Hart Island
Intriguing is the first word which came to mind after viewing the unusual and captivating Hart Island. For those who take this journey the experience will linger. The scope is as small as a wave lapping on a shoreline and as big as the gargantuan eons of Earth’s history.
Tracy Weller wrote this heady meditation about the largest mass gravesite in the world. Since the Civil War, a million people have been buried there. These souls were on the fringes of society; the poor, the homeless, the unclaimed. The island itself has long existed on the periphery of society with no access allowed. The recent COVID health crisis brought increased attention as the daily burials grew from 25 to 120 per week.
The installation is a multi-level, multimedia explosion of quiet reflection. Images tease. Ms. Weller portrays a narrator in a recording studio. She is taping the voiceover to New York Journey’s “Lifecycles and Systems: The Seen & Unseen Islands of New York, The Natural & Unnatural Human Experience”. Some of the material is upsetting and the Narrator has to pace herself.
Many of New York’s islands are covered along the way. The currently named Roosevelt Island was once known for penitentiaries, asylums and hospitals before its rebranding in 1973 for residential housing. Isolation is a theme which flows through this show both physically via the islands themselves and also amongst the lives which are touched by them directly or indirectly.
This travelogue of island history is supplemented with six individuals represented only by their initials. They are specific and unknowable. Each has a connection to a story which haunts them in some way. While the recording narrative propels the show forward on one level, the individual laments practically beg for reconciliation and healing.
Another level of engagement is the one experienced when you enter the space. Dirt runs the length of the environment and is peppered with artifacts. Is this a dump? An archeological dig? A baseball, cookie tin and water pitcher lay there. Although you may be watching a moment in time, the perspective may also be interpreted as a recorded vision of New York (and human society in general) if this show were encapsulated and revealed in the future.
The headiness of the material commands attention. Characters intersect and separate. Tales are told in a non-linear fashion. The listener might fill in the blanks or may simply choose to consider the painful indifferences of a troubled human race. Hart Island is gloomy, hopeful, mesmerizing, challenging and altogether unique.
Kristjan Thor directed this visually and mentally stimulating rumination. The tones range from darkly somber and deeply intimate to delicately confrontational and breathtakingly exasperating. Christopher and Justin Swader’s set design is creatively evocative of the various locales but also prompts engagement. Take the ladder down and peer into this diorama. Hart Island demands gazing at the periphery.
That gazing is enhanced through a production design that can be dimly foreboding, intentionally obscuring or starkly illuminating. The technical designs for lighting (Christina Tang), sound and music (Phil Carluzzo), and video and projection (Yana Biryukova) are memorably atmospheric.
All seven performances are intensely realized. The script has them articulating words, sentences and monologues, sometimes in complex unison. There is an element of group therapy concerning profound personal loss and a need for salvation. Movement is deliberate as is the language spoken. The dialogue is storytelling and utterances in equal measure.
Humans are an infinitesimal speck along the expanse of time. Ms. Weller makes us – and herself as Narrator – look at some of our failings and summon redemption. Rather than ignore the islands and relative isolations we create, this show asks us to look intently and deliberately at them. As an added bonus there are many tidbits scattered throughout such as the meaning of eutrophication and the General Slocum steamship disaster.
Hart Island is presented by Mason Holdings. Their mission is to “create intimate, experiential theatre inspired by the unseen and unheard”. This theatrical event should be seen and heard both both for its expansive intellectual reach and its extraordinarily immersive empathy. Discussion afterwards is ensured.
Hart Island is being performed at The Gym at Judson through April 9, 2022.