Self-proclaimed “over-educated under-achievers”, the lost, angst-ridden, identity-searching 20-somethings we all know intimately, perhaps uncomfortably, well, define the landscape of I Am Not An Allegory (these are people i know), written by Libby Emmons and directed by Ali Ayala. In the iconic underground theater at Under St. Marks, one got a sense that the characters onstage could be sitting right next to you, fellow attendees of the “alternative” set.

Through snapshot scenes, the play’s subjects, all members of the same dance class, search -- for fulfilling careers, for better relationships, for meaning, and for identity -- but the search is painfully cyclical. The questions go unanswered, asked over and over again as the frustration of feeling lost is pressed home.

What does it mean for characters to defy the concept of allegory? What makes someone an individual rather than a representation of an idea? The characters struggle through the identities imposed on them -- race, motherhood, femininity, sexuality -- in a way that ultimately both pushes against and reinforces the concept that their selves, their individual identities, are made up of these larger identities.

Sexuality runs an electric undercurrent through these otherwise abstract concepts. From the mother who embraces her identity of motherhood and her choice to support her son through online sex work, to the complicated, ultimately toxic love triangle between a woman, her best friend, and her best friend’s abusive boyfriend, to the exploration of taboo fetishes by two waiters at a cafe, the question of sex, like the question of identity, is asked and unresolved. It’s that very lack of resolve that defines the work, ironically creating something of an atmospheric allegory for the ennui that plagues its characters.

Though the dialogue was at times clunky and took the viewer out of the action onstage, the production related a familiar concept -- of wanting to be “the real thing”, an authentic self rather than a cliche -- that in many ways defines the experience of making a place for oneself in the world.