Post-apocalyptic tales of mankind's final days have been done many times, yet they remain a striking structure for focusing on essential cultural values and for exposing the dramatic revelation of character in human relationship. Such end-of-the-world stories are also rife with hysterical exaggeration and melodramatic over-indulgence, as well as dangerously walking the boundary between the extreme and  the comical. 

In “Artifacts of Consequence” playwright Ashlin Halfnight expertly navigates all those dangers and delivers an imaginative, impassioned encounter with the caretakers of a subterranean archive of cultural detritus and its few endangered inhabitants, the survivors of some catastrophic global flooding taking place over their heads. Director Andrew Lazarow has a firm grasp on this material, both thematically and in terms of theatrical technique, and he guides a talented cast to an intense, entertaining and ultimately convincing residence in a desperate place. The audience participates as “evaluators” voting on which artifacts will be accepted into the vast, unseen storage areas of materials salvaged from a disappearing civilization. Beyond that, we live with the residents long enough to share the heartbreak of a life spent in determining the value of all they are about to lose.  

That involves not only the drowning world above, but the inner-lives of these common people down below, and of us. As an audience we are, of course, also the evaluators of these lives and of this civilization in all its particular components, as we are of our own. At an hour and fifty minutes this is a long, intermission-less act, but it felt tiring only in the ways that time has grown very long for these people, and very short for the life they knew before. There was no way to break this action, and no way to let us “escape” without breaking the whole illusion of the play. Once we are in this place, we know we are to be in it until the end of time, or at least the end of time for these people.

As the supervisor of this archive, Lindsey Valitchka tried to give the character of Minna a brittleness, to make her a kind of institutional automaton, or at least a woman trying very hard to maintain an impermeable surface. She wants to do what's best for everything in her charge, trying not allow her human vulnerability to cost others their lives. That includes the vast warehouse and also her only close companion, Ari, played with fresh-air innocence and delightful enthusiasm by Adrienne Clark. In this character is embodied every childhood which will never see maturity, every hungry intellect trying to suck the juice from an emaciated, fallen fruit of culture. Their only contact with the outside world is through the occasional visits from Dallas, who travels in the outer world to recover and save the artifacts. Alex Matthews plays Dallas with a nice blend of the physical adventurer and the man of artistic conscience.  

Among the objects he brings into the shelter, along with various consumer products, are scripts from the lost world of theater. These are performed by a company of four actors in white jumpsuits and goggles, alternately over-acting in very funny ways and wrenching meaning from overly-familiar, undergraduate texts. The “Crucible” was very funny and “accepted” (while setting up our current situation, of course) but when we are not allowed to vote on a ridiculous “Oklahoma” number, there is a tangible feeling that something has been taken from us, and when we are denied a vote on “Our Town” after a heartbreaking delivery of Emily's hillside speech (“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?”) that what is being lost is art that speaks to every age and every situation, and that to lose it is to lose something of what it means to be human. Greta Wilson delivered that speech as convincingly as I've ever heard it, and reminded us that if we lose actors, real actors, we are losing another thing precious to our lives. 

With the arrival of an outsider, Theo, a refugee who has been traveling along the coast for too long and is very near death, Ari has her first opportunity to experience the thing which is most missing in her cloistered life, love and sex and the possibility of life renewed and sustained. Spike Friedman is just fine as Theo, making him a common man of frailty and unsatisfied ambition, just right for Ari. Of course, the introduction of a new man between these two women will bring its own conflict and complication, but Theo is ultimately more of a promise than a threat, and we end up really wishing that he and Ari could have a life, a life for and with each other. Not in this world. 

Satori Group is a new theater group in Seattle. This is their second production and it's clear that they know what they're doing and that they have an important contribution to make to local theater. “Artifacts of Consequence” is progressive, sophisticated playwriting given an accomplished and invested performance. They managed to make the end of the world new again.

PICTURED ABOVE: Lauren Hester as "Actor" (top), Alex Matthews as "Dallas" (middle), and Lindsey Valitchka as "Minna" (bottom)
PHOTOS BY: Tim Aguero