Deep History – 06 October 2024

Deep History left me feeling puzzled as I ran through my internal checklist of what makes a standout theatrical production. It was relevant to today’s world. The storytelling format was innovative and engaging. Design elements had beautiful moments (blue backlight, rumbling subwoofers under the seating bank, live projection that was a good mix of artistic and practical, plenty of sugar). I learned something. I walked away with a lot to think about that I wanted to discuss with my fellow theatergoers (and in my review). There were emotional moments that genuinely moved me. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check…

So why did I walk out feeling let down? Deep History is everything good theatre should be. For me, the ambivalence I walked out with had a lot to do with the constant interruptions woven into the structure of the play to allow the playwright/performer, David Finnigan, some grace to show personal growth since the initial writing (since he was also the one presenting). Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciated the fearlessness of looking at a list of doing the same things and coming to the conclusion later on that doing the same things produces the same results. I appreciated that continuing to ponder issues  as serious and important as climate change produced newer, better (though less optimistic) thoughts, and that Finnigan wanted to share his evolution of thought—after all, it is part of his story.

It wasn’t what he did that left me unsatisfied. It was the mechanism of how he did it as abrupt pieces of interruptions that didn’t flow together into a cohesive whole. It was somewhat jarring to have each new bit explained and re-explained, and even though the closing scene tied it all together as pieces of a larger puzzle, I found the lack of transitions from piece to piece difficult to connect for myself, leaving me with bits of information that my brain didn’t know what to do with.

Worse were the apologies. The performer stopped the show to apologize for his “horrible taste in music.” He stopped the show to apologize for the show’s conventions. He stopped the show to mock the Public Theater’s budget. He started a story at the beginning, then ten minutes later stopped to explain Australian customs for starting a show and then restarted the show in that way. I enjoyed Finnigan’s choices as a playwright—I just wanted him to own them as a performer. Don’t apologize for the way you want to start your story—start it that way! Just do it! The audience will follow. We’re here for it.

The last thing I’ll comment on is the run time. This show is 65 minutes. I don’t feel it could have gone on any longer in this current format, and I admire a playwright who knows when (and how!) to wrap things up. The ending where he connected the dots was definitely my favorite part. However, I think if the format of this play had crossed the boundary of lecture into theatre sooner and made room for proper transitions between ideas, the material would have been sufficient for a slightly longer, full length one act play.

In the spirit and style of the performance, I will revise my initial paragraph to say that Deep History possessed most of the elements of great theatre. It lacked meaningful transitions that lie together a piece of theatre as a story—as something more than a presentation—as a piece of art. Deep History reaches toward that ideal and maybe the next revision will get there. Hopefully less apologetically. David Finnigan is telling an important story and doing important work. All that’s left to do is acknowledge the power of theatre, trust it, and own it!

I attended this performance on a press pass from The Public Theater Press Team.