Gabrielle Maalihan and David Siniako are awestruck as they enter a new universe in “The Motion.” All photos by Jay Yamada.
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
The Motion, a new sci-fi dramedy, provides laughable and challenging theater while occasionally making audience members believe their brains are about to explode.
In a good way.
Obie-winning playwright Christopher Chen crams about eight tons of material into 105 intermission-less minutes at the Ashby Theater in Berkeley. He explores, for example, morality, memory, identity, emotions, science, and animal welfare vs. animal rights.
Oh yeah, and love.
What’s dubbed a “metatheatrical sci-fi fable” is a five-character production with each of the Shotgun Players’ actors trying to out-superb the others as they try to figure out what it means to be human. The backdrop, the first of several universes that are explored, is a debate stage.
Dr. Alan James (played by David Siniako), “a humane doctor,” implies that critters have souls. To buoy his support of a ban on animal-testing, he describes in gory detail the vivisection of a bunny.
Dr. Sarah Matthis (Erin Mei-Ling Stuart) counters with facts, leading with the notion that 44% of testing does “no harm to animals of any kind” and attempts to show that most experimentation is on lower forms. “Fish are used to study cancer,” she reports, and “worms are used to test Alzheimer’s.” She declares that animals are sentient creatures that shouldn’t be mere tools in scientific research by humans. Along the way, she quotes 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant and cites an illustration of not knowing who to toss overboard when there are five people in a lifeboat that safely holds only four.
Matthis’ alternately cocky and insecure anti-ban partner, Prof. Neel Serrano (Soren Santos), believes the key to settling the debate is by determining how to eliminate suffering. A ban, he warns, might “halt most medical experimentation in its tracks”
Gabrielle Maalihan and Soren Santos provide a love undercurrent.
Prof. Lily Chan (Gabrielle Maalihan), perhaps the most susceptible to emotions and thereby the most vulnerable debater, admits at one point that she has “this thing where I can’t allow myself to be happy.” In a crisis, she simply feels “so helpless.”
Moderator Jack Donovan (Erin Gould) futilely tries to keep the lid on the debate, circling back to the initial question when everything starts flying off the rails, with participants either talking over each other or flirting. He gets to deliver many — but by no means all — of the laugh-lines.
James, white-bearded, distinguished, and nattily attired, tries swapping one-upmanship lines and concepts with Sarrano, but ends up angrily blurting out, “Please stop interrupting me.”
After loud claps of thunder and blinding lightning flashes, the four debaters are transported to an alternate world in which they are momentarily trapped behind invisible walls. Reading each other’s thoughts, a concept that frightens all of them, is but a first step in a journey that leads to them evolving in other places where they learn to live in the present with AI as a sidekick.
To make the presentation immersive, audience members get to vote on how the debate affected them.
Playwright Chen is popular in the Bay Area. His works have been produced and developed by such companies as the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Rep, Magic Theatre, and SFPlayhouse,
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (left), Gabrielle Maalihan (center) and David Siniako brave a bitter-cold snowstorm.
Artistic director Patrick Dooley founded the Shotgun Players in 1992 in, the website says, the basement of a pizza parlor with “20 eager actors and a bucket of black paint.” Their aim: “to make great, affordable theater.” In the following 12 years, the players performed in 44 different spaces before finding their permanent home on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley.
In a post-show conversation after an opening week matinee of the world premiere, audience members cheerfully dove deeper into the morality issues — politely debating one another and, now and then, ignoring TDooley, who was moderating the half-hour bonus.
During the conversation, he suggested that perhaps the audience might want to consider what the play’s characters and they, as well, have learned about themselves. In the program, he advises theatergoers to retain “a spirit of thoughtfulness and wonder. Stay open. Stay curious.”
Both he and Chen make it virtually impossible to do otherwise.
The Motion will run through Oct. 12 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets: $23 to $80. Info: 510-841-6500, ext. 303, or boxoffice@shotgunplayers.org.
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.
