A small impoverished town prepared for famed billionaire Claire Zachanassian’s arrival, hoping she would provide financial support in the aftermath of World War II. However, the townspeople didn’t expect her to offer them support in exchange for killing one of their own.
UT’s Department of Theatre and Dance’s “The Visit,” a tragicomedy play, opened Friday, haunting audiences through the exploration of revenge, greed and extreme lengths people may go to for survival. Directed by Sunghyun Lim, a third-year master of fine arts student, the play will run until Nov. 8 at the B. Iden Payne Theatre.
“It feels unsettling, but that’s pretty intentional,” Lim said. “(Audiences) go, ‘What would I do if I was in the same shoes (as the town people)? Would I kill him or would I resist it?’ It’s a very difficult question. I think my hope is (for) the audience to reflect on their own life, their reality.”
Set in 1950s Europe, Zachanassian offers $1 billion, equaling nearly $14 billion today, to save the town from succumbing to the economic depression. Acting senior Emerson Hartman plays Zachanassian and said the show’s focus on corruption feels timeless.
“Corrupt governments, corrupt people, they have existed always,” Hartman said. “How we have reacted in history is the thing that is always different … (Money is) intoxicating to people, and it gives people this idea of, ‘Well, I can do anything,’ and that leads into corruption.”
Acting junior Connor Davis plays Anton Schill, who Zachanassian asks the townspeople to kill due to resentment from their past romantic relationship. Davis said his family and friends attended opening night and told him after they couldn’t stop thinking about the play.
“Some of them have even been bringing (the show) into their personal lives,” Davis said. “(They’ve told me) ‘There’s someone who I haven’t spoken to in a while, and who I’ve been holding a lot of resentment towards and thinking about this play has made me want to reach back out to them.’ Or, some of them are talking about the parallels they’ve drawn to their day-to-day lives.”
The use of live-feed cameras projecting scenes off stage makes the show unique. For example, the cameras livestream footage of Zachanassian watching the townspeople from a hotel balcony, which in reality is in a set in the basement of the theater.
“We use live-feed cameras with (actors as) reporters and cameramen to reflect how this society makes these cruel decisions in the name of democracy,” Lim said. “How we monetize or how we make it entertainment.”
The play also utilizes color to represent change, shifting from a black-and-white set and costume design into yellow by the end.
“It looks like they flourish and they got better, but it still stays in the totalitarian society,” Lim said. “One color dictates the whole word. My designer (and I) tried to keep this simple and fundamental element but push the extreme, so the audience can feel this excessiveness.”
Davis said the most poignant aspect of the show is its ability to connect to real life treatment of people that have wronged others.
“When you exclude those people or punish those people, things don’t really get better,” Davis said. “Maybe financially things get better, but by the end of the show, I would say that the soul of the town is gone. These are not people anymore, and I think that’s what we see a lot in life.”
