreinconnu.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chicago playwright Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone,\u00a0playing now at Victoria\u2019s Theatre Inconnu, fits completely into the category of \u201cmind-bender,\u201d which, in a nutshell, covers anything that can dramatically and rapidly cause your thought pattern to go \u201c\u2026eh?\u201d The play’s protagonist, Jean, played by Inconnu regular Melissa Blank, is one of those likeable and slightly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18281,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions\/18281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}