Skip to main content
Imagine the sounds inside a stranded Arctic ship, right before the crew resorts to cannibalism.
It's no surprise that a theatrical group with "experimental" in its name and a former EDM DJ in the director's chair would create a "sightless" show built on that exact premise. But no one knows exactly where it'll go from there, including the director.
Jacob Coleman admits that All Well might be an overly optimistic title for Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble's newest undertaking.
"In this exact form, this hasn't been done before. And it can go wrong in so many ways," says Coleman. Touring 25 patrons at a time through the basement of an old Masonic lodge, tucking them into hammocks in complete darkness and whispering stories in their ears about an 1845 Arctic expedition—that's his plan. "Worst-case scenario: Someone falls out of a hammock in the darkness."
All Well promises to be the most intriguing production this year, at least for the brave souls who sign up for sounds like a haunted field trip for art-school kids.
It started out as sound. Not any particular sound, just Coleman's broad conceit of a sound-based play. "In the dark, all of the other senses are heightened." So when Coleman found the story of the Franklin expedition—in which British sailors lived stranded in ice near Canada until cannibalism and cold killed them—it seemed like an ideal plot.
"What does it mean to take a journey into the unknown? There's something fundamentally human about that instinct to explore," Coleman says, "so we are using that query as a frame for the show."
"Soundplay" is the best way to describe his collaboration with sound designer Mark Valdez. The two traded sonic inspirations and recorded things close-up—like a finger on rope or the rustling of pipe tobacco—in a series of sound experiments.
"I've always enjoyed the avant-garde side of music," says Coleman. "like when sounds that are distant and enveloping contrast with ones that are close and staccato."
Using headphones and 16 speakers of varying sizes, Coleman and Valdez devised a unique approach to every director's mission: Infiltrate the audience. "It sounds like someone is right next to you, or inside your head even," says Coleman. "That's usually impossible to get in a theater."
Testing what's possible on guinea pigs from PETE's Institute for Contemporary Performance, Coleman was still making changes to the show two weeks before opening. What used to be a museum-scale exhibit in the Imago Theatre lobby is pared down to a brief summary of Franklin's escapades. In some cases, the less you know, the better, he says.
But there is a solid plot amid the ever-changing theatricality, insists Coleman. "It does have a narrative arc. It's twilight into darkness, despair into dawn—the trajectory of a dark night of the soul."
But he's keeping the rest of All Well's precarious details shrouded. "We want to keep the mystery," he says. "People will be pulled away gradually from the lobby, one by one or two by two…into the darkness."
see it: All Well is at Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave. 10 and 10:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday; 10, 10:30 and 11 pm Friday-Saturday; 8:30, 9, 9:30 and 10 pm Sunday. Through Nov. 1. $25.
Willamette Week