Review: "White Box" is a powerful mishmash of art forms

Obsession can take various forms. “White Box,” the play that premiered May 29 at Spoleto Festival USA, never limits itself to how it details its fixation.

Narrator Maria Weisby details a doomed 1897 gas balloon expedition to the North Pole in the play’s opening moments. “White Box” bunches a number of art forms together, including dancing, strings, percussion, photography and stop-motion animation.

This combination from the mind of writer and director Sabine Theunissen creates an exciting, if at times confusing, theatrical experience. The expedition remained a mystery for decades until the discovery of the group’s photographs in the Arctic in the 1930s. Theunissen playfully looks at how humans document history and how understanding can change over time.

A chilling retelling of a doomed journey

Weisby mentions from the jump that the sequence of events — where the three men died after their balloon crashed — would be in reverse chronological order.

The explorers’ deaths are front and center early on. Dancers Thulani Chauke and Fana Tshabalala, plus performer Andrea Fabi, do a commendable job of showing the perilous stakes. The three frequently shiver and uncomfortably contort their bodies in the face of the extreme cold.

The rest of the stage reflects the harsh conditions of the story’s setting. Audience members hear howling winter winds before the show even begins.

Art forms collide in experimental harmony

String performer Catherine Graindorge and percussionist Angelo Moustapha heighten the sense of terror the explorers felt in their final moments.

Graindorge, seated to the right side of the stage, repeatedly stands and sits to emphasize the at times unnervingly high-pitched music. Moustapha, standing stage right, crafts an atmosphere of doom and danger with drums and piano.

While all of the music and dancing can feel quite typical for a play or musical, “White Box” subverts expectations by frequently adding stop-motion videos. These clips mainly depict the camera taking photos of the explorers. The onstage performers simultaneously do an interpretative dance of being photographed.

If all of this sounds overstimulating, just wait for the onstage camera. Fabi dances around with a device that resembles an 1800s-era model, before he attaches the camera to ropes and sends it flying into the first few rows of the theater. It’s a thrilling moment that celebrates how beautiful photography can be.

Fragments of memory, stitched together

Despite the excitement, none of the onstage performers has any dialogue, so it can be a little confusing to pinpoint the chronology in “White Box.” Enter Weisby’s narration, which keeps the audience grounded in the history of the 1897 journey.

The constant explanation of the play’s story and themes may feel overbearing at first. But it ends up being more like table setting before the other art forms show up.

Furthermore, the narration becomes critical to understanding how the moments audiences see on stage are just glimpses of a larger story. The restored photographs from the time help historians, as Weisby describes, “fill the gaps.”

This takes on a more personal angle as well. Weisby’s brief mention of a father recounting his life in reverse before his death draws from Theunissen’s own experience and is a source of inspiration for the play.

Whether through stop-motion, reverse chronology, interpretative dance or a photograph, “White Box” succeeds at filling the story’s gaps.

IF YOU WANT TO GO: “White Box,” 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. May 30; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. May 31, Emmett Robinson Theatre, College of Charleston, 54 St. Philip St.

Henry O’Brien is an arts journalism and communications graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.