It comes as no surprise when Ravi Jain of Why Not Theatr…e asks, ‘What the hell is time?’ Time is quite a big factor for Ravi who battles time zones and borders in collaborating with Katrina Bugaj of the US and Troels Hagen Findsen of Denmark. Poor Ravi, it’s Monday morning, he has just returned from a weekend away and he now faces a stranger over the phone who is anything but indirect. I dive right in and read a line from Why Not’s promotional material, ‘[The] ensemble takes you into a universe where the fabric of space and relationships tears and repairs itself.’ These are no small topics for a Monday morning but I ask Ravi how this subject matter came about. He, Katrina and Troels began their process by examining Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. (At this point I doubt my own ability for such conversations; I should have kept to small talk.) Ravi articulates his belief that time is getting faster and faster and sees technology as playing a key role in this. ‘I spend more time with my computer than with people.’ I agree with him.
Ravi is kind enough to simplify Hawking’s theory for me (and I still am probably missing something here). Either the universe is expanding and will do so until ‘the planets and stars sail away from one another’ or … … the universe will contract and ‘come together in a big crunch and slam together’. These opposite relationships with time and space are applied to the story of a couple in Why Not’s piece, I’m So Close…. The husband’s life is continuously speeding up more and more with his career while his wife, who stays at home, is experiencing an opposite shift in pace.

After their successful run at the SummerWorks Festival in 2008, the band of merry actors (to mention one of many abilities) have partnered up with writer, Nicolas Billon to balance the narrative with the abstract. ‘I’m So Close… is a love song drowned out by the hum of the technological landscape we find ourselves in.’

I am eagerly anticipating the show that opens on March 23^rd as part of the Free Fall Festival. In fact, I’d like time to speed up even more so that I could be sitting in the audience of the Theatre Centre tonight.