A Personal Take on Moved by the Motion

This is a review of Moved by the Motion by Wu Tsang and Boychild. A little backstory on this piece and the authors behind it, Moved by the Motion is a play that tells a story through the use of various multimedia. The play incorporates text, movement, film, theater, and music in order to tell this story while keeping a sense of improv to narrate the story.

                The piece starts out in silence in a dark room until this silence is broken by a video. The video was perhaps there to introduce the viewer or at least give a sense of what the story might be about. Keep in mind that throughout this piece the story is never given to you. In fact, the story is very ambiguous and by the end of the play, the viewer is left trying to piece together a meaning to it all. After this video music plays and the two main characters are introduced running from side to side in a very peculiar manner often falling to the ground and moving along the ground. Meanwhile, a prerecorded video of the same actors moving in strange manners seen from different perspectives is seen from the projectors. This gave a really interesting effect giving the actors a sense of superposition and demonstrated a form of live illusion. Soon after the third actor came to light and started to speak in riddles. She spoke as if she was trying to tell a story but said it in such a way that it was near impossible to comprehend without a full analysis of the spoken words. Soon after she collapses and the actors start to run up a ramp right in the center of the stage and jump off falling backward behind the ramp. This continues for a while until the actors move off the stage laying right in front of the audience. They start to roll around and share this form of intimacy with one another and this is where I’ll stop since soon after the play ends.

                So as stated above the story incorporates various methods of multimedia taking a very Avant-Garde approach to storytelling. But with so much going on and the authors clearly trying to keep the story as ambiguous as possible what does the viewer make of it all. Given the form this story takes it would not be a surprise if my take on the piece is entirely different from someone else’s but perhaps this is what the Author wanted. What I saw was the cycle of life. The video was a brief historical wrap up of life up until now and the deranged dancing was a representation of the struggle of navigating life. The actors climbing up the ramp and falling could be a representation of death and how it can’t be avoided. The narrator’s ambiguous story might represent the story of life and how it’s not always so simple. And towards the end perhaps the meaning of life lies within the relationships we build with one another. Overall this play was different and the story was not linear but by the end of the play I would be lying if I said I left without thinking.