In Brandeis’ production of the play “Every Brilliant Thing,” Amy Ollove ’21, Ashley Friedman ’22 and Kat Potts ’23 expertly balanced audience interaction, humor and heartbreak. Director Emily Pollack ’21 decided to alter the play’s casting from a one-man show into a play with three roles, representing the public, private and secret versions of the nameless main character. Originally written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, the play ran at the Off-Broadway Barrow Street Theatre in New York City from December 2014 to March 2015. The production follows a little girl who navigates her childhood with a depressed mother. After her mother’s first suicide attempt, the young girl begins a list of wonderful things that make life worth living in an attempt to save her mother’s life. As the young girl reaches adulthood and graduates college, she finds herself in a depression not so different from her mother’s. But she never stops fighting: Throughout the show, she continues to update her increasingly complex list of things to admire in the world.
The defining feature of this show was its use of audience interaction. When I arrived at Lown 002 for the show, I was handed a green ribbon that represented suicide and mental health awareness, as well as two notecards, reading “bed” and “deciding you’re not too old to climb a tree.” The audience of around 20 settled into the small lecture hall. Pollack briefly explained that audience members have the choice to participate in the show, which would be dealing with heavy themes. She thanked the show’s supporters and sponsors, the Free Play Theater Cooperative and the University’s Psychology Department.
As soon as the show started, Ollove, Friedman and Potts used the help of audience members to portray the narrator’s story. One girl from the audience was brought to the stage as a veterinarian and asked to put down the narrator’s dog, named “J.K. Growling.” Ollove borrowed another audience member’s coat and had the volunteer doctor “pet” the dog gently as it passed away. Afterwards, a different audience member was asked to be the young girl’s father and mimed driving the girl to the hospital after school. The narrator’s girlfriend, Sam, was played by yet another audience member. Friedman and “Sam” bonded over books that were spontaneously collected from the audience—“The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton and “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. The prospect of randomly being selected to participate in the show kept the audience on their toes, keenly focused on the twists and turns of the story.
Along with physical participation, audience members also read their index cards with items from the narrator’s list when their number was called. Audience members called out their items throughout the show, which ranged from ice cream to Christopher Walken’s hair. For the list’s final entry, number one million, Ollove, Friedman and Potts spoke in unison. The three actors, all playing the same character, skillfully narrated the show from a single perspective. Handed the difficult task of cohesively telling one story with three people, while running around the stage, pulling in random audience members, and sometimes singing and dancing, Ollove, Friedman and Potts did a masterful job in their roles. The audience participation elements lightened the overall mood, considering the intense themes of the show. Randomly bringing audience members onstage and having them read from cards kept me paying attention out of fear that my card would be called and I would be unprepared to read. I felt that given the show’s simplicity and intimate setting, just three actors in front of a small audience, breaking the fourth wall made the story feel more intimate and real.
Classic soul and jazz music drifted in and out of the performance. In the story, the narrator’s father loves artists like Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra, playing their records in his study and the car. When Sam meets the narrator’s parents, the family sings in unison. Ditching the studio recordings, Potts grabbed an acoustic guitar and strummed the chords to songs like “That’s Life” and “My Way,” with all three actors pitching in vocals. In addition to the seamless integration of music into the show, Ollove, Friedman and Potts interacted with images throughout the performance that were projected onto a screen at the front of the lecture hall. When the narrator takes a college English course, the “lectures” were projected behind the actors. Later in the show, a text message from Sam is projected onto the screen. These visuals gave the audience the effective opportunity to put themselves in the narrator’s position, reading her texts and taking her classes.
The humor and immersion that Ollove, Friedman and Potts create by engaging the audience members serves the deeper purpose of bringing everyone into the conversation about suicide. The play demonstrates the profound effects that the narrator’s mother’s depression had on the little girl’s childhood. Often, the young girl was left to fend for herself. Her mother’s condition led to stress and uncertainty. For instance, the young girl often feared her mother’s happiness, for she knew it would be followed by a period of intense sadness. In the narrator’s adulthood, she experienced the same sadness and found refuge in the music of great artists in the past. In the show, the narrator notes that these musicians experienced mental health issues too. The narrator also finds comfort in speaking to her childhood therapist, a schoolteacher who used a sock puppet to approach difficult conversations.
The show’s message, when combined with the audience participation, music and visuals, resounded powerfully. My main takeaway from the show, which Friedman told the audience in character, was that for those struggling with depression, things won’t always be brilliant, like the show’s title suggests, but they will get better. Another important takeaway: Find beauty in life’s smaller pleasures, like the hiss of a vinyl record or the joy of watching TV late at night.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that over 47,000 Americans took their own lives in 2017. Productions that start difficult conversations about how suicide affects individuals and families are providing a service to the public. The director, cast and crew of Brandeis’ production of “Every Brilliant Thing” gracefully pulled off an engaging show about a very significant topic.
