Hey, everyone, let’s put on a show. What’s it about? Nothing. I know, Jerry Seinfeld did that already, but hear me out.

There’s this show playing in Carlsbad called Thom Pain (based on nothing). It’s by Will Eno, it ran for a couple of years in New York and it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. But, it doesn’t have a story line and just some actor (Adam Brick) talks for about an hour about “stuff,” fragments of stories that never quite fit together and the like. Would you be interested in seeing something like that?

Yet, all those hip, smart New Yorkers liked it enough to keep it going for a long run, so maybe we should take it apart and see if there’s more to it than meets the eye. When I do that, the first thing that pops out is that Thom Pain is also the name of a revolutionary era patriot who challenged authority with a pamphlet called Common Sense and convinced a lot of Americans to support the coming revolution. Except, he spelled his name Paine, which I’m guessing is a clue to the emotional state of the character who presents himself (at first in total darkness and later with lights, designed by Chris Renda) up in the audience as well as onstage.

And then, if we take the second part of the title, “based on nothing,” we might see a reference to the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s essay, Being and Nothingness, which also challenged authority on the idea of what is reality and how reality is experienced.

Starting, then, from the notion that somehow authority is going to be challenged helps to put what goes on in the 60 minutes that actor and audience are together into greater perspective. Yes, the text of the play turns out to be “nothing,” but the text is only the starting point for experience. Yes, the experience challenges authority, in the sense that it provokes the audience by not allowing it to sit in the dark with an attitude of “entertain me.” Rather, the audience builds its own meaning by what in the text becomes significant (for example, does the fact that the actor says, “Do you like magic?” several times and then answers his question differently each time charm you or annoy you?).

The audience’s authority is also challenged by the fact that the actor breaks the fourth wall and wants to interact with individual audience members. There is also an ongoing threat of “audience participation,” of being dragged up on stage to do heaven knows what. Oh yes, you can walk out (and I'm sure that some people will), but then you wouldn’t ever know what you missed.

In the end, though, Thom Pain (based on nothing) turns out to be an ideal piece for what its presenter, New Village Arts Theatre, is calling “The Ensemble Project.” By downplaying the importance of the text, Director Kristianne Kurner’s production demonstrates to the audience, that it, too, is part of the ensemble. It would be worthless to watch this play by yourself; you need others there to experience it, and each set of others will experience it differently.

So, this is theatre for the adventurous, for people who are willing to participate in being part of the experience.

In Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner’s play, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the character of Trudy the bag lady tries to introduce American culture to the space aliens she has befriended as she plies her way through the broken down and dangerous Times Square of the 1980s. She shows them a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and Andy Warhol’s painting of a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and carefully points out, “Now, this is soup and this is art. Soup, art, art soup, got it?” Of course, they don’t get it, until she finally sneaks them into the back of the Plymouth Theatre to watch Lily Tomlin’s one-woman play. During the show, she is concerned that they weren’t paying much attention to the stage, so afterward she asked them what they thought. “Oh,” her chums replied, “the play was soup, but the audience was art.”

Is Thom Pain (based on nothing) soup or art? You have until October 2 to see it and decide.

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