No Exit
5 February 2012
-- by Therese Ronco. Therese is a Goucher College freshman, spending spring 2012 dancing, reading, and writing around B'more, supported by an internship with Effervescent Collective.
Friday night I was pumped to get off campus and see this awesome play called No Exit at The Mobtown Theatre at Meadow Hill. I couldn’t wait to watch a member of Effervescent Collective performing in a different medium. Worked into a frenzy by end of the week relief and pop music, my dancing triggered the "child safety lock" device on my seat belt. How a device revered by my mother for its life-saving nature can just generate countless memories of spontaneously choking myself as an enthusiastic child evades me. I felt the familiar wrenching halt of the seat belt stop my movements and jerk me backwards. Struggling to push against the restraint only served to lock me in tighter and tighter until the seat belt won and I unclipped myself.
After watching said awesome play, I appreciate the ability to unlock all of life’s safety locks. It’s healthy to unclip something when it starts to strangle you. The actors in No Exit (including our own Rachel Boss!) brought the audience into the prison of their one room confinement as well as the prison of their minds. Sometimes the harder you struggle, the more you're stuck. The characters showed their human "child safety locks" when the locked door to their room finally opens. All they wanted before the door opened was to get out. The more they struggled with each other and with their own problems, the harder it became to be confined in such a tight space. The room seemed to shrink and begin to crush them. So, when the door opened, there was a release of energy: the seat belt unlocking. Only, nobody left the room. It became apparent that the real lock was in their minds.
In a plain room with little to no furnishings, the characters are forced to face themselves and each other for who they really are. What they blindly search for is true acceptance. Why is that so hard to give? Genuine, sincere acceptance. By the end, I believe they accept that they cannot accept themselves because the others cannot accept them. Their hell is the other two, and will be, for eternity. So, what is the lesser of the two evils?
Decide for yourself at The Mobtown Theatre this Friday or Saturday night, at 8 PM.
