Written by Jayita Bhattacharya
Hanging up. Breaking up. Stars that collapse. Black holes that suck. Purposefully adhering more to the internal logic of dreams and half-remembered conversations, To End to Seem to Endcomprises a series of dialogues, disputes, missives, chants, lyrics, squabbles and epiphanies that coalesce around the grievances of a couple (Nick Leininger and Debbie Halstead) and the attempt to end a relationship—as well as the repeated effort to name or characterize the "leave taking" itself. But, explicitly challenging the Western ideal of the self-sufficient individual, the text implicitly asks: what does it mean to leave, and who exactly does the leaving? As the couple discovers, it is memory that binds them together. Like gravity, memory cannot be simply escaped by wanting to escape. Rather, it constitutes their ability to exist—to co-exist, to live together—on this planet, inside this (happily! hopelessly!) binding relationship.
With To End to Seem to End, Jayita takes a further and even bolder step in her process of privileging the rhythm and emotional texture of voices over the traditional, psychologically-correct line of characters commonly associated with conventional theater.
