Noisy Visuals presented “A Heap of Broken Images” in the Hewitt Workshop from Thursday, April 3, through Saturday, April 5. The show, based on a series of poems by T.S. Eliot, was directed by Kieran Gettel-Gilmartin ’25, starred Sam Slye ’25, and was stage-managed by Ali Scher ’25.
“[‘A Heap of Broken Images’ is] like disparate fragments that represent something that once was,” Gettel-Gilmartin said.
Despite being a one-man show, this production featured an immense creative team, including Juno Wright ’27 as the dramaturg, Cecilia Dondorful-Amos ’25 as the live camera operator, Michael Minars ’25 as the set designer, Simon Whitus ’25 as the lighting designer, Megan Athey ’28 as the sound designer, Catherine Christine ’28 as the video board operator, John Earling ’27 as a video contributor, Evelyn Grandfield ‘25 as a video contributor, and Lily Goldfine ’25 and Norman Slate ’25 as producers.
“I’m not the first person to stage ‘The Wasteland’ but may be the first person to put all the poems together,” Gettel-Gilmartin said.
“A Heap of Broken Images” is a mixed-media, one-man show with TV videos that accompany the poems. The poems contained material discussing social anxiety, loneliness, and gender dynamics. The sequences on TV included a work by Earling and Gettel-Gilmartin, a trailer for “The Age of Innocence” slowed down, and clips from movies shown in Vice Chair of Film Studies Michael Slowik’s classes.
“Our generation is looking around and seeing a wasteland and a heap of broken images wherever we go,” Slye said in an interview with The Argus. “It’s significant to me that it was a one-man show because it feels really, really lonely to go through all that. COVID contributes to that. The social media culture contributes to that. I think even being on such a small campus where people are afraid of being perceived contributes to that. It could’ve been anyone on that stage.”
The show, through its fragmentation of poems, describes the confusion and frustration rendered by living in the political and social reality of 2025. While the director and actor articulate that they were not attempting a throughline, the staging of one man amidst a fractured flurry of images points to the human experience of feeling alone amidst an overstimulating, constant, and sometimes painful, stream of information. In this day and age, we are overstimulated by a heap of images that we don’t know how to make sense of.
“There are a lot of actors who are good at faking emotion,” Gettel-Gilmartin reflected. “But that’s not Sam Slye. Everything he has just bubbles to the surface. My directing style is knowing an actor.”
The process of staging a one-man show was not easy. The team used particular actor tools to prepare for the show. In the rehearsal process, Scher and Gettel-Gilmartin incorporated physical acting, such as the Suzuki method, to teach stamina.
“In [Gettel-Gilmartin], I had a parent,” Slye said.
The three developed a familial bond during the process.
“Ali had some of the most genius ideas,” Slye said. “It was an extremely collaborative process.”
Naturally, the production was not without challenges. The tech was so incredibly involved that Gettel-Gilmartin admitted he gained gray hairs from the experience. Actors in one-person shows, such as Slye, rely on tech elements as scene partners to cue transitions between different thoughts. This reality created roadblocks for the show, as the three shows happening on campus last weekend meant there were shortages of technical equipment. Due to these equipment shortages, many designers had to use different programs for the first time.
This Noisy Visuals production was also off the beaten path for Wesleyan student-produced theater. Noisy Visuals Vice President Slate explained how the show aligned with the group’s larger goals.
“We’re a small team with less bureaucracy, [so] we’re able to do more experimental things with our work and come up with our own processes,” Slate said. “We used analog tech and a live cam, which is not typical of student theater.”
The team of “A Heap of Broken Images” and Noisy Visuals believe there is a large market at Wesleyan for experimental theater. Even though the show was experimental and explored dark themes, it still maintained a positive message, ending with a prayer for eternal peace.
“I could deliver that message, but the rest is up to you,” Slye said during the conclusion of the play. “You’re about to leave, so start to think about the bits and pieces you want to take with you.”
The team brought us “A Heap of Broken Images,” but how we put the pieces together is up to us. As I put these different fragments of the production together, I conclude that it is a call for us to bring any peace we can into a world full of chaos.
Elizabeth Laurence can be reached at elaurence@wesleyan.edu.
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