Danger Signals

Theater review by Raven Snook

Much of Built for Collapse's collaborative meditation on brain dysfunction is appropriately disorienting—especially its first few minutes, when an unidentified woman (Jessica Almasy) writhes repetitively in a chair, seemingly trapped in her own body. Perhaps this is how director Sanaz Ghajar felt after a 2014 car accident left her in a temporary coma and altered her brain forever. While the unapologetically experimental Danger Signals isn't autobiographical, it is informed by Ghajar's experience, with three disparate narratives that touch on the most complex organ in our bodies. There's the unnamed woman, attempting to give a lecture about the brain but unable to speak; there's Lucy (Eva Jaunzemis), one of two chimpanzees lobotomized by American neurophysiologist John Farquhar Fulton in the '30s; and there's 19th-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (Robert M. Johanson), part of an expedition lost in the Arctic. 

How does the latter fit in? It's hard to say, but the nonlinear story lines of Nina Segal's script echo each other as they slice into complicated concepts like the hubris of colonizers, the violent legacy of the patriarchy and the fragility of our psyches. Jen Goma's unsettling soundscape and Dave Tennent's eerie videos contribute to the sensation of being immersed in a leftie intellectual's nervous breakdown. Developed over the past two years as part of the Archive Residency, Danger Signals is best for adventurous theatergoers who aren't looking for coherence. Even if you scratch your head, the play keeps your synapses firing.

New Ohio Theatre (Off-Off Broadway). By Nina Segal. Directed by Sanaz Ghajar. With ensemble cast. Running time: 1hr 10mins. No intermission.