Review: The Society for Hard Determinists by Twin Alchemy Collective
by Michael Meigs
Trust.
Trust is essential.
Trust is fundamental to theatre art. We the audience come to the appointed place and time, trusting the actors with our attention and our time; company and audience understand the unwritten rules of the playing space. We depart trusting one another on a journey of defined duration, even consenting to turn off our cell phones and other noise-making devices so that, like airline passengers, we're locked away in a shared reality where escape is impossible -- or at least, difficult and disruptive to all.
Twin Alchemy avows, "We are not a cult," but the setting at the Museum of Human Achievement isn't designed to reinforce that message. Audience members are received as 'candidates' who pay their 'dues' to attend. Darkness has fallen across the world as attendees group compliantly in a circle around a lantern outside the playing space. Chatting isn't discouraged, but the gate keeper, with his rigidly courteous questions, doesn't make it easy. You look down and you realize that someone has laid down a meticulous spiral pattern in crushed leaves over the gravel beneath your feet.
Why does he ask for your blood type? A reply of 'O positive' seems to please him most of all. He invites you to close your eyes and concentrate upon the lantern. Then he summons attendees in groups of four to the closed door and accompanies them inside. If you aren't in the first wave, you're wondering what you've gotten yourself into.
And why did they instruct you to place your car keys in the large circular bowl on the ticket desk?
Your car keys. Your car keys! That was the unexpected moment when you committed to this mystery-play-not-a-cult-but-an-initiation experience. Who the hell would just turn over his car keys to this young stranger with glittering eyes?
You just did. And then it's the turn of the next four candidates, including you.
Your time with the Society of Hard Determinists is not lengthy although you are likely to find it intense. Masks, robes, blindfolds, trust exercises, meditation, video, an invitation to primal shouts and to respond -- or not -- to questions; hugs, a touch of quantum physics, a touch of philosophy. No faces other than your own. There's some kneeling, some sitting, some breathing; exercises with receptacles of water, mixed media, a disappearing cat that may or may not be there. A ritual moment of invitation, passage and assumption. A final blindfolded journey.
A bit of learning, as well. Google and Wikipedia will teach you that 'hard determinism' is indeed a metaphysical concept, opposed to the 'soft determinism' proposed by William James. The question, the eternal question, is whether free will exists. Determinists say that everything results from givens -- environment, genes, social structures -- while soft determinists, also known as compatibilists, grant us the power of decision while denying that we have more than a very few degrees of freedom. Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." (Thanks, Wiki!)
If you have a thesis concerning determinism, you also have a view toward moral choice and ethics. Twin Alchemy's hard determinists offer one through the exercises, instruction and video. If all is determined, you are free of guilt. No need for regrets, no need for apology. It's a serenely reassuring doctrine, one that invites you to surrender. Not a brain washing, exactly, but a very intimate and seductive brain rinsing that leaves you calm and slightly disoriented when you find yourself in the parking lot outside the Museum of Human Achievement.
This short evening with The Society of Hard Determinists intrudes far past the usual boundaries of theatre, for the narrative, such as it is, is largely internal to you. Don't go if you panic at the thought of temporarily being deprived of vision; your guides are patient, quiet and ready to respond if you indicate distress. You'll just have to trust me, and them, on that.
Speaking of trust: the car keys were still there in the bowl, apparently untouched.
The Society for Hard Determinists
Twin Alchemy Collective
Oct 17 & 19, 8PM
Oct 24-26, 8PM
Oct 31 - Nov 2, 8PM
