Arguably among the most powerful storytelling experiences of early quarantine was not exactly a work of theater. On April 27, Heroes of the Fourth Turning scribe Will Arbery hosted a master class on Zoom, presented by Playwrights Horizons and now available to watch in full. I entered it expecting pointers on structure, dialogue, finishing that pesky first draft - the usual stuff.
Arbery instead took on us on a melancholic, often deeply revealing tour through his writing career, narrating his creative development play by play (literally folder by folder, on a shared screen), and tracing a consistent theme that has driven his work - a play’s relationship to breath.
Jumping from one Word document to the next at a pace that feigned casualness, but often felt carefully structured, Arbery explicated that concept for us: “If a play can teach you how it breathes, and get an audience to breathe at that same rhythm, then the body won’t be able to forget it.”
Will Arbery shares his screen for a ‘POP’ master class, hosted by Playwrights Horizons
Static Apnea is the first piece of live, in-person theater I’ve seen since the March 12 shutdown. Even as I entered the space, I felt oddly uncertain about how to breathe. Or how to hold myself. Or, really any of the theater rhythms that used to be second nature.
In fairness I didn’t (usually) see theater quite like this. Static Apnea is staged by The American Vicarious in a shipping container next door to The Invisible Dog Arts Center in Boerum Hill. Directed by Christopher McElroen, who co-wrote with Julia Watt, the piece is nine minutes long and performed for a single audience member. You enter a darkened hallway (really dark - watch your step) and make your way down to the end, where a female performer (at my performance, Jenny Tibbels) stands at a microphone behind glass. She delivers a monologue about breath, about the body’s limits, and about Natalia Molchanova, a female record holder for static apnea - Molchanova held her breath underwater for 9 minutes and 2 seconds.
As the monologue proceeds, the space grows disorienting. Soon, it felt like the floor was shifting beneath my feet. I couldn’t tell you if there was an actual lighting change - or, if really anything had happened. But it felt odd, and unstable. Though I was engaged, a little part of me wanted to get the hell out of there.
Near the end, the actor instructs you to hold your breath. (I did not, but you have fun with that.) Then comes a really excellent theatrical shift that I won’t spoil here. A show that had transported me out of my body abruptly, with its final turn, grounded me. For all the time I’ve spent alone lately, the last minute of Apnea felt like a rare moment all to myself. A moment to breathe, check in with my surroundings, and just feel present.
Static Apnea, by The American Vicarious
Is breath really coming up more in post-COVID theatrical work, or am I just noticing the theme in a new way? Richard Nelson’s first Apple Zoom play hit on it, but building on an established Apple theme. Gelsey Bell’s moving, transporting Green-Wood Cemetery soundwalk Cairns mentions it also, and like Apnea, even instructs you on how to breathe at one point. Apnea itself was first staged in 2017 - though of course, the choice to re-stage it right now is a deliberate one.
I come back to that calming final moment in the darkened hallway of Apnea, and to something else Arbery said: “We could all stand to take a moment and consider our relationship to breath - not only [because of this disease], but because the world seems right now to be taking a very strange, complicated breath.”
Right now our shared breath is one of panic, chaos, and fear. Arbery’s presentation, and much of his work, hits upon that anxiety so well. Static Apnea starts with it - but then takes you out of that space, if just for a moment. In doing so, it finds great value in the forced loneliness of its single audience member. It let me, for a moment, step out of this shared panic, and breathe in my own way.