Bokun Jiang

1984:AGAIN is a thought-provoking, not crowd-pleasing, empathetic, and generally speaking encouraging show. I wrote all this, and some may contain spoilers? I hope it’s OK considering I went to the closing performance.

I kinda like the structure of this show, with all the 3 timelines and intersections/interactions with real-life events. The interesting structure leads to exceptional narratives and TENSION, to the extent that it leaves room for the audience to ponder before falling asleep tonight till next week. I very much like this approach to storytelling- it presents the book and asks you to flip the pages.

I love the monologues more than the dialogues; they are the ones that almost made me shed a tear. I absolutely love the song, a version of Bella Ciao, as someone who is also into musical theatre. The singer’s voice itself is storytelling.

It is my first time at an all-inclusive show; broadening my understanding can be for real. I mean, we all know that there’re infinite ways to make a theatrical production work inclusively, yet rarely do we consider how to make inclusivity organic. I think they kind of did that. And I might be a fan of Theatre Terrific right now cuz you folks are quite terrific.

Ofc there’re potential improvements to be made. As for the whole surveillance camera online meeting thingy, I was impressed at first, but it quickly felt thin. Because we’re just watching (which is fair considering that’s probably what people in Oceania can do), not interacting much, or even making meaningful decisions. The monitor here is more of a condiment to enhance flavour and immersion, not really a big deal? Anyways, props to the person holding the camera, I don’t know if you are a human anymore or merely a government agent like birds are. I’d love to see the concept being explored further, actually: What if the audience can vote? What if we can interfere with endings or characters’ destinies? Not necessarily to save the world, but we could be seen as the common folks wielding our weapons against other common folks; we could be a bunch of mobs who joined a populist rally, we could be a bunch of directors, we could be more. Winston may have a fate sealed away, but it never hurts to make everything a little Kahoot game. Again, if the fact that we can only remain silent is the vibe of Oceania, then it all makes total sense. Otherwise, we may not be given the tools to participate. However, I wasn’t in the online meeting for very long, so I might have missed important info that led to my biases due to my phone’s battery situation and how it burns in my pocket under the sunbeam. I do apologize if I underestimated their vision, as these comments are purely subjective and largely delusional.

As people probably can tell, a show called 1984:AGAIN will be highly political, and it is. I like it. I like it as a person who’s never read the book before. The only thing I know about 1984 is the fictional anthem of Oceania that my highly political friend sang about. Even so, I liked it. I like the way some political satires and “jokes” were delivered. I especially like the way it did not end up lecturing the audience or providing a boring summary of the book. It moves forward to question the audience, to ask When will you fight for whatever you are fighting for, and Why haven’t you started. In this case, the answer to the latter question is fear, while love being the counterargument provided. Fear & love: we can choose our answer, somehow. Whoever did this adapted it well; they know something about mobilizing. I too like to add a call-to-action paragraph at the end of my essay.

That being said, I decided to give this show a 5/5. We need more of this in every aspect possible (more good political commentary, more accessibility, more interesting shows with creative ideas, etc.). You know I’m biased cuz my friend is in the cast. I also wanted to mention how I appreciate that they have an ASL interpreter alongside the performance; you know I’m impressed. Actors, you did a great job and I WILL be studying your delivery to aid my own acting and use your data captured by my Flock camera eyes to train my Artificial Intelligence powered neural network + feed into my surveillance model named personal growth. As for the crew and creative team, thank you thank you thank you.

Love the free posters btw.