Arts

A Thousand Ways: A Review of a Theater Piece during a Pandemic

A Thousand Ways, the new COVID-era performance piece by theatre duo 600 Highwaymen presented virtually this weekend by the ’62 Center, is composed entirely of similarly pointed questions (I think one or two of them even overlapped with the ones J and I had asked each other). In A Thousand Ways, two strangers — participants who reserve tickets for the same time slot — dial into a personalized conference call. There, a pre-recorded voice greets the two strangers and guides both participants through a set of questions (“Who is someone you idolized?”), visualizations (“Picture yourself in a blue car on a dusty highway. Say ‘I’m there’ when you feel it) and partner exercises (“Person A, count down from 5 as Person B traces their forearm from elbow to wrist”). Over the course of the hour, the idea goes, the stranger sharing anecdotes on the other end of the line might become less of a stranger, might “come into focus.” I understood this because at the end of the piece, the pre-recorded voice requested I repeat to my partner, “Am I coming into focus?”