“temping” blurs the lines between theatre and video games
I write theatre reviews for The Arts Fuse, and I recently went to see an experimental piece by New York-based Wolf 359 called temping. It involves a single audience member, inside a tiny office cubicle for 45 minutes, interacting with the missing life of a 53-year-old actuary named Sarah Jane. It’s a strange little work, and I was particularly taken by the reactions that others had to it.
One patron tried to mediate the relationship between two characters, James and Diego, whose creepy exchanges become part of your story because of a printer on the fritz. One, fearing what seemed like suicidal tendencies in the main character, tried to contact Sarah Jane’s friends in the office and get her help. Some people messaged their friends or live-tweeted their experience of taking part in the show. A few patrons were so freaked out by some of the weirder developments that they locked the office door…One twentysomething wrote the show’s creators and told them she’d quit her job in real life, inspired after what had happened to her in temping.
