urban excavations

The Voices in Your Head
Featuring Christian Caro, Marcia Debonis, Alex Gibson, Tom Mezger, Daphne Overbeck, Jamila Sabares-Klemm, Erin Treadway, and Jehan O. Young
Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective
September 9, 2024 – October 6, 2024
production site

Grief can be something to survive, a tonic, a process, a way of being. And in The Voices in Your Head, we live the fact that grief can be a community building emotion, and addressing that grief can be a salve.

Float the idea of “immersive” theater to a group of theatergoers, and some significant portion of that group will groan. Add the thought that the audience one joins if about twenty strong, that groan might grow louder. In the hands of expert actors performer a script (or at least a structure) that holds multitudes of thoughts and themes and characters, and audience instructions (no you don’t need to participate and in fact are encouraged at most points not to) and group management, a show that presents as a support group circle complete with snacks holds us as it holds the actors.

We in the audience, folded in with the actors when we enter the storefront space at St. Lydia’s in Brooklyn, learn during the hour-long show, learn that entry into the group is only granted when they acknowledge the search is not to share tears of pain but joy. The group leader Jamila Sabares-Klemm sets the rules, and several group members illustrate the range of group member possibilities. Vivian (Marcia Debonis) is the energic group member with nervous energy focused on her yarn, Regina (Daphne Ovebeck) is a widow who is pondering life after her husband’s death; Caleb (Christian Caro) is a college student trying to figure out how to be sad while socializing at school; Sandra (Erin Treadway) shows us vibrating hostility and resists the group; Hadiya (Jehan O. Young) is the newest group member seeking the chance to say her piece; Blake (Alex Gibson) provides the most theatrical entrance to the group and takes the “stage” to tell his story.

Confessional and presentational, surprising revelations in a classic group therapy setting. Who gets to talk, who sets the tone, how do we corral the outliers, what is our group goal, what are individual goals for participating? The playwrights Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee have crafted surprising nuances to a familiar set up.

There are no stars but there are resonant standouts, among them Marica Debonis, who is energetic and awkward, raging and lovely, sincere and confused.

The short piece has a huge impact, and the exquisite skill of the writers, performers (corralling all that energy and instructing the audience to be eager collaborators in the storytelling, almost without verbalizing instructions), and Ryan Dobrin’s direction and Carina Goegelbecker’s choreography (created a movement direction) all combine to create a transformative small scale piece of theater with a huge heart.

© Martha Wade Steketee (September 14, 2024)

Playwright [“created by”]| Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee
Director | Ryan Dobrin
Movement Director | Carina Goebelbecker