Examining Our Present by Excavating the Past in ‘Artifacts of No Consequence’ (The NoPro Review)

We don’t talk about it, but so many of us have become divorced from ourselves over these long sequestered months. What did I like before all of this happened? Since when do I have my Dad’s musical taste? What’s this bump on the back of my neck and was it always there? The questions seem mundane, but with enough hours to contemplate them, eventually, we all can feel adrift in a sea of possible selves. And then so many of us, myself included, had to return to our childhood bedrooms and live amongst our archived selves, like hermit crabs forced back into long discarded shells.

By inviting us into his own proverbial shell, creator Jeff Evans manages to capture all of the desperation, alienation, and confusion this process has brought forth in a solo performance called Artifacts of No Consequence. The show invites the audience to shuffle through the discarded evidence of a life other than their own (Jeff’s life), looking for the “self” buried somewhere in there. Because it has to be there, doesn’t it? Otherwise, what? We can’t just be lost from who we used to be, with no way back. Can we?

(Minor spoilers follow.)

“You like this, right?”

Jeff gestures to a set of Power Rangers, a sad smile on his face and a note of confusion in his voice. He sounds like a father who only has the vaguest recollection of what their child likes. Except the kid, in this case, is himself.

Artifacts of No Consequence begins with questions like “You like this, right?” presented to each audience member, as Evans pulls objects from a recreation of his childhood room, all using the real objects of his real childhood. Sure, there’s a sense of the uncanny while digging through a life not yours. But it’s scarier to realize you’re having the same uncanny feeling that you have digging through your own evidence of who you (we?) once were.

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The show isn’t all sullen, though. We collectively all pick through Jeff’s journals, notebooks he’s kept from well before his college years up through present day. Here is a journal filled with Biology notes and a Thai work permit. Here’s some rambling freshman poetry from a journal kept to record random thoughts while high; it describes Batman retaining hope after a career-ending disability. Evans probes each passage for some semblance of meaning, declaiming them as if his adolescent ramblings are pearls of wisdom. Between monologues, he finds humor in the odd little rituals that kept us sane; he keeps coming back to the same songs over and over to play in the background as we rifle through the journals, and will declare a break for us all to fuss with and find distraction in an ancient Bop-It. The whole exercise finds humor in the struggle to hold onto one’s identity as the world comes crashing down.

But the humor doesn’t detract from the emotional impact of the show. In trying to reconstruct someone else, the audience is forced to reckon with how many pieces of themselves have been left behind or forgotten. Artifacts that clearly once meant the world to Evans, acting as an audience stand-in, now are divorced from meaning, with their revelations inaccessible. Motif is also a strong suit of the piece; we keep returning to superheroes, leading their double lives, and childhood games that used to eat up hours in laughter but now only seem to frustrate or confuse.

I have to applaud Evans’ nuanced performance throughout the experience. At first, the sense of trepidation with which he approached each phrase or action, fumbling with notecards and repeating himself, worried me. I predicted that it would just be a layer of self-effacing artifice. But then that sense of sad confusion, paired with an attempt to maintain normalcy, quickly seemed to be the most natural emotional state for these times. And occasionally, his desperation becomes personified, as when Evans comes out as a manic self-help guru wheeling a retro overhead projector, unfurling and scrawling on endless spools of clear film as he monologues in a blind panic.

And as the show comes to its conclusion, it feels impossible not to grieve for the people we all were before this seemingly interminable period of diminishing. How do we find our way back home? There are no answers here. Artifacts of No Consequence is smart enough to know that, at least for now, the road behind us is blocked off.

What makes the evening special, though, is the way it reassures us that there’s at least a small joy in the people we are now. So sift through the papers of the past, if that’s what brings you comfort; after all, comfort is in short supply these days. But remember to bury your dead and look forward, forwards towards what we might be. However long it takes.

The in-person run for Artifacts of No Consequence has concluded. A streaming version will be available Oct 1–3 on the FringeArts website.

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