Is This a Room is the astonishingly true story of Reality Winner, the 25-year-old former Air Force linguist who was surprised at her home by the FBI on June 3, 2017. The play’s text is taken from the FBI transcript of her interrogation – and from these pages, Tina Satter has wrought an extraordinary human drama between Reality (Emily Davis) and the agents who question her. In this theatrical thriller, Reality’s life is upended before our eyes, and we’re left questioning American values and the very nature of the truth.
On the one hand-perhaps the upper hand-Is This A House is effective in illuminating the process by which the sometimes reassuring, sometimes intimidating FBI agents elicited Winner's less-than-winning admissions. On the other hand, adhering strictly to the word-for-word declaration introduces several questions. Okay, it's word-for-word, but after a while, doesn't the actors so assiduously replicating every verbal hiccup begin to feel like a stunt? Doesn't this representation prompt a thought about what is the more efficacious manner of representing theatrical reality (no pun intended)?
Is This a Room dwells in a nebulous other-region, even now that it has moved uptown to Broadway. The 75-minute thriller is conducted in suspended time: You don't leave the show so much as you wake from it, shaking off its foggy, clinging, chilly mood. Satter and her company have built a highly choreographed event around a found text, the verbatim transcript (with redactions) of Winner's arrest at her home in 2017. Satter hasn't changed a single word, revealing the exquisite way lowercase-r reality can 'write' a text. On the page, the unscripted lines already throb with subtext and sing with terrifying overtones.
2019 | Off-Broadway |
Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway World Premiere Off-Broadway |
2019 | Off-Broadway |
Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway Return Engagement Off-Broadway |
2021 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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