April 07, 2023
Westco Cafe, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06457
In seven scenes, the world ends again and again, for any number of reasons: environmental collapse, war, government incompetence, unrestrained capitalism. Navigating this chaos are a panda, a polar bear and a duck, not to mention a genetically-modified chicken and a couple of humans. How can we coax meaning and happiness out of our brief time on this dying planet? When the dust settles, only one human being is left alive in the world -- but is he blessed or cursed to have survived? Eerily resonant, this play is something between a dire prediction and a last-ditch warning.
My note:
“I [once] wrote to myself: ‘I have an instinct, that I can trust theater like how I trust my lover. Inside a space, a story, a human, I could be vulnerable and alive,’” Guo wrote in a message to The Argus. “This time living in ‘A Fable for Now,’ my trust in theater has grown and branched out. I trust my mother language dancing on the tip of my tongue in my alienated body. I trust friendship and collaboration that transcend where we’re from and lead us to imagine futures. I trust audiences who listen deeply and carry the moment we spent together in the theater out to life.”