Annex Theatre Phones It In

Seattlest finally got out to see a performance of Line One at the CHAC on Friday. The premise of Line One is that the actors on stage are all wearing Bluetooth cell phone earpieces - Different people call the show and are patched through to various actors' cell phones and the actors repeat what they say. The theme is different for each performance's phone calls, and part of the reason we took so long to get to a show is that we were waiting until the "Meet Me At The Mall" night. However, we screwed it up and went on Friday which was spooky and supernatural Friday the 13th night and had nothing to do with the mall. Meet Me At The Mall was Thursday night.

Watching Line One is like watching stage actors do battle with each other; each trying to outdo the others for the favor of whomever runs the show up in the booth. When an actor is in the booth's good graces, everything is right with the world. All the lights and eyes in the theatre are on them as they climb to the highest point in the room and hold forth. When the material is dry or flat or the delivery isn't commanding, the actor is shuttled off to some dark corner of the stage where they continue mumbling in obscurity until the booth decides to let them end their call and start again. It's all fascinating to watch, even when it seems like everyone on stage is banished to dark, quiet corners.

Friday's spooky thing was alternately pretty cool, pretty boring, and absolutely brilliant. It's probably pretty safe to assume that the same is true of every performance of Line One. A few callers were asked about their experiences with ghosts or were entreated to Google various ghostly-related things and read the results. One of the actors was sent downstairs to the bathroom to play Bloody Mary and another spent some time with a psychic, both off stage and relayed to the audience over the phone to another actor, of course. Some callers were set up with an Ouija board in a nearby cemetery and connected to several actors. All of this is happening at the same time, by the way, and someone up in the booth is managing the thing in real time; focusing on different actors via lights, volume and placement on the stage; receiving calls and putting them through to different actors and directing the actors on when to end calls.

You know how it's really scary when someone's speaking words that aren't their own? When they're possessed or whatever? All of the actors of Line One are possessed by the people on the other end of the cell signal, or, more indirectly, by the people in the booth, but that was never explored during the performance. It seems like that would have been the most obvious chill to deliver to the audience, and, sadly, it was an opportunity missed. Nonetheless, it was a cool experiment in live performance, and Seattlest is going to try to get to another show if we can. It runs tonight, Thursday, Friday and Saturday before it closes.