Mind-Fuck

"Ideation,” a play by Aaron Loeb, 2018, Gremlin Theater

Mind-fucks are par for the course in the U.S.  Movies, politics, some human beings.  This 2016 play toys with the idea of building extermination camps for humans, then frames such a thing as useful in saving the rest of humanity from extermination by a deadly virus.  Then it segues into the possibility that the whole exercise is some kind of a corporate test with an obscure intent. Do they go through with it?  Does the manager keep the team together?  Do they realize what is going on?  The audience is never meant to know which is true, as the ending is inconclusive.  In the end, one team member believes it is a normal assignment to be completed so he can go to his daughter’s sports event.  Another finally thinks it is a corporate test of the team.  A third, the manager, worries they are in some kind of danger to even work on it, but she continues… A fourth – Sandeep, an Indian with a green card - walks out over the insanity of designing an extermination regime for terminally infected people.  A ‘logic’ provided to them which might be a lie anyway.

A corporate nightmare

And that vagueness is the point.  The arch New York Times theater critic called it “a psychological game, one that’s both amusing and intriguing to play.” Which I guess is high praise on the ‘silliness’ of the whole idea, as you’d hate to think that a corporation was actually planning extermination camps - again.

What is accurate is the depiction of corporate life in the play. All the scenes take place in an office board room, where 5 employees brain-storm about a very secret project they have been given by the CEO of the company.  It is so secret they cannot put anything in digital form.  They have 90 minutes before they verbally present a rough draft to the CEO.  (Needless to say the CEO communicates with the team like the Wizard of Oz through a digital program like Skype... oops…)

In the process we see careerists not trusting each other.  Teams that are driven by an excess of white-board rationality and no emotional intelligence.  Connected interns who are really plants to observe the team.  Clueless Americans that trust and fear the wrong things.  Sexual desire between managers and those they manage.  Possible layers of projects that might reveal layers of lies, thus intentionally keeping employees in the dark.  Fears of losing their highly-paid white-collar jobs.  Subservience to the anonymous, vicious boss.  Competition for profitable work.  Amoral planning in the service of profit.  Assured arrogance and possible surveillance.  Board rooms, water bottles, snacks and fancy chairs.  It is all here.

I take issue with the intentional vagueness, especially in the ending, trendy as that is.  The ultimate point of this play is that we know nothing definitively, and so everything is subjective.   Facts?  Experience?  Prior knowledge?  Pshaw.

Really, what was this corporate exercise about?   We know the U.S. Pentagon, as do other military forces, have various plans for war or virus outbreaks or political rebellion.  Plans for prison camps or isolation regimes or software blocking or roundups of various kinds are not unthinkable.  The play could have actually been about that, but then it would have moved it from ‘dark comedy’ to politics.  Anyone with even a glancing familiarity with present health practices would know that killing the terminally ill en mass – a 2 million figure is suggested at one point – would not be practical or done.  (Yeah, they even suggest putting the bodies in hydrochloric acid and secretly burying the acidic mess at sea in shipping containers.)  So the ostensible rationale for this project is basically flawed and illegal - and most people would grasp that immediately.  Except perhaps some corporate types…these corporate types - blinded by a certain narrow-minded functionalism.

I was just following orders.  As an exposure of highly-paid white collar consultants it certainly works.

Many times in the fog of limited facts you have to still make a decision, based on certain simple things.  Certainly Sandeep made the correct decision, maybe at the expense of his job and perhaps at the expense of his green card.  But in this play, reality is subjective and supposed to be ultimately unknowable.  Actually even ‘amusing!’  And that is the way we are supposed to like it.  I don’t.

On the practical side, the theater is a small ‘in the round’ style.  The acting is excellent.  There is only one set, which keeps things simple.  And it’s down the hall from a brewery, so except for the price and the basic message, what is not to like?

The play will be performed at the Gremlin Theater in St. Paul, 550 Vandalia Street, from July 6 to July 29.

Other theater plays reviewed below: “Rock and Roll,” “The Good Person of Setzuan,” “Things of Dry Hours,”  “Oil & the Jungle,” “A Bright Room Called Day,” “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again,” “Camino Real,” “The Lower Depths,” “The Dutchman,” “Puntilla and his Hired Man,” “Love and Information.”

Red Frog

July 17, 2018