Central Square Theater

CST’s Stunning ‘The Moderate’ Unleashes the Internet’s Good, Bad and Ugliest

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Nael Nacer in CST’s ‘The Moderate’. Photos: Nile Scott Studios.

‘The Moderate’ — written by Ken Urban. Direction and Multimedia Design by Jared Mezzocchi. Scenic Design by Sibyl Wickersheimer; Lighting Design by Kevin Fulton; Sound Design by Christian Frederickson; Assistant Projections Design by Emery Frost. A Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production presented by Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave, Cambridge through March 1.

By Shelley A. Sackett

The Moderate is not for everyone.

Kudos to Central Square Theater for its excellent job of warning that the play contains mature themes, including images, video, and audio depictions of violence, nudity, and racism. Its Content Transparency Statement goes even further, stating, “Central Square Theater cares about the well-being of our audience. We are committed to sharing information about stage effects, sensory experiences, and topics people may find distressing in advance of attending our productions.” The theater recommends that audience members be older than 17. (See full program here).

On a recent Sunday matinée, one woman left early, clearly distressed. The rest of the capacity crowd stayed put, transfixed by one of the most compelling productions to hit Boston this season.

Two-time Obie Award winner, director and multimedia designer Jared Mazzocchi and scenic designer Sibyl Wickersheimer set the stage and mood before the play even begins. Stark metal scaffolding and 10 wrap-around screens hover above a screened gazebo. It is March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic and lockdown. Inside the gazebo/cage, a man sits hunched over his computer, busy at work. His face is projected in double negatives above, framing shooting purple lights. Suddenly, the other screens come to life with images that range from loving couples holding hands to actual beheadings.

Celeste Oliva, Nacer

The man behind the screen is middle-aged Frank Bonner (the always excellent Nael Nacer), newly estranged from his wife, Edyth (Celeste Oliva), and his teenage son. He’s also just lost his job at Kohl’s and is facing mounting debt, including loans he took out to pursue a degree in English literature at a community college. Isolated and desperate, Frank has applied to be a content moderator for a company subcontracted to a company contracted by the social media global giant meant to be Facebook.

During his interview with Martin (Greg Maraio), Frank (and the audience) learn exactly what the job entails.

When viewers encounter content on the web they deem to be “questionable” and alert the provider, Martin explains, that content goes into a queue for human evaluation. The evaluator views the content and presses either “Accept” or “Reject.” Personal beliefs are irrelevant to the job, Martin advises (warns?) Frank. “Just follow the company guidelines.”

Martin also warns (advises?) Frank to “try to look but not see” some of the more traumatic images that will parade across his screen, especially anything having to do with ISIS.

Frantic for a job and any diversion during his marital and societal isolation, Frank jumps at the chance to earn $17 an hour.

As he screens a never-ending stream of debatable content, the work takes a predictable emotional and psychological toll, and the audience, riding shotgun as we are, channels that upheaval. A young but seasoned colleague, Rayne (the enormously appealing spitfire Jules Talbot), counsels Frank when he hears that he wants to help a kid named Gus (Sean Wendelken), who has repeatedly filmed and posted evidence of beatings by his father. His pleas for help have struck a long-buried chord in Frank.

This may also be an opportunity to use his job (and the Internet) to do some good. Redemption? Perhaps. Relief? Definitely.

Not so fast, Rayne cautions. Never, ever get personally involved. “This job changes you; you decide how. It can make you better, or it can break you,” says Rayne. “Compartmentalizing is the only way to survive.”

Frank struggles with more than whether to protect a stranger (and, perhaps, heal himself). Society’s obsession with technology and the power of those in charge of that technology literally shapes the world we live in. Are moderators defenders of decency and morality or simply “Internet garbage men” doing the bidding of corporate profit seekers and right-wing fanatics, as Rayne suggests? The answers are as slippery as the slope that forces Frank to “accept” a photo of a white family embracing a young black girl titled, “Every family needs a pet,” which, according to corporate guidelines, is only ambiguously racist.

Playwright Ken Urban interviewed scholars and people who worked as moderators to create his one-act drama. He envisioned an innovative staging that would incorporate live video in “surprising ways” while exposing audiences to the kind of disturbing visuals that cling to the underbelly of the dark web.

Mezzocchi and his team are more than up for the job. For this world premiere, they create a technological landscape that seamlessly invades body and mind, creating a secret world we all live in, where erasing a video does nothing to stop the underlying evil. When a technological glitch early in the 90-minute production brought the lights back up, it was as if the fourth wall melted.

Suddenly, we were all in it together, all hostage to the technology we can’t live with and can’t live without. As Nacer busied himself at his desk, the audience was in his shoes, wondering whether this was a staged or real hiccup, trying to figure out if it’s ok to busy ourselves too, and maybe even turn our phones on and cop a quick fix.

Lest the misimpression be left that The Moderate is a 90-minute, relentless parade of vile images, rest assured that Urban has created a multi-layered story with complex, multifaceted characters who lead complicated, messy, and real lives, peppered with real challenges. A universally talented cast, bang-up production, and sharp direction bring this very human story to life and force us to confront some uncomfortable but valid questions about whether we can control technology or whether our addiction has forced us to relinquish the driver’s seat. One thing is for sure — The Moderate is certain to spark lively post-theater discussions.

For more information, go to: https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/

CST’s ‘Silent Sky’ Aims for The Stars But Falls Short

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Lee Mikeska Gardner, Jenny S. Lee, Erica Cruz Hernández in Central Square’s ‘Silent Sky’
Photos by Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

Lauren Gunderson’s career as a playwright (she is also a screenwriter and short story author) has largely focused on stories about iconoclastic women in history, science and literature. She is one of the top 20 most produced playwrights in the country, with over twenty plays produced. (Lyric Stage Boston’s 2022 production of her The Book of Will was a knockout).

With Silent Sky, a Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production presented by Central Square Theater through October 5, she turns her attention to the story of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, a young astronomer whose scientific brilliance and curiosity led to her discovery of the relationship between luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables (a star that pulsates).

If that sounds wonky and more opaque than incandescent, it is. Yet, thanks to Gunderson’s witty, tightly crafted script and several outstanding performances, the almost two hours almost fly by.

The play starts in 1902 with Henrietta (Jenny S. Lee), the daughter of a rural preacher in Lancaster, Mass., speaking to her sister, Margaret Leavitt (Kandyce Whittingham). Henrietta, a recent Radcliffe College graduate, studied the classics with strong interests in math and astronomy. She considers herself, above all else, to be a scientist.

Margaret, on the other hand, considers herself (and Henrietta) to be unmarried, marriage-aged women whose lives will be unfulfilled until their status changes.

Kandyce Whittingham

Henrietta has just received an invitation to join the Harvard College Observatory. She assumes that she will be working with the college’s “Great Refractor” telescope directly under its greatest faculty member, Dr. Pickering. She is determined to accept their offer, despite Margaret’s trying her best to get her to understand that she will die an old maid if she does.

Ironically, her words fall on deaf ears (Henrietta contracted a disease that led to deafness). “I need to start my life,” Henrietta pleads. “With daddy’s money.”

Dowry in hand, she burns any hope of marrying and heads to Harvard.

There, she is met by Peter Shaw (an excellent Max Jackson). It is Shaw’s unfortunate duty to inform Henrietta that she has been hired to join The Harvard Computers, a sisterhood of scientists who analyze plates that contain images from the telescope they are not allowed to touch. These women do the necessary mathematical equations for the observatory’s male-only research team, who absorb (code for steal) the women’s work and pass it off as their own.

Lee, Max Jackson

Shaw’s second unfortunate duty is to inform Henrietta that he is her boss and mediator to Dr. Pickering, whom she will also never see. Needless to say, Henrietta goes ballistic in the first of many scenes that are so well written but flatly executed.

As Shaw, the inferior physicist whose father’s connections landed him his job, Jackson turns in a solid performance. He is clearly out of his league professionally and his will, credentials and verbal swordsmanship are no match for Henrietta’s. The two circle the desk as Henrietta puts on her best pit bull persona, furious and determined.

Gunderson’s script is crisp, funny and fast-paced, a gift to both actors and audience. The problem is that Lee doesn’t quite have the tone and touch that the part of Henrietta requires. Strident and droning, she struggles to flesh out Henrietta with the nuance and rhythm she needs.

Her co-workers, thankfully, are another story. As Williamina Fleming, the Scottish housekeeper turned “computer,” Lee Mikeska Gardner is the runaway showstopper. Pitch perfect in every way, she milks her character’s dry sense of humor with straight-faced deliveries in an impeccable (and easily comprehensible!) brogue. She has some of the show’s best lines and delivers them like the consummate (and much regaled) actress she is.

Annie Cannon (Erica Cruz Hernández, also very good) is the no-nonsense, brilliant scientist and head of the computing team. A diva relegated to backup singer, she is at peace with her lot. “I don’t need a title,” she declares. “My life is my work.”

The two convince Henrietta to stay. At least she has access to the world she longs to live in and, with Cannon and Fleming as her colleagues, its best minds.

The play unwinds fairly chronologically with relationships, historical events and family crises moving the story along. Eventually, her discovery allowed astronomers to estimate greater distances up to ten million light-years away, much greater than one hundred light-years. Hubble used the law to estimate the distance of the Andromeda galaxy in light-years. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics, but she had already passed away 4 years earlier.

Gunderson tackles more than just Henrietta’s contribution to science, however, with big-ticket issues and questions. Societal restrictions on women permeated every aspect of her life. It was expected she would be a homemaker and supporter rather than a contributing participant. Her legacy was to be her children, a life well lived, measured in her husband’s accomplishments.

Lee

Henrietta, on the other hand, dared to challenge long-held norms and trumpet the call for women’s independence, unfettered scientific research, and academic gender bias blindness. Thank you, Central Square Theater, for spotlighting this little-explored crusader. Sadly, over a century later, her concerns couldn’t be more relevant.

‘Silent Sky.’ Written by Lauren Gunderson. Directed by Sarah Shin. Scenic Design by Qingan Zhang; Costume Design by Leslie Held; Lighting Design by Eduardo M. Ramirez; Sound Design and Composition by Kai Bohlman. A Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production. Presented by Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge through October 5.

For more information, visit https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/