Walden – 03 November 2024

Through a three-character science fiction framework, Walden explores what happens when two people with polarized political views interact, through the intersection of loving a character who was raised in one school of thought but has come to discover and appreciate the other. Amy Berryman brilliantly sets the polarizing political conversations just far enough removed from our current situations to allow people to ponder from a safe distance whether it really is impossible to understand and empathize with our political opponents. The show centers around climate change solutions—namely two diametrically opposed view points: should we try to revitalize planet Earth with increased sustainability efforts, or is it ultimately going to be more effective to find another celestial body to call home? Protagonist Stella (Emmy Rossum) finds herself trapped between the tranquil life she has been cultivating with her partner, Earth Advocate Bryan (Motell Foster) and her twin sister, Cassie (Zoe Winters), who is an astronaut who has just returned from a mission where she grew the first plants ever grown on the moon. The story is complicated by Stella’s past as a failed astronaut turned NASA architect, who hasn’t interacted with her family of origin since she found herself in the simple ways of cultivating plants and being self sufficient through a symbiotic relationship with the local ecosystem.

Today in 2024, some of us have contemplated this Earth verses outerspace question as we calculate climate change rates and ponder sustainability, but it isn’t the predominant dividing line between people. Today, it is easy to imagine that somebody who believes the future is on Earth and somebody who believes the future is on Mars could have a beer and a philosophical chat but not have strong enough opinions to truly hate each other. Through watching characters who were at that point due to the circumstances of their reality, someday our future, the audience was able to reflect on whether or not we personally could put aside our differences for philosophical discourse with people whose viewpoints we find pointless and futile and silly and painful and oppressive and dismissive. Today, some feel this way about abortion, queer rights, Middle Eastern foreign policy, welfare, the economy, separation of church and state, the right to bear arms, immigration… As social media, referenced in Walden merely as “screens”, continues to spread false statements and derivative sentiments like wildfire, it would take a special person to be able to sit down with me and have meaningful (but not hurtful!) debate on these issues.

One strength in Walden’s characters is that Cassie’s knowledge comes from screens and rapid paced technology while Bryan’s comes from lived experience and a commitment to learning from what he can hold in his hands and see tangible change in. But when they interact, neither can be dismissed by the audience as foolish, unwise, or unworthy. As a character, Stella avoided telling her own story, perhaps because she still felt that she had a foot in both words and couldn’t trust either world with the truth. In a way, being moderate and understanding both sides made it harder for Stella to be part of the discourse because she had to tread lightly and could be rejected by either or both sides. For her, the stakes of leaving behind her partner or her twin sister are very stress inducing and make her seem closed off, when she’s really the most open minded. Cassie is confused by Bryan’s version of Stella’s present, and instead of being open to the idea that Stella has changed, Cassie repeatedly says things like “No, she doesn’t! Stella wants xyz!” Instead of being open to the idea that Stella has changed, Bryan repeatedly says things like “Stella wants it this way now. She is happy now.” When Stella does finally speak for herself, she is agitated and frantic, going on about moral quandaries about right and wrong, and her cognitive dissonance about what she wants to have versus what she wanted to have.

The dialogue of this play was brilliant and let us examine the political temperature of our own world by removing us from the present moment but keeping us within the realm of possibility. Equally brilliant were the things that were not said. The scene transitions showing the passage of time, particularly the final sequence showing the deterioration of the Earth, were incredibly powerful ways of reminding us that, though this play was a political dystopian science fiction imagining, the characters were human enough to be us. They wanted sex and children and technology and adventure and progress and journeys and companionship and recognition—mostly, they wanted to be seen and to be validated. And in the end, despite their differences, all of them are. Even as the Earth is dying and twin sisters are separating for life, there is a spark of humanity that is rekindled in everyone’s hearts, turning this dystopian nightmare into something beautiful and hopeful.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Polk & Co.