I spend more evenings than most people in the dark with other people, watching yet other people pretend to be . . . well, other people. So seeing Teenage Dick at Theater Wit Monday night, knowing it was the last live performance I’d be at for a while, had a special poignancy to it. (Mixed with pandemic guilt—”Should I even be out here tonight?”)
It also draws on the narrative trope of social media as a driver of conflict, à la Dear Evan Hansen, with tweets projected on the walls of Sotirios Livaditis‘s locker-lined set. (You can’t see those projections in the video version, but most of them are accompanied by voice-over so you won’t miss much.)
Is Arney’s Richard morally warped because of how the world treats him as a person with a disability, or is he an inherently off-putting person who uses that disability as an excuse for his behavior? (Is he depraved on account he’s deprived?) Does the politics of dominance, so pronounced in our current shitshow, turn everybody into a dick?
Through 5/24: Thu–Sat 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM. This show is available at the scheduled times through reserved remote online viewing of a previously recorded live performance. Limited tickets available for each viewing at theaterwit.org, $28.
