She opened with the mundane as she munched on pieces of All Bran cereal in her blue striped pajamas, but soon delved into the paranormal when her words produced real objects. Anna Moench ’06 vacillated between these two extremes in her senior “antithesis” production “Commencement,” a technique that vividly evoked a period in transition, and notably, a transition that lacked direction.
The movement between the abstract and the literal infused nearly all of her words and actions in this one-woman show, written and directed by Moench herself. She used her body and props as a manifestation of precariousness, climbing on her kitchen counters, furiously piling books that threatened to topple at any moment, and sprawling upon the floor. Moench made visible the inner turmoil and instability her soon-to-graduate protagonist voiced.
Moench’s stakes heavily contributed to what made her play so compelling. Though she risked appearing puerile and saccharine by indulging in the almost proverbial graduation lament—I fear leaving because I do not know where to go next—her unabashed confrontation of the idiosyncrasies and weaker points of memory prevented her play from ever appearing anything but intimate and original.
The audience filed into Moench’s real-life kitchen to find her dressed in a gray wife-beater and blue pajama pants muttering to herself, before she matter of factly explained that she refuses to take and keep photographs because they provide a false view. Instead, she saves trash. Pictures, she elaborated, suggest an episodic life full of smiling people, leaning toward an invisible center point, and trapped inside small rectangles. Despite this disclaimer, Moench moved on to create a mélange of memories, a series of episodes structured inside rectangles of varying sizes: her kitchen, the books stacked inside her cabinets, the cabinets themselves, the window out of which she gazes, the oven, the relics of her adolescence located within the square storage spaces beside her stove.
Unhinging time through these series of memories (signaled by changes in lighting and costume, Moench traveled between the present and several pasts) Moench’s character documented her fears about leaving college and her sense of futility and purposelessness. While many of these fears proved typical, such as her terror at her boyfriend’s cool confidence about the future, and his unquestioning conviction that she would follow him, Moench personalized these fears by making them come true. For instance, just after she divulged to the audience that her boyfriend turns teary-eyed at the sight of every fat baby, Moench opened her freezer only to reveal an obese baby doll inside.
Similarly, Moench’s protagonist coolly documented her defeats, her rejection from graduate school, the boy she teased in middle school, and her sense of anger that she has spent the majority of her life shuttling along without stopping to consider if she has a destination. Indeed, Moench relished these defeats. She shoved her hyperbolically large rejection letter into the oven, only to remove it later as a testament to a path she knows now is closed to her. Moench closed with this resolution, or to mime her terminology, “anti-resolution.” Rather than neatly unearthing her sense of self, Moench’s protagonist told her audience only what she is not: considering her circumstances, this seems an accomplishment of Brobdignagian proportions.
COMMENCEMENT. Written, directed and performed by Anna Moench ’06. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND STAGE MANAGER Meredith Steinberg ’07. ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER Jo Firestone ’09. SET DESIGN Michele Chun ’07. MASTER ELECTRICIAN David Haan ’06. LIGHTING DESIGN Dana Raviv ’06.
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