It works like this: You buy a ticket (modestly priced at $7) which gives you an access code once you dial into their 800 number.
Then there are many choices from the robotic voice that answers. And listen closely because the options have recently changed, as they say:
“To file a claim for unhappiness, press one. For the department of consciousness rearrangement, press two. For technical support, press three. If you’ve exhausted all other options and just want to speak to a goddam human being, press four.”
Such is the realistic, but slightly off kilter manner of the experimental theater work, whose participants are then free to let their fingers do the walking down the various electronic rabbit holes.
Being the first option may be an indication of just how pervasive unhappiness may be at the moment (it’s not just you!), so that’s where we went. And it had its own options.
“To begin your claim, choose your criteria of unhappiness,” the disembodied voice says. Among the choices: financial pressures, loneliness, race relations in America, having to wear a mask even though your glasses fog, a loved one having passed, a loved one being alive (to which the one doesn’t even have to touch a number to get the solution: hang up and call them), or having just ordered something dumb from Amazon, despite all of that company’s lapses, etc.
Summarizing their phone script probably robs some of the surprise, but I’ll tell you right off the bat there is no solution to financial woes.
Under loneliness, the response is “We are sorry to hear that, please wait while your claim is being processed.” Amid typically bad hold music we hear “you are 36th in the queue.” After a few more bars of hold music, “You are 34th” …and then: “Still 34th. So many lonely people. We are so sorry to hear you are one of them.”
You never will be able to talk to an actual human being, but eventually you may hear the voice of actor Jin Ha (who describes himself as the first hot Asian Burr from “Hamilton”) tries to do more than just joke around. Instead, he sounds sincere as he tries to ease the pain, and does so by reading in entirety the short poem by Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things.” Which is actually a really great thing to hear at the moment. Just the thing an actual recorded hotline to ease despair would be right to recite.
But it closes like this: “If your claim has been resolved, press one. If you would like to hear the poem again, please press two. If you’d like to hear the poem in a very bad Italian accent, press three. If you’d like to hear it in a Valley Girl voice, press four. If you’d like to hear it in an impression of Barack Obama, press five.”
And hearing Wendell Berry in the voice of a Valley Girl kind of ruins the whole thing.
There’s less they can do to address race relations, as the voice informs the caller: “we are experiencing a large volume of calls and our operators are all busy.”
Amid a long run of hold music, the robotic operator finally says “I’m impressed you are still holding,” After a while, she confides: “Our operators have gone to bed, they are exhausted… talking about this stuff takes a toll on the soul.”
But eventually there is a redirection to a helpful piece, a 1993 interview of Toni Morrison on Charlie Rose, in which she explains white supremacy: “If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem…My feeling is that white people have a very, very serious problem and they should start thinking about what they can do about it.”
There is an odd exchange between two people in technical assistance line. And just the kind of trippy itineraries you’d expect in Consciousness Rearrangement.
It isn’t for me to describe every possibility; the fun is for people to follow their own paths, which they can do for four days.
While it doesn’t really fulfill the desire for live theater after six months, the Telephonic Literary Union’s “Human Resources” makes for an amiable time filler, pocked with sardonic humor and a few surprises. But it might take a while to warm to the format (especially if you’ve been on hold the previous hour with some pandemic-affected business trying to answer a question).
Running time: As determined by the participant. A link allows return visits within a four day period, day or night.
The Telephonic Literary Company’s “Human Resources” will be presented in four four-day windows, Oct. 1-4, 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25. Each ticket comes with an access code good for the entire period, Thursdays through Sunday.