And Then We Were No More – 03 October 2025

And Then We Were No More at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in association with Stop the Wind Theatricals perfectly fits the definition of what theatre as an art form is meant to be and do. Tim Blake Nelson’s script investigates a future society in which a Function predetermines everyone’s role to play, and then posits a scenario where a compassionate lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) must defend a convicted inmate (Elizabeth Yeoman) who has been sentenced to death due to inability to be rehabilitated before an official (Scott Shepherd), an analyst (Jennifer Mogbock), a machinist (Henry Stram), and an alleged jury of hundreds of her peers. In this version of our world, everything is recorded for posterity and predetermined by the data from all previous knowledge. The executions take place in The Machine, which is supposed to provide a painless death.

Though there is a very literal, human level to this that is chillingly brilliant and hauntingly marvelous, as I was listening to the inmate’s unique speech patterns (in the show, explained to be the byproduct of isolation and torturous experimentation) reminded me not of repression and simplicity, but of spoken word poetry. After her first scene with the lawyer, I began to think about the role of art in society. It’s probably the least productive thing and, in an efficiency based world, the first thing that would need to be destroyed. The inmate’s spoken words were those of humanity. She spoke both literally and metaphorically from a place of strength and shared her most horrid, humiliating, painful experiences in ways that were moving and beautiful. In comparison, everyone else’s texts seemed dry. It was evocative of a society that lost its humanity in losing its art.

As the second act descended upon us, we saw the individual characters as even further withdrawn and even more hopeless in a world without art. The lawyer couldn’t shake her final walk with the inmate to her execution (no doubt a biblical “valley of the shadow of death” reference), and lost her hope in her ability to remain a force for good in the world. The analyst remarks about the inmate’s last words, a definitive, coherent acknowledgement that if the bodies of criminals are vaporized, then they become part of the air that is inhaled by the entire city.  This is significant, because the state justifies murdering convicts by saying that they are removing the most harmful genes from the gene pool; how ironic is it that they’re actually disseminating them in the air everyone breathes? The official is stuck in the past—looking back with a fondness. The machinist is looking forward, knowing that the creation of The Machine cannot be undone and that he holds the power to make people disappear. It’s an interesting dichotomy because in today’s society, it would be the lawyer and the analyst who have the most power; in this futuristic allegory it is actually the official and the machinist who decide who gets killed—it’s the lower status people who are “just doing their job”, so to speak, who really hold the cards. And we do see them acknowledge and take perverse pleasure in this.

The design team for this production did an outstanding job. In particular, lighting designer Reza Behjat did a brilliant job of controlling what the audience saw, felt, and experienced. There were moments where the audience was addressed as the jury in which house lights were on, but in a cleverly calculated way so as not to be disruptive. There were moments when we saw forms and figures rather than fully fleshed out people, and moments when intensity of light indicated the importance of one individual over others. The scenic (David Meyer) design created lots of industrial looks with air hoses and lighting helped create striking stage pictures. There were moments where all of the design elements, including the rumbling sound (Henry Nelson, Will Curry) took over the space and the audience felt immersed in the show, and other moments where design held us at a distance, asking us to consider whether or not this fatalistic future is as far away as we’d like it to be. Costume design (Marina Draghici) also played a role, reminding us that regardless of who society considers crazy, all are also human. The strategic precision of this design team’s collaboration was powerfully breathtaking.

And Then We Were No More is a most profoundly disturbing (and brilliant) piece of theatre that dares to ask very difficult questions before it is too late. Like all great theatre, it is vitally important in the message it imparts, the issues it asks us to face, and the questions that linger on unanswered for the audience to ponder. I expect that this show and its haunting intensity will stay with me.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Keith Sherman & Associates.