justArts: Why did BTC choose to produce Dead Man’s Cell Phone?

Adrianne Krstansky: Well, it’s a play by Sarah Ruhl, and she is really interested in this particular play—the question of technology and the way that technology affects our lives, affects our ability to connect with each other, to be present with each other. Although the play was written in 2007, it doesn’t really address texting, iPads or things like that. It does talk about our inability to be present because we always have a cell phone on. We’re never actually where we are because we’re always electronically connected to other things. As somebody who is a professor here [at Brandeis] and always telling students to put away their cell phones, stop texting, be here, I thought that would be a really interesting question. The play itself doesn’t say it is bad. In fact, the main character manages to keep the memory of this man alive by continuing to answer his cell phone after he’s gone. I thought that was really interesting. Also, Sarah Ruhl’s characters are kind of quirky. The world is a little quirky. It’s very imaginative, not your basic realism. It’s very dreamlike … I really wanted to see Brandeis art students do this play. I think it was a good match-up for our students.

JA: Can you tell me about the minimalist set?

AK: The play itself was inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper…the subject of his paintings is isolation—worlds that are drained of life. The subjects of his painting are waiting, so people who are in suspension ... In my imagination, I kept picturing that the play imagined on the head of a pin—that the only things you saw on stage were the things that were absolutely necessary to suggest the location. But because the location changes so radically during the course of the play—if you put an entire café up there [on stage] with the dishes, tables and chairs and an entire dining area and then you put an entire airport up there, you would have these massively long set changes. She says in the script all that’s required for this play are two tables, two chairs, a bowl. She sort of says that it’s not about the stuff. I think the way that minimalism works in a painting, which is why we eventually started looking at a lot of Mark Rothko paintings, is that it suggests the story to the audience but you are allowed to fill in the blanks.

JA: What was your biggest challenge in directing the show?

AK: This really has nothing to do with the play or the people I did it with, but I started this fall being chair of the [Theater] department, so I think just my energy level. I took on a really big job, and I’m still teaching a full load of classes. It was such a joy to go to rehearsal and be in this really creative space where other people were doing the administrative work. I think also solving those challenges and those problems of how do we get from one world to the other. There’s so little for the audience to hold on to, so specifically, what do I give them to tell the story of this play. I feel like directing is about that. It’s really about making choices and whittling away what’s not needed and trying to get to the essence of something.

JA: What is the most important message you wanted your audience to take away from the play?

AK: I think, for me, it’s not so much of a message, but if the audience can just be a little bit—just think about the question of what it means to be present. And does your technology impede your ability to live your life in a very present way? When I saw the play over the weekend, there was a young man who spent a couple of scenes during the show with his iPhone hiding behind his program, and he was on the Internet while the play was going on ... And so I very quietly went behind him and put my hand on his shoulder, and I asked him to please turn off his iPhone and watch the play. At that very moment, there was a monologue that got the very point that we are not present in our lives because we are always in two places at once, and it’s hard to be in a room. I don’t know if he had to watch the play for class, or maybe he had a family emergency—I really don’t know. But it was a very meaningful experience like that. I just think that’s the big question—it makes all of us think. I’m not immune to the question either—what is that pull, that email and that [idea] we have to be 7,000 places at once.