Farflung Show Review

Farflung was a very, very interesting play. First off, the audience was in the middle, which is already completely original. The audience was in four rows of two facing each other in a square, with separate stages placed behind each section of the audience. This made you, as an audience member feel very exposed and almost uncomfortable because not only could the other audience members look at you, around you, and past you at the actors, but also when the actors moved around behind you and near you.

The play also you used another medium along with the typically devices of plays: actors, costumes, props, and stages. But they also used four projectors that projected images onto the walls behind each of the four sections of the audience. The projectors projected previously filmed images of the actors in different environments using a green-screen. This allowed the actors to go into what I believed was sort of a ‘dream-state’ where the screens showed the characters dreams, or sometimes different themes that had to do with the­m at that moment.

            Even though you could argue that having the audience in the middle was a form of breaking the fourth wall, especially when towards the end the actors finally moved into the middle of the audience, they also attempted to do one other way. Near the middle, when it appeared as the projetors were showing the wrong videos one of the actors yelled in his real voice (he was using an accent in the play) up to the control booth, where the technical person opened the window and yelled back something along the lines of don’t worry I’m fixing it. It was a strange way to break the fourth wall, and I wasn’t very impressed with it. It seemed like a way to break the fourth wall just for the sake of breaking it.