What We Know

During Pamela Carter’s What We Know at the Traverse, I spent a lot of time playing a mental game in order to stay awake: coming up with different titles for the play. Some examples include Why Am I Here?, What’s Going On? and Why Should I Care?

The six actors all do the best they can with the drivel they have been given, but one wonders whether they are clued in on what was happening, or what it is supposed to mean.

The most dramatic thing that happened during this particular performance did not come from an actor, the script or any production element but from a guide dog in the front row. The play is set in a kitchen and has food prepared, cooked and consumed onstage. The poor dog was so interested in the food that it spent the entire production salivating, to the point that it had to be restrained by its owner. That dog’s reaction, and the uncertainty of what it would do next, gave the audience more drama than the play itself.

Carter’s dialogue attempts to capture the essence of what the naturalistic movement tried to do: show how people really acted and sounded like in private. Unfortunately, every scene is less interesting and dramatic than any mundane conversation one would overhear on a bus or in a restaurant.

After careful consideration, the best alternative title I could come up with was a quote from the Bill Murray film Scrooged: Boy Does That Suck!