Daily Life Everlasting isn’t so much a play as a collage of dance, spoken word and physical theatre. Some of it is absolutely thrilling, like a blow-out dance party complete with strobe lights and people stripping down to their skivvies. It can also be terribly mundane, as when performer Chinaza Uche makes a bag of microwave popcorn and passes it around to the other performers. Or it can be really strange, like when Uche and Dan Safer are sitting on a couch having a nonsensical conversation. It’s also got a bit of audience interaction and improv, as when an audience member is asked to select a cast member’s name out of a hat and that performer (Aziza Barnes, this time) has to riff on a topic, also selected for her.
The experimental nature of Daily Life Everlasting is owed to its being devised by ensemble-based theatre company Witness Relocation. Led by Director and Choreographer Dan Safer, every performer on stage has come up with some very original vignettes that flow into one another like a warm breeze. Using text by Chuck Mee and original songs by Heather Christian, the ensemble cobbles together a series of lyrical and meandering scenes. Each actor gets a monologue and sometimes a dialogue, mostly using their bodies to perform some erratic and fight-like motions. The physicality of the show is very specific and impressive. Scenes in which each person is seemingly doing his or her own independent movement always come together in an interesting way.
Despite the great movement and dynamic dance scenes, the lack of a narrative thread doesn’t sustain Daily Life Everlasting enough. The patchwork-like structure keeps anything substantial floating in the air with nothing grounding it. There seems to be no purpose to the text and the movement only distances it further from the language, rather than supports it. The supposed theme of love is just too subtly and vaguely threaded throughout the piece. My favorite moments are the dance scenes and the musical numbers, those without the words.
Still, the members of Witness Relocation really can move and I applaud their accomplishments as great physical actors. If they could just focus and build on the moments of pure physicality, they will surely be an entertaining group to watch.
